by Dan O’Brien ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2004
A capable western in the vein of McMurtry, not L’Amour. Well suited to those who like their historical fiction more...
Restless Indians meet hard-bitten pioneers, bluecoats, and bureaucrats.
The hero is again Doc McGillycuddy, introduced in O’Brien’s The Contract Surgeon (1999). He’s been roaming the Great Plains for a few years and seen his fair share of battle and scrapes, including the fresh aftermath of Little Bighorn. Now, he’s ready for a regular salary in order to provide for his ailing wife, so he heads back to Washington to apply for the medical corps of the regular army—and gets more than he bargained for. Having issued his opinions on the need to turn the conquered Plains Indians into good citizens of the United States (“most Sioux . . . would like to put the past behind them and move, as they say, down the white man’s road”), he’s pressed into service as the Indian agent for the newly created Pine Ridge Reservation—formerly the Red Cloud Agency, so named after a particularly troubling leader, who lately has been up to his plotting again. O’Brien peppers his narrative with useful bits of history and anthropology, and his story moves easily along a course fraught with peril for most of the principals as Red Cloud’s followers begin to drift northward to start a new war against the whites, who have been pouring into the Black Hills in search of gold. After McGillycuddy has armed a band of Sioux policemen to serve as his lieutenants, O’Brien writes that “There were a thousand possible sparks in this wild landscape, and McGillycuddy, who . . . was entrusted to predict where those sparks might be and to douse them quickly, wondered if he had not fanned one instead.” A great prairie fire does indeed ensue, the product of contemporary politics and no end of cultural misunderstanding, all of which O’Brien does a good job of explaining.
A capable western in the vein of McMurtry, not L’Amour. Well suited to those who like their historical fiction more historical than fictitious.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59228-244-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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by Dan O’Brien
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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