Set in Ethiopia in the 1950s, Ambau’s moving tale is a lively coming-of-age story with merging themes of forgiveness and redemption.
Desta’s early years are filled with longing—to be loved more fully by his family and to understand why he is so often the object of his brothers’ torment. He longs, too, for the day he will climb the mountain beyond his home to touch the sky and gather the clouds in his hands. For several years, he plans what he’ll take on his journey, but he is too young to make the trek alone, and his sisters and mother repeatedly fall back on their promises to accompany him. On the eve of Desta’s seventh birthday and his rite of passage into adulthood, his father, Abraham, reveals the duties that will now be expected of him; aside from his new grown-up responsibilities of tending animals and helping with harvests, Desta and his niece, Astair, have been tasked with contacting the spirits—with the assistance of a sorcerer, Deb’tera Tayé—to ask for help in resolving his sister Saba’s inability to conceive and carry a son to term. Desta’s real troubles begin when a cloudlike man appears to him during the spiritual ceremony, providing instructions for Abraham and his family that will further anger Desta’s brothers and turn them even more vehemently against him. To make matters worse, many in the community laugh at the boy and scorn him for what they suspect are wild imaginings. Ambau’s deft descriptions of spiritual happenings and ancient blessings transport the reader to another time and place that almost seamlessly alternates between the magical world of the cloud man—“stippled with dots and tinged with gold”—and the despairing reality of a little boy who suffers brutal beatings at the hands of those he loves. Readers may wonder what caused the abrupt shift in Abraham’s character when he whips the boy mercilessly, since the author has shown us a gentle and compassionate father to this point. One might also wonder at the quickness with which young Desta puts the affair behind him, as he later does again when slighted by his father at a family feast. Throughout, Ambau shows us a boy who is perhaps unusually resilient and abundantly forgiving of his father, yet real enough to be mightily challenged in his attempts to forgive his bullying brothers. Desta’s strength and tenacity in this first volume will entice many readers to eagerly anticipate the next installment of the young boy’s journey and the continuation of his family’s saga.
Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-1884459016
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Falcon Press International
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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