A neat slice of local color, regional history and the joy of amateur sport.
Valley reflects on the zeal, pride and love his amateur team from Rye, N.H., brought to hockey through the 1940s and ’50s.
The author uses a considerable measure of polish, not unlike the surface of a pond after a long freeze, in this memoir of his hockey-playing years, principally for the Seahawk team from his native New England. From Thanksgiving until the ice rotted in April, his town was obsessed with hockey. World War II veterans started a club (perhaps, Valley suggests, not just to play but to help bevel some of the harsher experiences of war, in a game where warlike tendencies are kept in check) that rose to prominence through the B ranks. The author turns a bright light on the thrill of the game, its mesmerizing flow of speed, skill and color, but finds something deep within the Seahawks. The team members organized everything independently–the outdoor rink, uniforms and money needed to sustain a club–when times were still economically hard. They “gave everyone a source of community entertainment and, more importantly, something to identify with, get behind and make everybody proud.” Valley also captures some quality on-ice action, as he joined the Seahawks between the goal’s pipes when he was 14 years old. It’s good, cringing fun to read of the poor goalie’s circumstances–the equipment was primitive, and he wore no mask. Still, the author shrugs off one encounter that left a number of his teeth on the ice and 80 stitches in and around his mouth. He provides choice nuggets of club history–for their first game, since no local sport shop stocked the hockey variety, “each player was wearing an extra-large, bright pink ladies garter belt under his hockey pants.” No one will begrudge him if he goes on a bit about his coming retirement from the game and struggles to determine when his exit is graceful rather than premature.
A neat slice of local color, regional history and the joy of amateur sport.Pub Date: Dec. 25, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-931807-72-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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