The author of three mysteries (The Emerald Lizard, 1990, etc.) and coauthor of a TV documentary on David Duke, Wiltz was inspired by the 1980 shooting of a white New Orleans policeman and its bloody aftermath to focus on the issue of race relations in her city—resulting in a gripping, thought-provoking drama that begins with a quote from Abraham Lincoln: ``As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.'' Thea Tamborella is not sure she wants the inheritance her Aunt Althea has thrust upon her: a Garden District mansion on the all- white end of Convent Street. The house harbors painful memories for Thea, who was forced to live there after her parents, grocers on the wrong side of town, were shot to death by a robber. Pushed into an exclusive private school, expected to take her place in New Orleans society, teenaged Thea waited out her Convent Street sentence until she was old enough to flee to the East Coast. Returning ten years later, she finds little changed, but everything made more so: Delzora Monroe, her aunt's housekeeper and once Thea's closest friend, still dusts the furniture but is perhaps a little more surly; her son, Burgess, once Thea's playmate, still charms with his smile but makes his living now as a drug dealer; Thea's high-school boyfriend, Bobby, is as ineffectual a rich boy as ever; while Sandy and Lyle Hindemann, once the golden society couple, have created a beautiful home and family, only to live in utter terror of the black ``mobs'' across St. Charles Avenue. As Thea renovates her house, she finds herself swept up again in the city's reciprocal fear, suspicion, and resentment, until the hair- trigger inter-racial tensions are tripped once again and men on both sides of the avenue take up arms. Never pedantic, always fair: Wiltz's message is that fear—and guns—are the enemy, and the choice is to not kill or be killed. A calm, quiet voice that deserves to be heard.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8071-1864-8
Page Count: 189
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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