A rambling family tale with an underlying message extolling the virtues of acceptance and gratitude.
A debut fictional autobiography focuses on an African American woman who searches her ancestry and uncovers an identity-shaking, decades-old secret.
Raised in Virginia, the product of an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, 47-year-old Maria Butler decides to do some research into her paternal lineage. Her father, Ronald Butler, has long been out of her life so she turns to the internet. Over the years, she has already assembled considerable information about her mother’s side of the family. She learned her older “sister,” Angela, is actually her cousin. Maria’s mother, Darlene, was coerced by her own mom into raising her half sister’s baby, Angela, to “spare Myrtle the embarrassment of having a child out of wedlock with her first cousin, Ronald.” Yes, the same Ronald that married Maria’s mother. The unsavory trail down the Butler line proves less than comforting—Maria turns up a “series of police reports, death certificates filled with homicides, and police records with long prison sentences.” But when she sends her DNA to the company 23andMe, she finds a link to a Texas Vietnam War hero, Samuel Anthony “Tony” Purcell. It turns out that Tony, not Ronald, is her biological father. Her given name was “Francis Marie Purcell.” She also discovers she has an older brother, Brice, who was left in Texas when her mother returned to Virginia with 3-year-old Maria. With the major reveals disclosed up front, Baxter’s narrative lacks dramatic tension. Even for fiction, the tale crosses the line of credulity. The combination of Maria’s mother’s family (the Sampsons) and the wealthy, prolific Purcells, plus the multiple, intertwined relationships among siblings, half siblings, and more, will leave readers scrambling to keep track of the over-packed cast. Adding to the confusion, the author rarely provides clear timelines, frequently jumping back and forth between present-day accounts and backstories. Still, the articulate, conversational prose is engaging and the book ends on a high note, with Maria asserting: “I would…learn…invaluable lessons about forgiveness and respect” and “I would learn how to build and support relationships.”
A rambling family tale with an underlying message extolling the virtues of acceptance and gratitude.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72831-041-1
Page Count: 122
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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