A decent book enhanced by Deford’s great, conversational writing style.
Sportswriter and NPR commentator Deford (The Old Ball Game, 2005, etc.) tells a sweet tale about a baseball-team manager, his moody superstar and their moral dilemma.
After decades of good, hard, largely unrecognized work in the trenches, Howie Traveler has finally gotten what he deserves: He’s managing the Cleveland Indians. And he’s doing the pretty good job he always knew he could do. But his golden opportunity is about to evaporate after two years of laying the foundation for a league championship. Jay Alcazar, the Indians’ superstar, the muscle in the team’s lineup, has gone off the tracks. The gorgeous, gifted Cuban is about to get hit with a rape charge, and straight-shooting Howie, who genuinely likes the slugger and has worked hard to earn his trust, holds Jay’s fate in his hands. Howie saw Jay’s accuser trying to leave the ballplayer’s room and saw Jay pull her back and slam the door, but rape doesn’t make much sense to Howie or to anyone. Jay is such a star and so handsome that he never wants for voluntary companionship or sexual satisfaction. He has only to lift an eyebrow, even in a year like this one, when he’s off his stride. The manager, a very canny and very honest guy, is stumped. He knows he was hired to keep Alcazar happy and motivated, he knows that he’s about to be replaced by someone who can motivate the outfielder to resume his winning ways, and he knows that he’s never going to get a chance to manage a team if he gets fired. But rape? How can you wink at that? What he needs to know is why Jay spent a year distracted from his championship form. It all has to do with the circumstances surrounding the player’s birth and subsequent removal from the Socialist Paradise, but Jay seems unwilling to save his own skin. Or Howie’s.
A decent book enhanced by Deford’s great, conversational writing style.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-4022-0896-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
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