by Anita Richmond Bunkley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 13, 1995
No wild embers in this tearjerker about breaking color barriers during WW II. Bunkley (Black Gold, 1994) writes with a stiff dignity that's better at detailing social history than sparking drama. Janelle Roy has everything going for her. Young, bright, and pretty, she's got a good job as the private-duty nurse for a wealthy white woman in Columbus, Ohio. She seems well on her way to the privileged future she has mapped out for herself, with little care for the problems of her race. But all her plans are smashed when her patient dies, and Janelle is accused of neglecting her duty. When she can't find another nursing job, Janelle enlists in the Army Nurse Corps, stationed in Tuskegee, Ala., which is admitting a small number of black personnel. Meanwhile, Janelle's younger brother Perry is helping the NAACP to integrate defense plants. Angry and alienated, he hates the idea of a segregated army. When he's drafted, he's sent to a camp in Louisiana, where the fact that he's eating C-rations while German POWs are fed hot meals enrages him so much that he looses his poise, commits a horrible act, and suffers a harsh end. Janelle, however, thrives in the army. She falls in love with a handsome officer, one of the first black pilots to fly combat missions. She even has her consciousness raised: When an injury sidelines her, she helps to integrate a defense plant. She gets some lectures in stiff-upper- lip resolve, as well. ``Nobody said it was going to be fair,'' a nurse tells her. ``You're not the first woman in love who has had to watch her sweetheart go off to war. You're Army! You're a part of this great big machine, so pull yourself together.'' The war against segregation on the home front, hobbled by bad prose and melodramatic chestnuts. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93753-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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