Perceptive and subtly powerful, this tale attempts to close a perplexing chapter in American history.
In this novel, a doctor confronts his past at a prep school in the 1960s, where the students were unwilling participants in a study.
Robert Thames is an infectious disease physician who searches the tropics for compounds that may lead to the development of new antibiotics. He works for a government agency, and as he has not had much success lately, his position is being eliminated. While he’s at home, UPS delivers a series of boxes with a familiar return address. Back in the ’60s, Robert attended Danvers Academy, a private prep school in New Hampshire. It was an exclusive place, one in which he felt out of place. As a Filipino with Eurasian and American roots, he was one of the few minority students. He was raised in a modest home in the Philippines by adoptive American parents who were missionaries. While new at Danvers, he and other students were photographed nude for unknown reasons, but in reality, it was part of a study to link physical characteristics to personality traits and chances for future success. The study’s coordinator has now sent the boxes of photographs to Robert with the request that he complete the research. Robert is astonished and somewhat sickened by the situation, and a flood of memories fills his mind. He searches for his old school friends and even visits one in Nairobi who has also become a doctor. Robert wants Danvers and those involved in the scheme held accountable for their actions. As revelations of sexual abuse surface, the school’s administration contacts Robert as it tries to save Danvers’ reputation. Based on real events, Sklar’s (La Clínica, 2010) novel is both insightful and nuanced, and he manages to tackle difficult subject matter with compassion. He digs deep into the social realities that Robert lives in and writes beautifully about his protagonist’s feelings of displacement, confusion, and sexual and emotional wonder. Robert’s overall sense of decency gently cuts through any disingenuous sentiments on the parts of others. And the topic of the nude photos is dealt with as a convincing quest for atonement (“When I was alone at home at night, the boys in the photographs called out to me. At first I did not know what they wanted. Eventually I understood: They wanted me to tell our story”).
Perceptive and subtly powerful, this tale attempts to close a perplexing chapter in American history.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72062-442-4
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Volcano Cannon Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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