A heavy, suspenseful North Carolina novel about parenthood, human connection, and how to make peace with the cards you’re...
Set in the coastal town of Beaufort, North Carolina, Fischer’s (Becalmed, 2013, etc.) novel focuses on a multifarious cast whose very different lives end up intertwining in ways they never expected.
After being abused by her ex, Roy, young Annie Mac vows to protect her two children, Katie and Tyler. At the start of the novel, barbarous Roy comes to Annie Mac’s home to claim Katie, the 4-year-old biological daughter he has been sexually abusing. When he can’t find the young girl (she’s in hiding), he nearly beats Annie Mac to death before fleeing the scene to escape law enforcement. Fortuitously, while the beating is in progress, another Beaufort resident, Hannah Morgan, heads out to walk her dog, and she discovers Annie Mac’s two young children cowering in fear under a bush. After she makes sense of the scene, Hannah rushes to help Annie Mac, who asks her neighbor to care for the children while she receives medical care, pleading: “Hide my babies. Please. Please.” At first, Hannah and her husband, Matthew, who never had children, are hesitant to welcome two young strangers into their home, but Hannah begins to fall in love with the children and feel maternally protective of them. She also realizes that Roy is on the loose and willing to stop at nothing to get his hands on the little girl. As the novel unfolds, the entire town of Beaufort joins forces—from Clay, the closed-off, lonely police lieutenant, to Rita, the town lawyer who’s expecting a child herself—in an attempt to keep the family safe from its abuser. Fischer’s novel examines several weighty themes: domestic and sexual abuse, lost pregnancies, and the fear of letting one’s guard down to make a human connection. At times, the dark and depressing subject matter can feel too heavy, with no lightness built in to balance the bleakness. However, the book’s strengths lie in its suspense and vivid characters, whose personalities and small-town relationships are truly believable.
A heavy, suspenseful North Carolina novel about parenthood, human connection, and how to make peace with the cards you’re dealt.Pub Date: March 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9861416-0-7
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Sleepy Creek Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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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