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
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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