A careful, intelligent account of the personal motives behind historical events. Dramatic and instructive.
A Revolutionary War historical from Cooney (Small Town Girl, not reviewed) portrays the rebellion unleashed by British atrocities in a small village in Maine.
William and Lavinia Mowlam were born and raised in New England, but they grew up thinking of Great Britain, though they’d never seen it, as home. Even after William was abducted by redcoats during the French and Indian War and forced into service as a guide for more than a year, he came home exhausted but not especially radicalized. Lavinia, however, never forgave the British for what they did to him and, now, grows to hate the mother country. With the encouragement of her brother-in-law John Avens, a Boston clergyman who moves in the same circles as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, the highly educated Lavinia begins to write anonymous articles attacking the Crown. Sedition is always dangerous, but who would suspect a farmwife in the wilds of Maine? Who, that is, except Loyalist merchant Samuel Leyson, who’d been shown the door when he tried to court Lavinia years before. Acting on a tip from Leyson, a party of English soldiers disguised as Indians attack and murder William and Lavinia and their five children at night in October 1774. The British will come to regret the atrocity, which turns an entire region against them. Lavinia’s brother, the ship captain Patrick Rousse, bends his energies to privateering and begins raiding British frigates and ports. John Avens gives up preaching and throws himself into the revolutionary cause. Most ambitious of all is the widow Winnie Goodridge, a local innkeeper who sets up a foundry on the old Mowlam farm and begins to produce guns and shot for the Continental Army. With the help of Patrick’s services as a smuggler and gunrunner, the Mowlam foundry becomes a decisive factor in the colonial uprising.
A careful, intelligent account of the personal motives behind historical events. Dramatic and instructive.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2004
ISBN: 1-58465-356-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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