A Western tale packed with intriguing historical issues but lacking fully developed characters.
This third installment of a series revives Marshal Angus Esperraza for another eventful ride, this time joining a research expedition retracing the forced relocation of the Navajo.
Angus has no plans for the day in Chama, New Mexico, beyond studying a map, but when a telegraph comes in telling him about a new assignment, he jumps into action. Or rather, first he has a chat with his gunsmith wife, Jill, which sets the tone for this Western, full of long discussions and thoughtful interactions in 1888. In fact, lengthy talks are the point of Angus’ latest mission. He is accompanying a Smithsonian researcher and writer, a military man, and a Navajo woman along the path used by the Army when the Navajo were relocated to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. Naturally, tensions flare, and a series of crimes—a young guide shot and killed, a stagecoach brake sabotaged, etc.—raises the possibility that someone doesn’t want this research concluded. While this seems like a classic Western setup—complete with a stagecoach full of diverse characters—the focus isn’t on typical action scenes, but on more cerebral issues of history. At times that emphasis on dialogue leads to some didacticism, and not just from the Smithsonian’s researcher: for instance, the man described as “an experienced teamster” goes on to note regional differences in what the driver is called—“a whip back East, or a teamster out West.” The Navajo woman imparts a history lesson, asking, “Did you also know that it was a Mexican, a man called Nakhayazih, who established the first trading post at Chinle in 1882?” There are some engrossing tidbits about the past in Stuart’s (Anatomy of a Confession, 2016, etc.) work, and some impressive conversations about the violent Long Walk of the Navajo. But with many in the cast sounding more alike than different, and with much of the book being taken up by those exchanges, readers may end up educated about the bloody history of the Southwest, but not necessarily engaged by these characters.
A Western tale packed with intriguing historical issues but lacking fully developed characters.Pub Date: March 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9863441-4-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Gleason & Wall Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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