CHALK’S WOMAN

Name: CHALK’S WOMAN
Author: David Ballantine
ISBN: 0-312-87348-4

by David Ballantine ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2000

Full of the sort of Old West derring-do that made A.B. Guthrie’s The Big Sky so enthralling, a book to which it bears...

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A lively if not especially original debut about a gritty young frontierswoman.

Vicksburg, in July of 1863, is being mercilessly shelled by Yankee cannons. An overwhelmed, ill-equipped Confederate Army doctor, desperately trying to cope, finds himself converted into an amputation machine. Chop a limb, save a life—that’s the grim mantra he keeps repeating. Ann Baxter, 16, is one of those brought to his blood-drenched operating table. Her left arm gone at the shoulder, Ann, homeless and orphaned now, is a prime candidate for self pity—but this is vintage steel magnolia. At her first opportunity, she hooks up with a wagon train heading northwest. She works for her keep under the mean-spirited auspices of an exploitive shrew—until a chance meeting helps her break free with the occupants of a lone wagon driven by a 14-year-old-boy, who, tragically, has just become head of his family: three younger siblings (one an infant), their mother and father dead of cholera. Unhesitatingly, Ann joins forces with them, despite the outraged outcry of a “protector” suddenly wrenched from indolence. After surviving unbelievably harsh weather, near starvation, confrontations with Indians, and a variety of other perils, the group arrives in Comptonsville, Oregon, where new challenges await. There’s the ongoing struggle just to remain a family, for instance. And there’s Chalk, an alcoholic who sees in the indomitable Ann a form of “seriousness that gets things done,” a seriousness and sense of purpose that will eventually lead to his redemption. By extension, it will also lead to Ann’s own fulfillment, though nothing ever comes easily to her or those she loves.

Full of the sort of Old West derring-do that made A.B. Guthrie’s The Big Sky so enthralling, a book to which it bears comparison.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-312-87348-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Forge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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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.