An accomplished debut novel about a family that lives in one of those rural locales where the old are ornery, the middle-aged disappointed, and only the young happy. Fern's family moves to the mountains of Kentucky three years after their farm fails in Ohio. Dad now has a job with the gas company, but he worries about losing it; Mom is tired out from taking care of everyone; older sister Florabelle is pregnant, angry, and about to marry the child's father, Jason; baby sister Birdie wants to keep the entire latest litter of puppies; Grandma, living alone nearby, is getting forgetful; and Fern works hard at the local gas station for kindly Clem. The characters and setting are saved from clichÇ by Fern's fresh perspective—almost. Fern is strong, conscientious, and gratifyingly sensible as she tries to hold the family together. And when she meets handsome architecture student Culler, she realizes she needs a life of her own. The two go fishing; then Culler comes home to dinner, which is a disaster. Meantime, as Christmas approaches, the family is alienated by Dad's decision to send Grandma to a nursing home; Florabelle has the baby and is later abandoned by Jason; Fern starts work at a veterinary lab, where she is encouraged to apply to college; and when the family objects both to her relationship with Culler and to her increasing independence, she regretfully moves out. This family disapproval, and the lovers' shared guilt about a fire at Clem's gas station that they may have caused, nearly ends the relationship. But a story like this has to end happily, which it does as love triumphs over a variety of family woes. Altogether, an intelligent celebration of the sometimes conflicting forces of family loyalty and romantic love.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-877946-79-6
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
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
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