Johnson (Unprotected, 2012) draws on 20 years’ experience as a child protection worker in this chilling look at the darker...
A social worker’s troubled past threatens her livelihood.
Roger and Beverly Danco’s first love had always been Star Wars. Their second was drugs—weed, pills, LSD. Their third might have been each other, leaving no room at all for their two kids. It’s no surprise that as adults, both Leah and Luke have developed addictions of their own. The tough older sister has beaten back the booze and now works for Terrance County Human Services, pulling kids out of homes no worse than hers was. Younger brother Luke is another story: his using and dealing are out of control. When things get too hot for him at his place, he holes up at Leah’s. Stressed by her needy brother and her relentless job, Leah decompresses courtesy of an affair with Pete Kemper, a cop who helps Human Services investigate abuse cases. But Leah’s childhood attachment issues keep Kemp at arm’s length. Worse yet, two of their joint cases go south. Baby Ben is airlifted to the hospital covered with bruises, bones broken. It seems a slam-dunk that mom’s drunken boyfriend is to blame. But questions about whether Kemp read him his Miranda rights block Human Services’ legal team from pushing the case forward. Even worse, Kemp and Leah’s investigation of the rape of a high school student gets derailed when the trail leads a little too close to home. Leah’s co-workers try to protect her, especially Amanda Danscher, the newest member of the team, whose checkered past rivals Leah’s. But Leah needs to close her cases fast before her personal and professional woes send her right back into the bottle.
Johnson (Unprotected, 2012) draws on 20 years’ experience as a child protection worker in this chilling look at the darker side of childhood.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-87839-800-3
Page Count: 290
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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