A charming, though slightly disorienting, story that will delight Southern readers.
The story of an Alabama family is set against the history of the nation in this biographical novel.
Racie Boykin lives on the Boykin clan’s ancestral plantation in southern Alabama, heir to the legacy of her successful family. Reminiscing in the pre-dawn hours of a winter morning, she begins to write the story of her grandfather Frank Boykin. Like Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump–another Alabamian who made the most of the turbulent events around him–Frank weathered the political and economic turmoil of early-20th-century America, prospering in uneven times. He successfully led his family through the Reconstruction, the Depression and the racism of the South with a humility and intelligence that bestowed prominence on his family for generations. His range of business interests in Azalea, Ala. (a fictional city reminiscent of Mobile), include timber, farming, cattle and even Coca-Cola, the first in the state to sell it. His story is not only his own, but that of the whole country at the dawn of a new century. The book’s author is the thinly disguised narrator here and real-life successor to the Boykin clan, and her tales reflect that tenuous and complicated dynamic. The stories about Frank’s life and times meld reality and fiction, and readers unfamiliar with the history of Alabama may become curious about just which events are embellished. Also notable are Grace’s evocations of the Southern landscape. She writes about the woodlands and the coast around her with a familiar and loving ease. This alone is not enough to redeem the factual inconsistencies that pop up in the story, but if looking for a sweet, heartfelt read, Boykin’s is a safe choice.
A charming, though slightly disorienting, story that will delight Southern readers.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1936
ISBN: 978-0-9800582-2-2
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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