A well-researched but overly complex dissection of a forgotten yet pivotal episode in American history.
An economist’s debut historical novel focuses on the roots and impact of the Virginia Uprising of 1675-76.
At the beginning of this ambitious work, violent attacks by the Susquehannock spread fear throughout Virginia. A brutal military retaliation leads the tribe to plan a getaway west to “Kain-tuck-ee” while its warriors continue raiding farms. Burgess Thomas Swann advocates brokering peace, but unscrupulous Sir William Berkeley, governor of the Royal Colony of Virginia, concentrates on profitability: “If some get killed, that’s in our interest. It makes land available for men of quality.” When peace efforts fail and the conflict intensifies, settlers petition Sir William to authorize strikes against the Native Americans by troops under Commissioned Officer Nat Bacon. But this leads to an elaborate sequence of cat-and-mouse machinations between the troops and Sir William, who bristles at anyone trying to influence how he runs Virginia. When Bacon successfully ends the assaults, Sir William regains the upper hand by declaring all of the soldiers traitors, hunting them down for execution and seizure of their property. He is ousted and replaced when King Charles II intervenes from England in response to the petition of people like Swann who seek a fair level of representation returned to the populous without threat of retribution. Crabbe convincingly argues in her book that this “popular insurgency” in Virginia yielded significant socioeconomic changes with far-reaching effects on America’s future. Her judicious research is evident by the long bibliography of both primary and secondary sources. In addition, the author boasts an extensive vocabulary of arcane words appropriate to the era. In terms of cultural sensitivity, engrossing details are offered in the Native American passages, but they too often fall into the noble savage trope. The novel’s constantly changing locations, mix of Native American and Gregorian calendars, and more than 70 characters could deter casual readers from wading through the daunting labyrinth for what is at heart an intriguing retelling of an underrepresented event.
A well-researched but overly complex dissection of a forgotten yet pivotal episode in American history.Pub Date: May 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9988114-0-6
Page Count: 292
Publisher: The Global Finance Group
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2017
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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