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OHIO ANGELS

Name: OHIO ANGELS
Author: Harriet Scott Chessman
ISBN: 1-57962-020-5

by Harriet Scott Chessman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1999

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A quietly lyrical debut about a young woman coming to terms with family and mortality. Hallie Greaves has long since arrived at that point in life where trips home to visit your parents are no longer routine events. A painter living in New York City, Hallie is married (to Morey, an architect) but childless, having suffered a miscarriage some years ago. Still vaguely depressed over the miscarriage and afraid to attempt another pregnancy, Hallie also feels “dried up” artistically and wonders whether she should even try to return to her painting. In the small Ohio town where Hallie grew up, her mother Virginia is equally listless in her own way, and keeps largely to herself, rarely venturing beyond the front door of her home. Hallie decides to come home for a week in July, and once there finds herself swept up in the recollections of her past amid the familiar objects, places, and people of her childhood. Not long after Hallie returns home, her mother takes an overdose of sleeping tablets and has to have her stomach pumped. Shocked by this turn of events, Hallie begins to ask friends about her mother’s moods and health, and is stunned to learn that Virginia had a miscarriage herself while Hallie was still a young child. Hallie stays on until she’s convinced that her mother is out of danger, then returns to New York, filled with a strange sense of liberation from her past and fired with nervous excitement over her own future. Somewhat oppressive in its introspection, but nonetheless a compelling and sensitive portrayal of two different women, each trapped between two periods of her life. Chessman’s style is fluid and unobtrusive, and manages to be meditative without being abstract.

Pub Date: May 1, 1999

ISBN: 1-57962-020-5

Page Count: 144

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

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.