A small gem.
The unexplained advent of a white turkey marks a turning point in the lives of a Lakota medicine woman and her granddaughter, in the latest from Washburn (American Indian Studies and English/Univ. of Arizona; Elsie’s Business, 2006).
It’s 1963, and Hazel Latour’s granddaughter Stella, whom she took in after her mother died, is about to turn 13. On Easter Sunday, Hazel and Stella find a white turkey scratching at their door. Their farm, on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota, is so remote that the turkey’s provenance is a mystery. The fowl’s appearance lends even more cachet to Hazel’s practice as a medicine woman. Her clients, who come to her for spiritual as well as medicinal healing, leave gifts in the form of staples, which supplement the meager income Hazel earns from selling eggs, cream and vegetables and from leasing out much of her acreage to a white farmer. As the annual midsummer Sun Dance approaches, Hazel’s schedule of consultations is packed as she prepares her clients to participate in the grueling three-day dance, during which some dancers are connected to a pole by rods piercing their chests. When Stella catches tribal official George Wanbli, Hazel’s rival shaman, skulking around the house, she suspects he’s after the white turkey, considered wakan—sacred—by the community. After the Sun Dance, Hazel and Stella return to the farm to find that someone has massacred their chickens. The white turkey has been crucified on the front door, but, miraculously, she survives. Hazel suspects George, and will later learn that her small family is in even more danger after she stumbles on evidence that George and other tribal leaders are skimming thousands off the top of farm leases, like Hazel’s, that they administer. Would George resort to kidnapping to protect his embezzlement scheme? If not, why did Stella’s best friend Avril, wearing her orange cap, disappear during her birthday picnic? Hazel’s pluck and resourcefulness, and Stella’s brashness and fierce loyalties, are lovingly portrayed against a backdrop of appreciation for the land and its bounties.
A small gem.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8032-2846-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bison/Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
