An engrossing tale of survival and redemption in the Pacific Northwest.
In this novel, the lives of two girls intersect in the woods of Washington state.
Ten-year-old Agate “Aggie” Hayes loves nothing more than climbing the massive fir trees that stand near her family’s home and sketching the bird nests she finds there. But her mother has instructed the girl to remain on the ground—climbing is too dangerous—and Aggie is wary of tempting her unstable parent’s anger. Sulking over a recent punishment, Aggie lights a small campfire that unintentionally torches the woods by her family’s cabin and burns it to the ground. Believing her parents dead in the blaze, Aggie flees into the wilderness, afraid of what might happen if she’s blamed for the crime. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Celia Burke is left by her father at her grandmother’s house for an indeterminate amount of time, far away from her friends back in Houston. She plans to skip town at the first opportunity, but when she hears of the fire at the Hayes home—and the fact that the daughter, Aggie, is missing—she can’t help but get invested. (Particularly after getting a peek at one of the other searchers, the handsome Cabot Dulcie.) As Aggie tries to stay alive and Celia attempts to find her, their stories become increasingly intertwined. Bostrom’s prose is propulsive and detailed, as here where Aggie cleans up after a scavenged lunch to avoid detection: “Rousing, she poured the rest of her seed into the bottle with the milk, pushed the waxy lid back into place, and scattered duff over her makeshift kitchen to erase it. No walkers or riders or dogs would stumble over her.” Aggie is a wonderfully magnetic character: a scrappy, stubborn preteen whose father has taught her to survive off the land. Celia balances out the tale with her suburban angst and sarcasm, but the supporting characters are equally strong, including the teenager’s bird biologist grandmother and Aggie’s autistic brother, Burnaby. The book contains an unexpected villain as well, who provides some added danger to the mix. While not always completely believable, the story is a true page-turner all the way to the end.
An engrossing tale of survival and redemption in the Pacific Northwest.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-068-0
Page Count: 328
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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