A richly detailed and thoroughly entertaining historical tale.
A runaway farm girl sets out to find her brother in Lovett’s (Saving Miss Lillian, 2017, etc.) latest novel.
In the summer of 1924, 14-and-a-half-year-old Tenny Chance heads to Ashbyville, Georgia, after running away from the tenant shack on a Georgia plantation where she lived with her family. Her brother, Byron, had hopped a freight train after her mother’s death and never returned. Tenny also suspected that her father, an alcoholic, may have tried to sell her to their landlord for $25. Her dream is to find Byron and make sufficient money to return to the shack and save the rest of her family from hardship. On her way to Ashbyville, Tenny is secretly photographed bathing in a river by 17-year-old Gussie Pemberton and her young cousin Pete Godwin. Gussie’s family farm is struggling to make profit, and she’s dazzled by the thought of making it as a photographer in New York City. Meanwhile, Pete can’t stop thinking about Tenny. The fate of these characters becomes intriguingly intertwined as they search for success and happiness—but a conniving new mill manager, Ned Fletcher, could put their dreams in jeopardy. This novel has several appealing aspects, including the descriptive ease with which Lovett writes—an unfussy, unhurried style that quickly becomes endearing: “Somewhere the river rustled and birds chirped in the trees and August insects filled the air with humming.” As in her previous novels, Lovett proves herself to be a master of plot; the relationship between Tenny, who’s striving to pull herself out of the gutter, and Gussie, who’s reaching for the stars, could easily feel contrived, but it never does. Lovett unfurls the narrative with a tantalizing slowness that allows her to fully develop her characters, and readers will find themselves rooting for them. The denouement may feel a bit too polished for some readers, but others will find it deeply moving.
A richly detailed and thoroughly entertaining historical tale.Pub Date: June 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9996579-5-9
Page Count: 572
Publisher: Words of Passion
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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