An unexceptional if appealing debut in which a part-Chippewa woman recounts the experiences of three generations of her family. Aja shares with grandfather Peke a susceptibility to the Trickster, Wenebojo, who, according to legend, appears during deluges to play pranks and cause trouble. The story begins back near the turn of the century, when Peke, taking the train to college, finds himself in a dispute over a card game. He's thrown off a bridge into pouring rain, and Isabel, the Swedish girl who rescues him, becomes his wife. Years later, their coolly glamorous daughter Nina runs away to St. Paul, where Roy, a handsome Chippewa pilot, catches her eye. Their hopes for a better life are dashed, however, when Roy goes off to the Japanese front and comes home traumatized, refusing to be parted from his parachute; meanwhile, Nina can gain entrance to the big houses she dreams of only by working as a cleaning woman. After Roy is sent to Korea, Nina takes their daughter, Aja, back to the reservation in Minnesota, where she grows up ashamed of her background. She also resents the attention given to her brilliant but difficult brother Jerry, and she fights with her father's sister, Betty, who runs a roadside diner that for Aja represents embarrassing reservation backwardness. Trying to escape, she attends Dartmouth, only to find herself disgusted by her patrician classmates and lured into a stormy marriage with a boy from back home. The birth of a child, the death of her grandmother, and her decision to open a school for Chippewa children eventually enable Aja to come to terms with her heritage, and, taking pleasure in the traditional stories Peke taught her as a child, she shares her culture with the Jewish lawyer who becomes her second husband. While Strong adds few fresh touches to this standard intergenerational saga, her graceful prose and affection for Chippewa lore make for a lively, involving tale.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-517-70621-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
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
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