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THE LAST OF THE OFOS

Name: THE LAST OF THE OFOS
Author: Geary Hobson
ISBN: 0-8165-1958-7

by Geary Hobson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 11, 2000

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paper 0-8165-1959-5 A slender but illuminating debut novel from Cherokee/Chickasaw poet and Oklahoma professor Hobson offers a sympathetic view of a Louisiana man who becomes the last of his kind, with the awful knowledge that no one will ever speak to him in his native tongue again. Looking back on his life from old age, the first years of the 20th century weren’t bad for Thomas Darko. Among other things, brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents all lived in what they called “Ofo Town,” with other, larger Indian groups as neighbors and relatives in good hunting and fishing country along the Mississippi. After dropping out of elementary school, Thomas even started to make a good living, first in the oilfields, then as a bootlegger. But as he prospered, his family, never huge, began to dwindle from a series of tragedies: One brother died in a New Jersey boot camp during the influenza epidemic of 1917, another in a knife fight, and his father’s spirit was crushed by the loss of his sons. Thomas’s reputation for first-rate moonshine during Prohibition extended to Texas and even Chicago, but the glory days ended in a raid in 1933 and he went off to jail. There, his high-maintenance wife Sally left him without a word, taking everything—and then the whole of his remaining family was killed when a freight train hit their truck. On his release he found years of solace in his whiskey, but by WWII, Thomas was sober and with the Marines in the Pacific, where he was his unit’s sole survivor in the assault on Japanese-held Tarawa. An empty time followed, until Smithsonian ethnographers asked him to record his language for posterity; that too proved a hollow endeavor, leaving the last of the Ofos to end his days alone. A compassionate sketch, and deceptively simple quiet study, that manages to put a human face on the sadly logical outcome of a national history of genocide.

Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2000

ISBN: 0-8165-1958-7

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Univ. of Arizona

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).