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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.