A latter-day oater, of some interest to fans of the genre.
Cliven Bundy, nothin’. Real Western ranchers pay their taxes—but kick up a fuss when they have to, as McGarrity’s modern Western has it.
Moving the intergenerational saga begun in Hard Country (2012) into the near present, McGarrity serves up a tough but tender cowboy who wants nothing more than to keep to himself out in the Tularosa country of New Mexico. Matt Kerney has been beaten up in love and war. Worse still, he’s about to come face to face with the Air Force, which has been buzzing his spread. Says Matt: “Just tell your general or whoever is in charge of the flyboys to pay me for my two dead ponies.” Says the lackey, you betcha, but without conviction, for it turns out the feds want his place to expand nearby White Sands Missile Range. If this part of the program sounds familiar, it’s because Ed Abbey hit on it with more dramatic force half a century ago in his novel Fire on the Mountain. What McGarrity adds is a finer-grained sense of place and of attachment to New Mexico; when a rancher paterfamilias intones “Don’t let them on our land” anent the Air Force minions, the reader will have already developed a good understanding of what ties those people to a dry and dusty place. A former sheriff, he also has a good way of dealing with the politics of lowland New Mexico and of hierarchical organizations, whether it be Matt’s subsequent misadventures with the ag-extension crowd or a descendant’s bumpy path through the Vietnam-era military. The story lacks much tension, certainly as compared to its own predecessor in the saga, but it has a certain bucolic charm: “After a long day working them, I used to love to come out here in the cool of the evening and see my ponies lazing in the pasture. God, they were as pretty as they come.”
A latter-day oater, of some interest to fans of the genre.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95325-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
