An often moving tale that humanizes the process of organ donation.
Shelly’s (Discovering Computers, 2012, etc.) novel explores the quandaries of a family struck by unthinkable tragedy.
One snowy afternoon in 1990, a school bus plunges into a freezing river in Rochester, New York. Sarah Nealle—a pregnant woman whose 6-year-old daughter Amy was on the bus—is in the process of driving to Sloane Hospital when she goes into labor. She delivers her baby alone in the car, passes out, and wakes up in Sloane to learn that Amy was gravely injured. As Sarah recovers in the company of her parents and her husband, Kirk, surgeons struggle to help the unconscious Amy, who shows signs of brain death. Meanwhile, a new state law passes that allows the families of brain-dead patients to donate their loved one’s organs. But an anti-abortion group fears that the new law threatens their own legal tactics, and they realize that Amy could be a politically expedient symbol. Soon, a maelstrom of journalists and protestors quickly descends on the hospital and the Nealle family. Meanwhile, Sarah navigates her troubled marriage and hears from other patients about the agony of waiting for donated organs. Although Sarah is the book’s main focus, Shelley spends time with a broad range of other characters, including Elliott Howerd, an embattled surgeon trying to do the right thing; Gilbert Dillian, Sarah’s curmudgeonly but vulnerable father; and Fly Nugent, a tenacious reporter. Shelly successfully portrays an intensely painful dilemma, and readers will feel empathy for Sarah as she wavers between accepting Amy’s death and fiercely rejecting the idea. The book’s large cast allows the author to sympathetically portray a wide range of views, with the exception of the most strident “pro-lifers.” The prose flirts with sentimentality at times, as perhaps any story about adorable, dying children must, and Shelly’s tendency to use staccato sentence fragments (“Startled awake. Another watch check. Three-twenty-two. Still no bus”) sometimes becomes grating. That said, the book remains a well-told, worldly story about a complex issue.
An often moving tale that humanizes the process of organ donation.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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