A worthy but overstuffed saga about Maryland before and after the birth of America.
A novel explores the history of Maryland, from Colonial times through the end of the War of 1812, as experienced by members of the fictional Kerr family.
In 1634, the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, received a land grant from King Charles I, a parcel carved out of the colony of Virginia. Calvert’s goal was to create a haven for
Roman Catholics, who faced persecution in England. His vision was for Maryland to be a colony in which “everyone would own a large estate, and live the life of an English aristocrat.” That is not how it turned out, of course, but Maryland’s original commitment to the concept of religious freedom brought in a wide mix of immigrants searching for a new start. This book’s family saga begins with patriarch Simon de Coeur, who leaves Spain for France in 1590. His son and grandson eventually depart France for better prospects in England. At the end of the 17th century, great-grandson Emmanuel Coeur (the family name will later be changed to Kerr) is rejected as a proper suitor for a daughter of the aristocratic St. James family—he is not of high birth and is a Catholic to boot. Heartbroken and angry, he heads to Maryland. There, he begins what will grow into one of the most successful mercantile businesses in the colony, somewhat inauspiciously by becoming a smuggler and, when necessary, a privateer (a government-sanctioned pirate). There is a lot of history packed into Hart’s (Lacey Blue and the Rejects, 2013, etc.) novel—perhaps too much. By the time Emmanuel arrives in Maryland, the reader has already perused more than a third of the book and endured long lessons in French and British royal lineages and misadventures. The story provides intriguing background for an assortment of characters who will eventually interact with the Kerrs, but this material also clutters the flow of the fictional narrative. The most compelling sections of Hart’s work, which constitute the second half of the volume, deal with Maryland’s pivotal role in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and the lengthy philosophical arguments between sequential generations of Kerr fathers and sons about the economic underpinnings of the two conflicts.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-68256-111-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: LitFire Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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