Richly entertaining melodrama about the US labor movement, reminiscent of both early Steinbeck and John Sayles’s Union Dues, from the prolific author of popular naval adventures (such as The Circle, 1992) and sociopolitical thrillers (e.g., The Only Thing to Fear, 1995). The story’s set in western Pennsylvania’s “Petroleum City,” site of the Thunder Oil Company, and a disastrous industrial accident that kills five workers and sets their surviving “brethren” against a management indifferent to cost-ineffective safety procedures—and determined to break the will of the hastily assembled union. CIO organizer (and Communist Party member) Doris Golden spearheads the struggle, abetted by sturdy, young well-driller W.T. Halvorsen (with whom she soon begins an affair). Thunder Oil’s President Dan Thunner (a well-drawn and by no means simply evil character) hires cold-eyed Pinkerton man and professional strikebreaker Pearl Deatherage (a Gordon Liddy—like amoralist), thus setting in motion a smartly paced series of impassioned meetings (even Eleanor Roosevelt shows up, the time being 1936), pitched battles, and other crises, climaxing with a winner-take-all boxing match (!) between Halvorsen (who’s handy with his dukes) and Thunner’s carefully groomed show fighter, murderous Jack McKee. Few readers will likely resist this exhilarating nonsense, despite an abundance of clichÇs (yes, there’s a turncoat who eventually finds his manhood and makes a supreme sacrifice; and Poyer does end with Halvorsen’s crassly Steinbeckian vow that “as long as somebody was hungry . . . . He knew . . . [who] he was going to stand with”). The novel is fortunately graced by consistently vivid writing and knowingly detailed descriptions of such relevant manly pursuits as boxing and deerhunting along with (really first-rate) explications of the oil refining process. If Poyer hasn’t exactly rewritten The Grapes of Wrath, he has given us a rousing good read, and one that ought to make a nifty miniseries.
Pub Date: March 17, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-86494-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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