A historical novel in the vein of John Steinbeck about a long disputed New Mexican territory and the Hispanic and White families that call it home.
This is an admirably ambitious book, with much to say about race, colonialism, civil rights and man’s relation to the earth. The novel focuses, promisingly, on the uneasy relationship between its two strongest characters: Joaquin Peralta, a fiery leader of a community group devoted to winning back the title to land they believe was stolen by gringos from their Mexican and Spanish-settler ancestors; and Joaquin’s stepson Chava Traxler, a half-white, half-Hispanic teenager who comes to question the group’s increasingly militant tactics. However, that story is diluted by the novel’s overly large reach. The characters are too often used as vehicles for exposition and info-dumping, with long speeches about the technical details of the land dispute stemming the flow of the narrative. The point-of-view shifts too often to incidental characters whose lives and thoughts are not fleshed out fully enough to coalesce into true, necessary plotlines. Action is well written, and between all the guns, shooting and storming of properties, there’s lots of it. At times, however, the book reads like a newspaper article dutifully reporting all the facts, rather than inevitabilities that should spin out from the motivations and psyches of the characters. The biggest missed opportunity of the book is Joaquin; despite opening with his point of view, Trafton confusingly moves away from him in the second chapter and never fully returns. Enough groundwork is laid out to suggest an intriguing, charismatic personality on the level of Malcolm X, but readers are deprived of access to Joaquin’s interior thoughts and feelings; the result is an angry, one-note cutout. Chava exhibits greater self-reflection and character development, but in the end he, too, is unable to break free from the novel’s dogged, didactic devotion to its larger sociopolitical themes. Vivid and well-mapped-out, but ultimately closer to history lesson than novel.
Pub Date: July 6, 2006
ISBN: 978-1552123386
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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