A family epic set in the Wild West during the decades following the Civil War, with a telekinetic twist—the latest from Western specialist Matthews (One True Thing, 1989, etc.) is big, bloody, and breezy, but runs out of gas by the end. Three orphaned Dugans—two brothers and a sister—are sent from New York to the Midwest and adopted by different families, in spite of their wish to remain together. They vow to reunite quickly, but circumstances conspire against them. Clay, the eldest, finds a good home as the son of an educated farmer; but when the man is murdered by the brother of his hired hand, Clay becomes a killer himself in revenge, receiving a terrible wound through his cheeks in the process. Brother Drew fares little better, as his adopted father hears voices that tell him to take his family to the desert, where his mother dies of thirst and he barely escapes playing Isaac to his raving dad's Abraham. Meanwhile, sister Zoe is raped by her new father, gives birth to a girl with a vivid blue mark covering half her face, and is turned out to fend for herself and her child. And that's only the beginning. Clay turns into a humorless lawman and bounty hunter, Drew into a bank and train robber, and Zoe becomes the wife of the richest man in the West, having found herself a fantastic vein of gold high in the Colorado Rockies with the help of daughter Omie's unerring second sight. After much bloodshed and unhappiness, the three cross paths again, joining forces to deny Zoe's faithless, murdering husband his grandest conceit: a massive elk made entirely of her gold. Unfortunately, death isn't far behind them, and the Dugans are quickly eliminated after dumping the elk into a chasm. Redolent with frontier flavors, but the violence and menace, and even the supernatural effects, ultimately prove more gratuitous than gripping.
Pub Date: March 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-017969-4
Page Count: 848
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
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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