A long slog that might appeal to readers interested in the experience of Eastern European immigrants in 20th-century...
A coming-of-age novel about a Polish-American Catholic girl growing up in and escaping blue-collar life in upstate New York during the Great Depression and World War II.
Moses (Second Thoughts, Second Chances, 2015, etc.) relates the early years of Joanna Ludak, a girl living in the company town of Thompsonville with her immigrant family. It’s a tale of evolving freedom but increased cares and responsibilities for Joanna. She attends a strict parochial school, where a nasty nun and pedantic priest treat her unfairly. Moving on to a public high school, she begins to flower, excelling in her studies, finding her first love, and making friends. Meanwhile, her father, Joe, an orphan with a fourth-grade education, barely scrapes by doing piecework at a shoe factory, and her mother, Bertha, takes a job during the war to help make ends meet. Looked down upon by deeper-rooted Protestant families in town, Joanna’s family struggles. An in-law does succeed in home construction, but Joanna’s father is too proud to ask him for a job. Joanna breaks up with her first boyfriend, Daniel, after her best friend admits she’s been dating him as well. The novel concludes with Joanna heading off to college on a train, fulfilling a long-held fantasy of “her very own train from Thompsonville” to leave her grim hometown. Moses’ lengthy novel is uneven. Its main strength lies in laying out the brutal realities and basic unfairness of life—particularly for the young—and the struggle to rise above. Precocious Joanna succeeds thanks to her intelligence and grit. The book’s weaknesses include its length and lack of action; nothing much happens in a narrative of interiors and emotions that can seem unending. The writing can be very good, with lucid, detailed descriptions of people and places and an occasional much-needed dash of humor, but it also can ponderous and bombastic, with exhaustingly long, sinuous sentences clogging the pages. Compared with these faults, the narrative’s penchants for overusing quotation marks and weak passive verbs are merely annoying.
A long slog that might appeal to readers interested in the experience of Eastern European immigrants in 20th-century America, particularly their youthful female progeny.Pub Date: July 30, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-4120-5334-1
Page Count: 442
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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