No Catcher in the Rye angst here. Instead you'll find a welcome dose of nostalgic realism laced with hard-edged wisdom.
Mosher (The Great Northern Express, 2012, etc.) finds a coming-of-age story in God’s Kingdom, "up in the little known mountains of northern Vermont hard by the Canadian border."
The tale follows Kinneson fathers and sons across the centuries, as revealed by the curiosity of high schooler and budding writer Jim Kinneson during the early 1950s. Described in Prairie Home Companion–like storytelling chapters, the Kingdom Kinnesons originate with Charles, who trekked into "Territory but Little Known" in 1759 and led a massacre of Abenaki Indians, only to return later and marry Molly Molasses, an Abenaki. In the early 19th century, "Abolition Jim" Kinneson was killed by federal troops because he led God's Kingdom to secede from the United States over the issue of slavery. In blackly comic stories, often melancholy or ripe with realism, characters are shaped by a land of isolated beauty, where winter weather can linger far below zero. Teetotaling Kinnesons once operated the Water of Life whiskey distillery, and they live on the "farm that wasn’t," which only begins to flourish in Jim's time under the stewardship of the itinerant Black Canadian Dubois family. Sadly, it’s young Gaëtan Dubois, math genius and hockey demon, who learns "the great dangers of this place they called God’s Kingdom lay closer to home." Amid hunting and fishing, baseball and school, Jim falls in love with a beautiful girl from the Île d’Illusion, worships his grandfather, and uncovers the ugly truth about "the trouble in the family" between great-grandfather "Mad Charlie" and his best friend, the Rev. Doctor Pliny Templeton, an escaped slave, Princeton seminary graduate, war hero, and founder of Kingdom Common Academy.
No Catcher in the Rye angst here. Instead you'll find a welcome dose of nostalgic realism laced with hard-edged wisdom.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-069481
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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