A sequel to Thunder in the Dawn (1993, not reviewed) offers yet another version of Custer's Last Stand, as told by a fictional white eyewitness. In the summer of 1876, George Armstrong Custer and the 7th US Calvary rode to destruction at the hands of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the combined Sioux and Cheyenne Nations. No whites survived, but writers have ever since sought to explain how such a disaster could have happened. Adam Garret, hero of this newest version, is a lantern-jawed, fearless undercover journalist commissioned by Ulysses S. Grant to dig up dirt on political rival Custer. Although he's never been west before, Garret quickly adapts and becomes a better warrior than the Indians. He kills and scalps a Sioux brave almost before we have his name. Garret does not ``go native''as does his fiancÇe's brother, Mason Hall, an army deserterbut maintains drawing-room manners while developing a heightened sensitivity to the Indian's plight. Meanwhile, his fiancÇe has come west in pursuit of both lover and brother. Plodding earnestly through the leadings-up to Little Big Horn, the story is punctuated by redundant, wooden dialogue in which everyone, including rustics, speaks with perfect grammar in complete sentences. Overwritten, repetitive letters also keep the pace slow, while historical figures are accurately but broadly drawn, never quite penetrating legendary facades: Custer is egocentric, cruel, ambitious, and a bore; Libby, his wife, appears childlike and long-suffering; Crazy Horse is seen as a noble but misguided idealist. The massacre itself is so subordinated to the plot as to be virtually anticlimactic. Only those who've never read an account of the Little Big Horn debacle will find this romantic, revisionist interpretation plausible. Murray's done his homework (a very limited bibliography is included), but western fiction aficionados will find this account of Custer's Last Stand naive and shopworn.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85915-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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