by Edison McDaniels ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2013
A gritty, unalloyed treatment of a savage conflict.
A Civil War–era novel that documents the grim wages of battle.
The story begins by establishing a ghastly tenor of barbarity. The family of Cuuda, a black child, hides him in a box to keep him from harm as they travel. From inside the box, he hears the murder of his family members, but he later frees himself in order to find food. A traveling mortician named Jupiter Jones eventually rescues him; he’s a “showman and purveyor of the extraordinaire,” traveling from town to town, tricking the afflicted into buying his curative oil. He stole its essential ingredient from a tribe in Africa and although it does genuinely have medicinal powers, it also causes madness. Still, the war brings him plenty of business as the dead litter the countryside of the North and South. Meanwhile, three Union doctors—Solomon Hardy, Josiah Boyd, and Tobias Ellis—struggle to keep pace with all the wounded men sent their way. Debut author McDaniels affectingly describes scenes of battle, but his most achingly poignant depictions are of war’s aftermath: “The church-turned-hospital had become a horrid place…where four men died every hour day and night and the rain and blood ran as red mud across the ground.” The surgeons work indefatigably to save whomever they can, comfort the rest, and try to preserve their own sanity. In another storyline, a Union soldier, Ezra Coffin, is badly wounded in battle in southern Pennsylvania and finds himself beside Maj. Tom Jersey, a Confederate soldier who’s just as badly hurt. Despite being enemies, they forge a kind of friendship due to their shared anguish and looming mortality. McDaniels skillfully braids these multiple plotlines into a coherent whole, but his quick leapfrogging from one subplot to another can be wearying. Also, the story’s impressive historical authenticity comes at a price of unrelenting gloominess, so readers should prepare for a dexterous but austere experience.
A gritty, unalloyed treatment of a savage conflict.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4825-0516-0
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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