A compelling read about a pivotal event in American history, movingly rendered with solid characters.
This historical fiction shows the human side of a devastating war, with the Battle of Gettysburg as seen by the town’s residents.
In 1856, in the quiet town of Gettysburg, Pa., 15-year-old Wes Culp is in love with Ginnie Wade. Bullied by Jack Skelly for being short, Wes moves to Virginia when his boss moves his carriage business south. Wes and Ginnie remain faithful to each other, but then comes the Civil War. Still in Virginia, Wes joins the Confederate army under Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Ginnie, shocked at Wes’ decision, gets engaged to Jack, who’s in the Union Army. While being a soldier is a first thrilling to Wes, the war starts to take its toll. Battle by battle, Wes and Jack become hardened veterans, increasingly numb to the horrors around them. Finally, after years on the march, Wes and Jack return home as the two armies converge on Gettysburg. In this story based on real events and the lives of real people, the father and son authors tell an engaging story using clear, solid research. The focus is on individuals—their thoughts, their hopes, their families—and their portraits are realistically crafted. Amid the well-rendered details of domestic life, the dialogue is especially impressive, and the narrative, though mostly workmanlike, is frequently gripping. The authors’ afterword on the real people behind the characters makes the story all the more heartbreaking. There are a few narrative lapses, however. Despite some effective fighting scenes, the reader has little sense of what’s happening in the war as a whole, and the main action in Gettysburg happens off stage. While this may be accurate for the characters’ lives, it takes away both from the drama and the reader’s understanding of the events portrayed. Interestingly, there are no slave or freed-slave characters at all; again, this may be accurate, but their absence, particularly in the Virginia-set scenes, should be explained.
A compelling read about a pivotal event in American history, movingly rendered with solid characters.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-1771430319
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CCB Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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