A multilayered melodrama with a documentarylike feel.
In this debut novel, horrific health issues and other troubles plague the Bowman family and other residents of the small mining town of Libby, Montana.
In 1958, when 14-year-old Julie Bowman passes by the abandoned Hardin ranch, she recalls her friendship with Tommy Hardin before he and his family developed mysterious coughs and moved away. But she also has a more immediate concern: the physical abuse that she and her sisters suffer at the hands of their mentally ill mother, Betty, an overweight hoarder. (The book then details Betty’s own childhood abuse, both physical and sexual.) Dewey, the girls’ father, is clueless about what’s going on, as he spends most of his time at his music store. That changes, though, when older sister Darlene gets pregnant: Betty’s violent reaction in front of the girl’s boyfriend is hard for Dewey to ignore. Meanwhile, Eric, Dewey’s son from his first marriage, arrives in town, gets a job at the area’s asbestos mine and finds secret documents that reveal the damage that asbestos dust has done to workers and town residents. Other odd doings include hidden children at the Hardin ranch and a popular female choir teacher propositioning one of Julia’s male classmates. By novel’s end, the abused children are rescued through surprising means, and Eric moves forward with his investigations. Debut novelist Bowker, a native of a real-life mining town of the same name, notes at the end that “a great deal of truth often comes to life through fiction.” She provides some heartbreaking tableaux of life in Libby, such as the Hardin children playing with the asbestos dust that litters their home. Yet this town’s asbestos problem takes a rather surprising back seat to Bowker’s engulfing, powerful story of Betty’s abuse. These and other competing plot threads occasionally threaten to overwhelm the narrative, but the story gains clarity and momentum in its concluding chapters and almost always, sadly, has the ring of truth. In an afterword, Bowker announces a planned sequel to this fascinating, ultimately absorbing tale.
A multilayered melodrama with a documentarylike feel.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692220023
Page Count: 466
Publisher: H. M. Bowker
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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