Cooper (The Matter Is Life, 1991, etc.) relates this meandering tale of two half-sisters in a folksy, dialect-strewn voice that is moralistic—and also pretty dull. In the small town of Yoville, a newly emancipated slave named Josephus Josephus chooses to remain for a spell on the plantation of his former masters, the Krupts, while he plans his next move. While there, he courts a neighboring woman, who then marries a different man but gives birth to Ruth, who Josephus is convinced is his daughter: ``He just watched the child as she grew for signs that she might be his. He saw them and knew she was his child.'' Shortly afterward, the disgusting, drunken Mrs. Krupt commands Josephus to have sex with her and becomes pregnant, eventually giving birth to a daughter named Yinyang. After Yinyang discovers her mother's hidden stash of gold, Josephus steals it and buries half in the ground, then Josephus and Yinyang leave together and he dies shortly afterward, but not before giving her some gold coins. Back in Yoville, Ruth discovers the buried treasure, marries the love of her life, and starts having children. Meanwhile, after a stint in New Orleans living with a woman who showers her with gifts and ``loans'' her to a priest, grown-up Yinyang returns to Yoville. The story flips back and forth between Ruth and Yinyang (and, after Ruth's death, between her daughter Hosanna and Yinyang) with dizzying speed, as if to force home the good girl/bad girl dichotomy. More irritating are the constant references to Satan's feelings about things (``Satan smiled in amusement. `I will be there with some suggestions to make, little one.' '') and the authorial instructions on clean living (``You just watch those Ten Commandments and watch out for people who do not respect and try to do them''). Imitative of but in no way equal to Zora Neale Hurston. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-46785-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.
A bike shop owner and her book club pals keep solving mysteries in ways that somehow don’t endear them to the police (Murder on Cape Cod, 2018, etc.).
Mackenzie Almeida, the proprietor of Mac’s Bikes in the touristy Cape Cod town of Westham, is dating Tim Brunelle, the caring and handsome owner of an artisanal bakery, who wants to get married and start a family. That’s not something independent neat freak Mac is ready to do. She enjoys living in her tiny house with Belle, her talkative parrot, for company. When Mac and her best friend, Gin, come across the dead body of wealthy Beverly Ruchart outside Gin’s taffy shop, Mac’s romantic problems get put on the back burner, especially since Gin is a suspect. She and her date, Eli Tubin, the widower of Beverly’s daughter, had attended a party at Beverly’s home only the night before. Beverly seems to have died from a heart attack, but an autopsy finds that she was poisoned with antifreeze, some of which has been planted in Gin’s garage. Of course Mac and her cohorts at the book club can’t resist a little sleuthing. They uncover several other plausible suspects: Beverly’s ne’er-do-well grandson, Ron, his Russian girlfriend, and his long-absent father, who has a police record. Although Beverly could be generous, she had a sharp tongue that made her plenty of enemies. Her interest in genealogy and reuniting long-lost parents and children endeared her to Wesley Farnham, for whom she found a son, but not so much to Farnham’s daughter, who misses being an only child. Although Mac turns her findings over to the police, she still attracts the killer’s notice and ends up owing her life to Belle.
The romantic doings of the likable characters are more interesting than the mediocre mystery.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1508-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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