From the late Glasco (Second Nature, 1981; The Days of Eternity, 1983): a WW II melodrama about the race to build an atomic bomb based upon the presumption that a single family was deeply involved in nuclear research in Germany, Russia, and the US. As the story opens, American Jew David Linz meets Katherine von Steiner, daughter of an embittered WW I major with leanings toward the developing Nazi Party. Each is a brilliant scientist attending the same German university in 1921. They fall in love and marry, despite her father's fierce opposition. In part two, set 18 years later, David, Katherine, and teenage son Jacob, living in Berlin, are torn apart because of the increasing persecution of Jews and Katherine's unwitting willingness to betray her family to regain her father's love. She is on the verge of making major scientific breakthroughs in the area of atomic fission and doesn't want to leave Germany, as do her husband and son. Instead, she arranges to compromise David's supporting research to achieve protection for her family. Part three follows David and Jacob to France, whence they have fled from the Nazis. They become convinced that not only did Katherine betray them, but that she is also lost to them forever. As the Germans invade and approach Paris, the two run to England, together with the Aloise Fregand, a beautiful Russian spy who captivates David. Part four reveals Katherine's fate and ends with a tragedy that sends Aloise and Jacob fleeing once again, now to Russia, where Jacob will become a key figure in nuclear research. Finally, justice prevails, the survivors find love, and things end about as well as they might. Readers who enjoyed Glasco's earlier books will probably forgive his excesses in this one, losing themselves in the classic themes of love and betrayal.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-62305-2
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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
BOOK REVIEW
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