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Waiting in the Wings

Name: Waiting in the Wings
Author: Geene Rees
ISBN: 978-0-9976702-1-9

by Geene Rees ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2016

An engaging showbiz and courtroom drama, hampered by underdeveloped characters.

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A debut historical novel details the life of an early 1920s vaudeville starlet whose career was tragically cut short.

Rees bases her story on the real-life tale of her great aunt, who was a big name in San Francisco’s vaudeville scene. Ruby Adams has a tough upbringing, living in a shantytown after the earthquake of 1906, but through pure charm and panache is able to build herself up into a local star, loved by San Franciscans as one of their own. At the outset of the novel, she’s in the middle of a successful run at the Strand Theater, set to marry the wealthy John Davis, a popular bootlegger, and about to make her move into the burgeoning film industry. One night, though, tragedy strikes, as a falling sandbag backstage strikes Ruby, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. The rest of the tale follows the aftermath of the accident, as lawyer Charles Brennan constructs a case against the theater and its proprietors in order to recoup the potential income that Adams has lost. Arrayed against Adams and Brennan, though, are some sketchy characters—a few with connections to the city’s Mafia. Morris Markowitz and Moses “Moe” Lesser, the owners of the theater, hire the bombastic Col. Herbert Choynski to head up their defense team. Most of the latter half of the book focuses on Brennan’s and Choynski’s moves and countermoves before the trial. The tale eventually culminates in the dramatic courtroom finale. The work is clearly a labor of love, full of little historical details about the time and place that make it clear Rees has thoroughly researched her family’s story. The characterization and plot are somewhat simplistic, however—the players are either wholly admirable or malevolent, and readers rarely see the better or worse sides of them. This lack of nuance somewhat saps the yarn of suspense, as it seems impossible for Adams to lose a case against such monsters. But to Rees’ credit, the tale sticks to the history and delivers a murky and unexpected ending. Historical buffs and lovers of the stage should find something to like in this account.

An engaging showbiz and courtroom drama, hampered by underdeveloped characters.

Pub Date: July 28, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9976702-1-9

Page Count: -

Publisher: Regina Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.