You don’t need to be a rock fan to appreciate this rite-of-passage story, but Squires’ fellow rockers will also appreciate...
A rocky encounter with a rock icon changes a filmmaker’s life in Squires’ (Along the Watchtower, 2011) heartfelt novel.
Ray Wheeler is down on his luck thanks to bad judgment on his last documentary: he kept filming while a man was shot and wounded; now Ray is saddled with both guilt and a lawsuit. Ray accepts a gig to document the comeback of Lena Wells, a 1970s country-rock superstar whose music he never cared for. A Western visionary and one-time glamour figure who seems a cross between Stevie Nicks and Lucinda Williams, Lena has a past shrouded in mystery. Her relationship with her guitarist, Cy, is intense but ambiguous, and her son, Gram, has never learned who his own father is. The more Ray investigates her life the messier things get, as he develops sexual chemistry both with Lena and with Gram’s wife, Jettie. As Lena’s comeback show in her Oklahoma hometown of Medicine Park draws closer, it gets more likely that either the event or Ray will fall apart. Rock aficionados will appreciate references to cult heroes Los Lobos and Gram Parsons, and the lyrics Squires provides for Lena’s songs are good enough to pass as genuine '70s rock artifacts. Squires gets it right on both sides, making Lena a convincingly grizzled rock & roll survivor while giving resonance to Ray’s journey to personal redemption.
You don’t need to be a rock fan to appreciate this rite-of-passage story, but Squires’ fellow rockers will also appreciate her attention to details.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5733-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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
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