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WHERE THE RIVER BENDS

THE STORY OF A TRAGEDY

Sentimental but still tells a forceful story about racial identity.

A family must face their origins after disaster strikes in Matthews’ debut novel.

The Vandenholms live a charmed life in New York City, seemingly unscathed by the Great Depression ravaging countless families. But when Peter Vandenholm winds up in a coma, his wife, Celeste, discovers that their family fortune has almost vanished. She must soon sell their mansion; call her teenage son, David, back from private school; and let go of the nurse caring for her mentally disabled daughter, Martina. After a wealthy man attacks Martina, a desperate Celeste pulls up stakes from their tenement apartment and moves the family to rural Sculley’s Bend, Virginia. In Sculley’s Bend, David learns his mother’s shocking secret: while light-skinned enough to pass as Caucasian, Celeste is in fact the youngest daughter of a poor African-American family. As Celeste (born Carol Ann) reconnects with her father, sister, and the black community she fled as a young woman, David struggles with anger and resentment about his mother’s deception. He also bridles at being perceived by his new community not as a privileged white academic, but a poor black orchard worker. David’s refusal to think of himself as anything but white, his flirtations with a bored white woman, and the brutal punishment promised to any black man who “acts white” visit danger on the entire Sculley’s Bend community. The book’s New York half flirts with melodrama: characters often struggle not to faint or vomit as they cope with a string of disasters, and Martina’s attack is too familiar a Victorian trope to be shocking. Tone improves with the move to Sculley’s Bend; dramatic reactions are replaced with internal struggles, and the family’s problems unfurl more realistically. David and Celeste are complete creations—David’s occasionally repugnant sense of entitlement is softened by his vulnerable age and upended identity, and Celeste’s erasure of her past is contextualized. There seems like far more to unpack for these characters in Sculley’s Bend than in New York, which makes the ending feel slightly rushed.

Sentimental but still tells a forceful story about racial identity.

Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9906786-0-1

Page Count: 292

Publisher: Copake Lake Press

Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017

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MAGIC HOUR

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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