An engaging tale of a contemporary Navajo girl’s connection to her horse and culture.
A blind Navajo teenager and her thoroughbred head to the Kentucky Derby.
In this debut novel, Moore introduces Victoria Jo Pinto, a blind high school junior living with her brother and grandfather on the Navajo reservation. After Victoria and her brother, Calvin, stop a stranger from beating a horse in a restaurant parking lot, they find themselves the owners of a thoroughbred who loses every race. The family spends time training the horse, now named Victory Jo after her new owner, and Calvin starts racing, slowly teaching the animal how to beat local competitors. Victoria also bonds with the horse, though a riding accident makes her reluctant to take the reins herself. As Victory Jo begins to show promise as a racehorse, Victoria decides to enter the thoroughbred in the Kentucky Derby. A collective fundraising effort both on the reservation and off supplies the entry fee, and a caravan of supporters helps escort Victory Jo to Kentucky, leading the Navajo Nation president to observe that “except for the forced march our people made in 1863, there have never been this many of our people away from home at the same time.” Will Victory Jo finally reach her potential in this Triple Crown race? Moore has lived on the Navajo reservation, and shows familiarity with both the physical environment and Navajo culture. (That experience does not always produce an authentic rendering of the culture; the use of “Medicine Man” instead of hataalii, when Navajo words are used in other instances, is grating.) The plot requires some suspension of disbelief, and readers familiar with horse racing will note liberties taken with the entry process. But Victoria is a compelling protagonist, balancing her heritage with the concerns of a typical teenager, and frequent but minor grammatical and punctuation errors (for example, “the Stalley’s”) do not keep the story from being an enjoyable one.
An engaging tale of a contemporary Navajo girl’s connection to her horse and culture.Pub Date: March 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5141-6301-6
Page Count: 246
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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