A rich and satisfying novel that explores in a significant way contemporary issues of family, religion and politics.
An exploration of Tolstoy’s dictum about unhappy families.
Richard Shapiro, his wife Louise and daughter Molly are living the good life in California when tragedy hits. Richard, a therapist, has a patient who unexpectedly takes her life, and a short while later Richard, still stunned by the suicide, accidentally sets a forest afire on a camping trip to Colorado. In response to these woes, the Shapiros decide to uproot themselves and begin a new life in southwest Michigan. Richard takes a job as a Director of Psychological Services at a local prison, but Louise, a social worker, has trouble finding appropriate work in Stickney Springs. Although she eventually gets a part-time position as a counselor at the local high school, she’s put off by the politics (right-wing) of the locals, by their denial of evolution and by their sympathy for militias and conspiracy theories. Pollack sets her novel around the time of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and some of the locals were known to have consorted with McVeigh—and they even show some sympathy and support for him. While Richard’s status as a Jew makes him a curiosity in this largely evangelical community, he finds himself unaccountably drawn toward survivalist acquaintances. Louise begins to grow apart from Richard, still haunted by his failure as a therapist. As their emotional distance increases, Louise begins a torrid affair and discovers that passion is a stern master—while it makes her feel most alive, at the same time it tears her apart.
A rich and satisfying novel that explores in a significant way contemporary issues of family, religion and politics.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-935536-12-3
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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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