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SUN DANCER

First novel about remnants of the American Indian Movement (AIM) coming together to capture Mount Rushmore. In 1971, members of AIM actually did this, and London blurs real events and timelines rather nicely here, attempting a larger and more contemporary story embracing a portrait of family life on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation; warrior visions attained through sun dancing (piercing one's chest with pegs or spikes that are attached to ropes, breaking free when the vision one encounters is too powerful and painful to endure); liberation theology as represented by a renegade priest; Lakota mythology; and the short, sad history of the Laramie Treaty of 1868, in which Congress recognized the Sioux Nation's claim to the Black Hills as inviolable, and then almost immediately violated the agreement. London's story focuses on two brothers: Joey Moves Camp, a Vietnam vet and college graduate who returns to the reservation because he hears voices (not ancestral voices but the kind that suggest schizophrenia); and Clem Blue Chest, a good-natured family man of small accomplishment, fighting a great dependence on alcohol. While Joey dallies in an affair with a white woman and fights off insanity, Clem, by sun dancing, experiences a true vision, one that he believes could once again make the Sioux a great people. In the novel's finest moments, as the Sioux stand off the FBI, Clem again sun dances on the face of Lincoln at Mount Rushmore. The Sioux know they can't hold the mountain for long but hope to reach the national media; the FBI blocks even this, however, and Clem's insurrection ends as badly as AIM's historical one. London reads like a blend of Thomas McGuane and Jim Harrison- -with touches from the film Dances with Wolves thrown in, too, since his white people are all bad and his Indians are all good. Even so, his storyline flies straight as an arrow.

Pub Date: July 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-684-81458-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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