The sordid history of Florida’s turpentine camps is riveting; the characters less so.
A Muscogee woman and a World War I veteran try to save the soldier’s sister and brother-in-law, held against their will in a brutal turpentine camp in 1920s Florida.
Scott Hampton comes from New York to northern Florida to search for his missing sister, Sarah, and her husband, Franklin, who’d gone south for work only to be imprisoned in a turpentine camp run by the ruthless Captain Riggs. Also held there is Martha LongFoot, the daughter of a Muscogee woman and a slave, who grew up as Riggs’ sexual captive and now serves as the camp’s resident “Medicine Woman.” (Martha narrates half the story, describing life inside the camp, while the rest is told in the third person). Wimberley (Devil’s Slew, 2011, etc) does a nice job keeping up the suspense as Hampton searches for his relations, and those unfamiliar with the history of camps like these will find no shortage of fascinating—and horrifying—context: from how debtors (and others) were essentially enslaved in them to the particulars of how workers extract resin from pines for turpentine. But while readers may be new to the history here, they’ll likely find the characters more familiar, from the brave (and bland) leading man to a bevy of recognizable villains (an oily attorney, an underhanded judge, the sadistic Riggs, etc.). Wimberley’s most memorable creation is Martha, who endures a monstrous childhood—and is severely disfigured, for reasons readers will later learn—to become one of the camp’s savviest operators. But in highlighting Martha’s resilience, Wimberley comes a bit too close to buying into the "magical minority" trope, in which a person of color has almost otherworldly wisdom or skills. Indeed, she can “lift a man onto a mule,” shoot a squirrel square in the neck (so as not “to mess up the meat”), and cure various ailments, all while recounting her life in vivid prose. Ultimately, a more nuanced characterization would have better served the story—and the reader.
The sordid history of Florida’s turpentine camps is riveting; the characters less so.Pub Date: June 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-91-7637-036-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: l'Aleph/Wisehouse
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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