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THE BLACK TULIP

Name: THE BLACK TULIP
Author: Elwood E. Yoder
ISBN: 978-0990555902

AN ATLANTIC NOVEL OF PRINTING, PRIVATEERS, AND PIRATES

by Elwood E. Yoder ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2014

A middling seafaring adventure in need of characters with more depth to make this intriguing history connect with readers.

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Leaving behind a life as a printer in his father’s Amsterdam print shop, a young man embarks on a journey around the Atlantic Ocean in the early 17th century.

After accidentally starting a fire while saving a young woman from two would-be rapists, Jansen Visscher disobeys his father’s wishes and runs away, boarding The Black Tulip, a privateer ship under the direction of the Dutch West India Company. Combining Jansen and other fictional characters with real-life historical figures such as Adm. Piet Heyn, the novel provides a thoroughgoing portrait of a life at sea. The Black Tulip’s mission is to capture the Spanish treasure fleet, and no shortage of naval skirmishes accompanies them on this mission. Jansen shows himself to be educated and quarrelsome, frequently questioning Piet’s orders and acting as a sort of moral compass: challenging the institution of slavery or pushing for less severe punishment of his shipmates. Amid the nautical events, Yoder (Margaret’s Print Shop, 2005) finds the most success in charting Jansen’s questioning of his decision to leave his father; he visits the print shops on islands where his fleet stops, engages in philosophical discussion, and comes to value the knowledge his father and others in the trade represent. To be sure, Yoder errs on the historical side of historical fiction. While the research behind the novel is beyond reproach, Yoder is less adept at providing an engaging narrative encapsulated by that history. Too often the story confuses information with emotional depth—the reader knows an awful lot about these characters, but feeling their motivations is less likely. Often, clichéd passages—“He had earned his sea legs,” Yoder says of Jansen early in the book, “but the ground under his feet gave him a sense of reassurance”—stand in for what might be more engaging writing, telling readers what’s going on without inviting them to feel it alongside the characters.

A middling seafaring adventure in need of characters with more depth to make this intriguing history connect with readers.

Pub Date: June 26, 2014

ISBN: 978-0990555902

Page Count: 318

Publisher: Plowshares Publications

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

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.