An often gripping real-life voyage.
Rowland’s debut memoir tells a tale of his seagoing trip to Australia, during which he braved storms, hapless crew members, and occasional supply shortages.
The author appears to have been destined for life on the water, as both his father and grandfather were sailors. After a tour as a U.S. Marine, Rowland worked as a salesman for 3M but dreamed of being an adventurer. He commissioned a naval architect to build his first boat, Love Story, but before he could set sail on a planned journey around the world, it disappeared from the marina. Rowland ultimately tracked down its thieves, but the boat, sadly, didn’t survive. By the mid-1980s, he was ready with a new vessel, Endymion, and in January 1987, he and his son, Tony, began their adventure from Newport Beach, California. (The author’s nurse girlfriend, Denise, was temporarily sidelined with an injury, he writes.) The sailors encountered surprising obstacles, including large hawks with the potential to damage instruments and a radio-silent vessel that appeared to attempt a collision with Rowland’s craft. Other people eventually joined the father-son duo on their travels, including Tony’s new pal Kyle; an attorney from Beverly Hills, California; and a hired couple that included another woman named Denise (the author dubbed her “the Amazon” to avoid confusion). The crew endured harrowing storms at sea, and some of its members’ lack of experience proved detrimental at times. But they persevered, spending leisurely hours on islands such as Bora Bora; later, Rowland’s girlfriend reunited with them. This nautical story is, rather appropriately, strongest when it’s at sea, particularly when squalls hit unexpectedly or unseasoned sailors cause problems without malicious intent. The author’s thirst for adventure is infectious, but he also takes solace in prayer, thanking God for his continued survival. He also does some things that may surprise readers, including a decision that has the potential to affect his relationship with his girlfriend. As an author, Rowland is sometimes too frugal with details, although he’s playfully apologetic when referring to a Bora Bora afternoon as “description-defying.” That said, the scenes aboard Endymion are memorable, and it’s sad to see a few crew members go after their shared escapades with the author. There’s intermittent comic relief, too, especially when high prices lead the crew to sacrifice their liquor.
An often gripping real-life voyage.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 311
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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