Ron Currie takes a big swing right at the start of his 2025 novel, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne. The book begins with a prequel spanning 300 years in the life of the Levesque family, Franco-Americans who settle in Waterville, Maine. For generations, the women of the Levesque line encounter brutality, deprivation and struggle, culminating in the hard-bitten Babs Levesque (Dionne is her married name) who takes a courageous but foolhardy stand in 1968 and pays a horrible price for it. After that, […]