A disappointing historical offering from Rinaldi, especially in the wake of her strong novel about Phillis Wheatley, Hang A Thousand Trees with Ribbons (1996). In reconstructing the romance between Rebecca Galloway, a teenage settler, and the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh, Rinaldi follows the historical record closely—perhaps too closely, for amidst Rebecca's tale of comings and goings, marriages, gossip, and details of daily life, there is little room left for plot and characters. Only six in 1798, when she first meets Tecumseh, Rebecca is smitten, a feeling that intensifies and becomes mutual over the next ten years as she tutors him in English during his rare visits. In between she reports—but seldom witnesses, dramatizes, or analyzes—his efforts both to build a tribal confederacy and to preserve the uneasy peace; she includes other events, of course, from the death of her brother's young wife to Ohio's emergence into statehood. In the end, Rebecca turns down his proposal, deciding (without ever having seen his village) that she cannot live as a Shawnee; a few years later, married to a farmer, she learns of Tecumseh's death in battle. Although only the dialogue and a handful of minor characters and incidents are fictional, Rinaldi never creates a clear picture of pioneer life or of Tecumseh's career, and his relationship with Rebecca is too sketchy to hold the foreground. (bibliography) (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-590-74258-2
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
A disastrous cattle drive turns a boy into a man in this ripsnorter, set in Florida where, Peck (Soup Ahoy, 1994, etc.) avers, “the American cowboy originated.” Slight of figure, especially next to his huge, gentle older brother Micah, Titus MacRobertson never skirts a challenge, so when he’s drafted at 16 to help drive his father’s cattle over several hundred miles to the stockyards at Homestead, he looks on it as a golden opportunity to prove himself. Those miles turn out to be rough ones, filled with filthy, exhausting work, with Seminoles and cowdiggers (rustlers) lying in wait, and tragedy too; after a wild storm leaves both Micah and the drive’s foreman dead, Titus has to take charge, a task made considerably more difficult after he takes a bullet in the belly. The author adds substance to the story with a thoughtful subplot involving Titus, Micah, and their tough, grieving father; readers who delight in the colorful language and robust characters—from aptly named cowhands Spout, Vinegar, Hoofrot, and Bug Eye, to the housekeeper Mrs. Krickitt, with her “temper that could spit upwind and bust a window”—have one more reason to find Titus’s coming of age a particularly memorable one. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028168-5
Page Count: 210
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
Fruit of two years’ overseas research and interviewing, Whitesel’s tale of a teenager’s coming of age is a perceptive study of social, spiritual, and cultural values. In the opening years of the 20th Century, Thondup Dorje, known as “Thunder,” is terrified to realize that the trader who has rescued him from a mountain storm is a “fringie” (white foreigner) in disguise. Confusingly, and contrary to everything Thunder has ever been told, the man doesn't seem at all demonic; still, as one considered dangerously contaminated, Thunder is hustled off to the distant gompu (monastery) where his eldest uncle, an influential lama, resides. There, he encounters kindness and cruelty, malice, courage, narrow superstition mingled with transcendental wisdom—and some disturbing ideas, including the radical notion that his life need not be entirely dictated by others. Through Thunder’s eyes, the author presents traditional Tibetan attitudes and customs with sometimes bemused respect. With brilliant subtlety, she also provides glimpses of a Buddhist worldview in which all acts carry a karmic burden or reward (the two being sometimes indistinguishable), and as young bodies house old souls, even small children are capable of insight and compassion beyond their physical years. Profoundly changed by his experiences, Thunder turns in the end, armed with a clearer vision of his life's path, toward a prophesied future in which Tibet’s long isolation will end in violence and exile. A strong debut that will give readers both a wide-angle view of a threatened culture, and of one young man’s personal search for truth. (afterword, bibliography, glossary) (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-16735-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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