An Englishman, a tough girl from Ohio, a cowboy, and a Comanche come together in a search for the last of the great herds of bison—in another outstanding western by the author of Honor at Daybreak (1991). Most Comanches find it impossible to believe the ridiculous rumors that reach them from the territory of the less-than-credible Cheyenne, who believe that white men have begun systematically to eliminate the bison, the animal on which the Plains tribes depend for food. The big animals have always been limitless. Crow Feather, an intelligent and capable hunter, sets out to see whether there's a basis for the rumor and quickly learns that the reality is worse than the Cheyennes' stories: The white men are killing just for skins, leaving thousands of corpses to rot on the plains. Crow Feather's search brings him closer and closer to a hunting operation headed by a former Union army colonel, Damon Cregar. Colonel Cregar's most capable scout is Jefferson Layne, a displaced Texan who's befriended British remittance man Nigel Smithwick. Smithwick fell in with the company after being thrown from a westbound train for winning too much at poker. Smithwick and Col. Cregar are both much taken with Arletta Browder, the competent, redheaded daughter of one of the colonel's subcontractors. Arletta favors the Englishman, but, despite good advice from Layne, Smithwick is still too class-conscious to know how to handle her. Meanwhile, exhaustion of the herds on the northern plains drives the white hunters farther and farther south into Indian territory, where the tribes have begun to understand that success for the white man will mean the end of the Indians' lives as free men. A horrifying story told without sentiment or bias. Kelton's spare, unadorned, and sophisticated writing gives intense pleasure without ever calling attention to itself.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-24894-6
Page Count: 369
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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