The intrinsically fascinating story of the struggle of competing factions in the western territories to achieve—or avoid- -statehood in the late 19th century: that's the background for Dempsey's (the paperback What Law There Was, etc.) earnest, high- collar tale about a group of pre-statehood activists led by James Hill, owner of the Great Northern Railroad. Young Zack Horton, heir to his late grandfather's Dakota and Western Railroad—about to be sold to James Hill—and lovely Leah Page, owner-manager of a Baltimore leather-goods company and an ardent suffragist, have been recruited by Hill to travel west and beat the drums for statehood: the tycoon would rather deal with individual states than with Washington's (Democratic) political appointees; there's also the bogey of a nationalized railroad system! After a lunch with labor leader Sam Gompers, Leah joins the men off and on on the western trek. She and Zack will meet Hill and President Cleveland; then Zack bags Teddy Roosevelt in Dakota territory (``There's no way this land can be set aside for a bunch of savages [Indians] to use as a playground!''); talks with a Grange leader and a Mormon power; and rescues a mate in a flood caused by a mining disaster in Idaho. Meanwhile, there's talk to, and about, various politicos, good and bad, homesteaders, labor and farming union boys, empire builders, and strong women suffragists. At the last, in D.C., comes the statehood vote for the northern tier of territories. The real people here (like the fictional) speak with lungfuls of ether (``There are great, great things about to happen and I intend to be a part of them!''), and everyone chuckles and grins a lot. But while a bit stiff in the telling, this carefully researched fiction—with lots of velvet luxury in private railroad cars, etc.—is gripping stuff on pre-statehood turmoil.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-85403-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out...
A post-apocalyptic novel in which Hig, who only goes by this mononym, finds not only survival, but also the possibility of love.
As in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the catastrophe that has turned the world into its cataclysmic state remains unnamed, but it involves “The Blood,” a highly virulent and contagious disease that has drastically reduced the population and has turned most of the remaining survivors into grim hangers-on, fiercely protective of their limited territory. Hig lives in an abandoned airplane hangar and keeps a 1956 Cessna, which he periodically takes out to survey the harsh and formidable landscape. While on rare occasions he spots a few Mennonites, fear of “The Blood” generally keeps people at more than arm’s length. Hig has established a defensive perimeter by a large berm, competently guarded by Bangley, a terrifying friend but exactly the kind of guy you want on your side, since he can pot intruders from hundreds of yards away, and he has plenty of firepower to do it. Haunted by a voice he heard faintly on the radio, Hig takes off one day in search of fellow survivors and comes across Pops and Cima, a father and daughter who are barely eking out a living off the land by gardening and tending a few emaciated sheep. Like Bangley, Pops is laconic and doesn’t yield much, but Hig understandably finds himself attracted to Cima, the only woman for hundreds of miles and a replacement for the ache Hig feels in having lost his pregnant wife, Melissa, years before.
Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out some hope that human relationships can be redemptive.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95994-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
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