A thought-provoking novel about the full implications of the death penalty by Van Soest (Diversity Education for Social Justice: Mastering Teaching Skills, 2008), a retired professor and social worker who has written extensively on social justice issues.
On a spring night in 2001, teenager Veronica Baker is stabbed to death at an Austin, Texas, bus stop by a drug-crazed woman. Ten years later, Veronica’s murderer, Raelynn Blackwell, is scheduled for execution. Veronica’s death, as well as family members’ differing opinions about justice for her killer, tears her family apart. Veronica’s adoptive mother, Bernadette Baker, experiences a change of heart after meeting her daughter’s killer, and her husband, Marty, a philosophy professor who seems too good to be true, supports his wife in her obsession with Veronica’s killer, even as he suffers a health crisis. But Veronica’s sister, Annamaria Baker, a strident, bitter attorney, wants Raelynn dead. She believes Raelynn and her attorney are playing the system. Meanwhile, Fin, Veronica’s brother, unequivocally opposes the death penalty, even for his own sister’s killer. When Raelynn is spared execution, Bernadette redoubles her efforts to help Raelynn find peace, although it means antagonizing Annamaria, neglecting Marty and uncovering a shocking revelation. Van Soest’s stated purpose for trying her hand at fiction is her “growing conviction that people become empowered to work for personal and social change, not through objective data and studies, but through personal connections that lead them to care enough to take action.” Raelynn and her neglectful, alcoholic mother, Maxine, emerge as surprisingly sympathetic characters. However, Bernadette’s determination to help Raelynn find peace when her own husband’s health is in doubt makes her less likable.
Complex characters populate this well-considered take on capital punishment.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62720-022-6
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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