A solidly entertaining, feminist tale that’s also well-suited for medical-history buffs.
In this fifth novel in Michaels’ (The Price of Compassion, 2018, etc.) Golden City series, set in 19th-century San Francisco, an intrepid young woman rebels against her parents and refuses to conform to high society’s expectations.
The story opens in 1893 at the home of young Katherine “Kit” Firestone as she and her friends, Cecily Anders and Bea Marshall, play in a tree while their parents socialize. From up in the branches, the girls overhear Cecily’s father and Bea’s mother discussing an extramarital affair. The story quickly jumps five years forward, when 18-year-old Kit allows a secret courtship to turn physical. She soon realizes that her feelings for the young man, Easton Challis, are fleeting. She agonizes over how to let him down easy, but then she’s shocked to learn that he’s proposed to her old friend Cecily. Worse yet, it appears that Easton has already impregnated Cecily and infected her with syphilis. (He’d used a prophylactic with Kit.) As Kit attempts to nurse Cecily back to health, her desire to help her friend sparks a passion for practicing medicine and protecting women’s rights. The narrative shifts back in time repeatedly to show Kit’s mother, Josephine, as a young woman. Due to tragedies in her youth, Josephine also found solace in helping female friends and championing feminism. Rather than recognizing their mutual activist spirits, Kit and her mother only butt heads. Indeed, readers are likely to wonder whether it’s possible for Kit and Josephine to stop arguing long enough to realize their similarities and use their mutual passions productively. Still, the novel’s fast-paced narrative and engaging dialogue will draw readers in from the start. It’s full of intriguing details about San Francisco near the turn of the last century, and it also provides engaging information about the evolution of medicine—and women’s health care, in particular. There are a few too many distracting subplots and tangents, and the book might have fared better if it were split into multiple volumes. Even so, the various threads remain compelling, and the novel as a whole provides a titillating journey through history.
A solidly entertaining, feminist tale that’s also well-suited for medical-history buffs.Pub Date: March 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9975201-2-5
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Red Trumpet Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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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