A very appealing debut from Dunbar, an Oklahoma native, whose tough-minded tenderness and authentic voice make the most of a...
Oklahoma psychic, in an impressive first from screenwriter Dunbar.
When her good-for-nothing husband Jimmy, a former all-state basketball player, walks out, Aletta Honor realizes she has no way to support her three children—especially not with a fourth on the way. But it’s 1976 and all over Okay County the nation’s bicentennial is being celebrated, along with Czech Day. Plan A: bake kolaches and sell them to parade-watchers. A few hours later, the house is filled with clouds of smoke. She can’t sell burnt pastry, and Plan B, lemonade at ten cents a cup, isn’t going to put food on the table. What next? Hang out a shingle that says “Psychic Reader—Drop-ins Welcome.” Aletta has had the ability to converse with ghosts and see the future lives of others since she was a young girl, though she was often mocked for her dreaminess. Her mother, a staunch member of the Burning Bush Battle Church, an evangelical sect that battles to save lost souls (Okay County is well-represented in this demographic), sure as hell won’t approve. But the desperate people who appear on Aletta’s doorstep are grateful for her help, especially in matters of the heart: Aletta can track down a straying husband and even predict whether the town tramp will find another sucker. And somehow, between readings, she still has to raise Sissy, Ruby, and Randy without their daddy. At the age of 34, handsome Jimmy Honor has gone middle-aged crazy and is fooling around with said tramp, not to mention tooling around in a red-white-and-blue painted van. How’d she ever get into this fix? Flashbacks to her childhood on a hardscrabble farm reveal her love for her father Clovis, who died too soon, and her difficult relationship with her judgmental mother. But life ain’t all bad, and there are a few small miracles in store for her yet. God works in mysterious ways—when He’s paying attention.
A very appealing debut from Dunbar, an Oklahoma native, whose tough-minded tenderness and authentic voice make the most of a slight plot.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46039-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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