Amid the smarm and bluster, a tense, richly textured epic of survival in a hard land.
Death and sex abound on the Santa Fe Trail in this rambunctious western adventure.
After he murders the man who killed his father, 15-year-old Billy Lassiter sets out from Independence, Mo., for the fabled Mexican trading post at Santa Fe. Accompanied by his pack horses and trusty Kentucky rifles, Meat-Getter and Hair-Saver, Billy dodges hostile Indians and cutthroat white men as he slinks through the lawless territories, now further roiled by war of independence in Texas. Stumbling on to a bushwhackers’ assault on a wagon train, Billy acquires a trail companion in Polly, the train’s fetching sole survivor, along with a judicious alias, Caleb Landers, and a precious bequest from the dying wagon master: the only pair of newfangled percussion-cap revolvers west of the Hudson. Caleb’s six-shooters astonish his flintlock-armed adversaries, while the lengthy, rapturous and graphically detailed erotic lessons Polly confers on him further boost the shy lad’s rate of fire. (“Mount up, Caleb, just like thet stud horse an’ see what happens!” she urges during one teachable moment.) This being the Old West, the gunfights are even more gratifying than the sex romps–“This hyar a-goin’ to be more fun than a fandango with a brace o’ whores!” exults one ruffian as he plots his next outrage. What separates this hyar story from vulgar kitsch is the author’s vivid, fine-grained portrait of life on the frontier. Lewis’ blunt prose steeps readers in gritty procedural–butchering a buffalo, yanking an infected tooth, whipping up a supper of antelope tongue and rattlesnake, inducing simultaneous orgasms–and a pitiless code of survival. Whenever their afterglow dims, Caleb and Polly feel themselves adrift in “the prairie-ocean,” whose wide-open vistas portend not freedom but vulnerability and exposure to the covetous eyes of ruthless strangers. It’s a grim, paranoid setting where every shot must count and the first order of business is to reload for the next one.
Amid the smarm and bluster, a tense, richly textured epic of survival in a hard land.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-6639-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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