A captivating homage to a wilderness sanctuary marked but not spoiled by human presence.
Generations of inhabitants who revered and defended a sylvan California setting are commemorated in Brovarney’s nonfiction history.
The author, a former curator at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, California, celebrates Lake Leonard, a pristine body of water nestled amid the mountains and streams of Reeves Canyon in Mendocino County. She begins by surveying the natural history of the area, which is dominated by old-growth redwood trees big enough to generate their own microclimates and shelter a menagerie of fauna, from salamanders to mountain lions. She also discusses the local Pomo Indian culture. Brovarney then profiles the families who owned Lake Leonard and its environs from the 19th century to the present, focusing on two iconic women. The first is Una Boyle, who summered at the lake as a girl and lived there full time for 30 years, beginning in 1921; she escaped from a convent at the age of 13 and later became an amateur rodeo rider. The second is Boyle’s neighbor Hazel Dickinson Putnam, a riding instructor who greeted trespassers on her 200 acres with a loaded gun and lived by the motto, “I don’t shoot to threaten, I shoot to kill.” The author sets these stories against the inexorable encroachment of logging into the area, which obliterated surrounding forests but spared Lake Leonard’s vicinity thanks to its proprietors’ conservationist efforts (one owner saved a favorite redwood by telling the lumberjacks that it was on her land—and then bought the property the next day). Brovarney deftly mixes regional history, ecology, and character studies of people who shaped and were shaped by the land, writing in lucid, workmanlike prose dotted with flights of vivid lyricism: “An ancient redwood forest dwells deep in our sense long after we leave it—a cool stillness, the pungent sweet-citrus scent born of sun-heated sap, soft duff underfoot, duskiness broken by slender streams of light, the crystalline song of a hermit thrush.” The book’s many photos, some a century old, give an equally evocative sense of the primeval forest, its vast, corrugated redwoods dwarfing the people beside them.
A captivating homage to a wilderness sanctuary marked but not spoiled by human presence.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798218021429
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Landcestry
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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