-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:Based on the experiences of real-life kidnapping victim Sally Horner and her captor, whose story shocked the nation and inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his controversial and iconic Lolita.
Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he's an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute - unless she does as he says.
This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.
Based on the experiences of real-life kidnapping victim Sally Horner and her captor, whose story shocked the nation and inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his controversial and iconic Lolita, this heart-pounding story by award-winning author T. Greenwood at last gives a voice to Sally herself.
Highly readable and tightly plotted, T. Greenwood's Rust and Stardust achieves the perfect balance between fact and fiction. The story is meticulously researched, yet it never lets its grip on the reader go, never falls so deeply into factual detail that it loses momentum...continued
Full Review
(443 words)
(Reviewed by Natalie Vaynberg).
It would be hard to dispute that Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita mirrors the true story of Sally Horner. Nabokov's character Humbert Humbert is quite similar to Frank LaSalle, the real kidnapper, and Dolores "Lolita" Haze bears similarities to Sally. Both men spirited the young girls away across the country. Yet Nabokov's fictional story has fascinated and ignited audiences for over sixty years, while Sally Horner's true story was forgotten by the public almost as soon as it was revealed. If Sally inspired Dolores, then why did the imaginary girl receive such loyalty and outrage, while the real child was lost in the annals of history?
The answer may lie in Nabokov's very struggle to produce his unforgettable novel.
Sally Horner was hardly ...
If you liked Rust & Stardust, try these:
by Kate Russell
Published 2021
Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.
by Maile Meloy
Published 2018
From a beloved, award-winning writer, the much-anticipated novel about what happens when two families go on a tropical vacation - and the children go missing.
Amy Hatvany, author of Best Kept Secret and It Happens All the Time
Greenwood is unmatched in her innate ability to weave lush, poetic language into a riveting story that hooks the reader from page one.
