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Blackberry Women

Name: Blackberry Women
Author: Ella Williams
ISBN: 978-1420878417

by Ella Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2007

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A historical novel from Williams (Strength to Carry On, 1998) that tells a story of the lives and struggles of an African-American farming family in the first half of the 20th century.
The novel opens sometime in the 1930s as teenage Lola wakes to realize that her mother has added a new baby to the family. She and her many siblings face the challenges of farm life and poverty as the story follows them into adulthood; they leave home and return, have children of their own and pass their troubles on to the next generation. Violence, alcohol, bad choices and bad relationships keep most of the family members from moving from subsistence to success. Some scenes are evocative and sharply drawn, including Williams’ depiction of long days spent in the cotton fields. However, an overall lack of detail keeps the story unmoored to specific times and places. There are references to Shirley Temple movies and a wartime military draft, for example, but the book never clearly identifies the story’s exact location. Despite the clearly Southern setting, segregation is only occasionally noted, and Lola’s prejudice against the “gypsies” who try to steal her infant sister seems far more intense than anything the African-American characters face. The prose is often awkward, often changing tenses (“Miss Dale told them that the least little trouble or bad news from either one of them will cancel the trip, and she will take someone else in their place”) or suddenly switching between the third-person perspectives of different characters. Also, many of the novel’s minor conflicts seem more like unconnected episodes than components of a unified plot.
A well-intentioned but unpolished novel of a family’s bleak existence in the rural South.

Pub Date: March 12, 2007

ISBN: 978-1420878417

Page Count: 392

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: July 25, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).