The joyful sense of community within this love story offers a charming and refreshing escape from the modern world.
The sudden death of her parents in 1910 sends a teenager on a journey from heartbreak to self-discovery through the American Midwest.
Ruby Drake, named for the red birthmark on her chest, would be too sweet to be believed if not for her terrible secret—she’s in love with a married man. After being shuttled from her cold great-aunt’s home in Beardsley, Illinois, to the farm of a kindly German couple, the orphaned Ruby lands in Harvester, Minnesota, to work for Emma Schoonover, whose own children have died. There, farming becomes an “endless source of wonderment” for Ruby, and Sullivan’s (Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, 2015, etc.) rapturous depiction of farm life makes it ring true. Ruby’s parents, who appear in memories and the small mementos Ruby carries with her from house to house, seem to watch over her from above. When she meets Roland Allen, his beautiful wife, Dora, is suicidal after the death of their firstborn daughter. Emma encourages Ruby to help Dora run the farm even though she never approved of Dora as Roland’s wife. Somehow, the two young women strike up a friendship, leaving Ruby in the difficult position of following her heart or doing what’s right. Barrett Cromwell, a family friend, would be a more suitable husband for Ruby, but will she trade love for stability? Though her droll observations root her in her time and place—“Is anyone ever their own boss?”—Ruby manages to build a life for herself with and without Roland. Whether her ending is happy or sad is a question to sit with and think about.
The joyful sense of community within this love story offers a charming and refreshing escape from the modern world.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-57131-132-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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