The final installment in Price's Georgia trilogy (Bright Captivity, 1991, and Where Shadows Go, 1993) concludes the 19th- century saga of the Fraser and Couper families. This time, though, the Civil War, which makes a belated rescue attempt of a sentimental narrative bogged down in past sorrows, may be the true hero of the piece. The year 1852 finds heroine Anne Fraser struggling to survive on a widow's pension, having lost in rapid succession her husband, a daughter, and both parents. Her courage and fortitude are further tested when financial hardships force her to abandon the family plantation on St. Simons Island and take up residence in the inland town of Marietta. Relying heavily on the support of her four stalwart children, as well as her servant Eve, who is, as both women relentlessly declare, so much more a friend than slave, Anne worries that she's become a burden. But her spirits improve as she reconciles with her deceased daughter's husband and makes the acquaintance of Louisa Fletcher, a forthright Northerner whose opposition to slavery allows for several genteel discussions on the ethics of owning people. One of Anne's daughters becomes attached to a doctor with Union sympathies, another to a fire-breathing secessionist. When Anne's beloved son joins the Confederate army, the stage is more than set for the Civil War to come lumbering through—on page 450—bringing some much needed dramatic conflict in its wake. More lives are lost, redeeming babies are born, and it's all wrapped up in a strangely truncated ending that is reminiscent of the author's inspirational books. An earnest, good-hearted drama whose besetting sins of slow pace and florid dialect are unlikely to bother Price's loyal fans. This last of a trilogy will also be featured this spring in a national PBS documentary entitled Eugenia Price's South. (Literary Guild & Doubleday selections)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-26703-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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