by Carrie Young ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 31, 1992
A first collection set in North Dakota among Nordic-Americans and mostly at the time of the Great Depression. Several of the seven stories here are evocative, moving renditions of prairie life, while the others are either one-pony anecdotes stretched too thin or affectionate portraits painted with a local-color palette. The title piece, one of the best, is about Ildri, a seamstress who shows up at a small dress-shop on the Dakota Plains and works with the narrator's mother on a wedding dress, which draws the two of them together and gives Young a symbol to develop: the bride-to- be runs off, so Ildri sits in the store window in the dress, increasing business, then buys the dress before returning where she comes from. Ten years later, the narrator's mother happens upon Ildri and the rest of the story: Ildri married, but not in the dress—instead, she lived the bleak life of a homesteader. This prairie chronicle, and Ildri's sudden death, are moving. Another successful story is ``The Nights of Ragna Rundhaug,'' about a woman who becomes a midwife only because there's nobody else to do the job. She delivers babies after driving through blizzards and the like for years, and survives. And ``Twilight and June'' is a haunting tale about a man in love with another man's wife. Of the rest, ``Bank Night'' is an extended anecdote, set in 1936 in Little Butte, North Dakota, concerning a hired hand who wins $250 at the movies; his lucky night results in his murder by a waitress he ``two-timed.'' ``The Sins of the Fathers,'' likewise, is a thin joke about girls and boys and a car. Part of the University of Iowa's regional Bur Oak series—and most likely to interest devotees of prairie chronicle literature.
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1992
ISBN: 0-87745-386-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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