Reminds warmly of Lonesome Dove and others in the McMurtry canon (Comanche Moon, 1997, etc.): colorful, poignant, funny.
McMurtry returns to the Old West he knows so well and loves so deeply for this first in a series.
On an otherwise ordinary day in 1866, Mary Margaret Cecil’s steel-trap mind clangs shut. Time to leave Boone’s Lick, Missouri, and trek west to Wyoming, she suddenly announces to that passel of folk who are completely dependent on her—for their physical well being, for their values, and, yes, for ongoing entertainment. Her brood is composed of three teenagers and a toddler, but that by no means completes the universe. There’s also rickety-rackety Granpa Crackenthorpe; Rosie, the sweet-natured whore, her half sister, and the ever resourceful Uncle Seth, Mary Margaret’s faithful swain, who also happens to be her brother-in-law. And once the buckboards are westward bound, there are two more notable additions: Charley Seven Days, the enigmatic Shoshone on a knightly mission, and Père Villy, a Friar Tuck of a priest, heading for Siberia, where he’s decided he’s needed. The why of the Cecil clan’s migration? The object is to track down Dick Cecil, that wandering wagoner, Mary Margaret’s husband, who hasn’t been seen in Boone’s Lick parts for upwards of 14 months. But then what? That’s what Shay Cecil, the story’s first-person narrator, would like to know. As for that, Ma keeps her own counsel. There will be Indian fights, brushes with bears, an almost disaster at a river crossing, surprise meetings, painful departures, dozens of near-death experiences until, finally, the trail ends at Wyoming’s far-flung Fort Phil Kearney. There, Dick Cecil’s family encounters . . . Dick Cecil’s family, and the irascible, indomitable Mary Margaret does what she’s traveled those hundreds of miles to do.
Reminds warmly of Lonesome Dove and others in the McMurtry canon (Comanche Moon, 1997, etc.): colorful, poignant, funny.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86886-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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