It’s not Dallas’ Southfork (yet), but this ranch-set series offers plenty of room for growth.
A Boston pediatric oncologist inherits a spectacular New Mexico cattle ranch that is literally to die for in this series launcher.
Dr. Bryce Miller cannot fathom why a distant uncle would bequeath to her free and clear The Sun, a 140,000-acre ranch near Alameda, New Mexico. She has given herself a week to sell the property before returning to her “deeply urban life.” But to whom? The mayor is pushing for development catering to the wealthy. One interested party wants to drill for natural gas. Another wants to purchase the land for conservation. A fourth, Mister Nibble, works for a company that has bought all the land north of The Sun. “No one knows what he’s up to,” a neighbor tells Dr. Miller. The sky-high, competing offers make her gasp, but her uncle, she is told, had a different vision: “He wanted it to be a model ranch. Healthy land, healthy food.” The ranch foreman seems desperate to talk to Dr. Miller about something but disappears before they could meet. When he winds up dead, the doctor has a murder mystery to solve while struggling to determine what she will do with the land. White’s (Grassroots, 2017, etc.) ambitious fiction debut does an efficient job of scene setting, from “the rich colors of the high desert” to the locals with their competing agendas, and his appreciation of the American West shines through. He grapples—albeit ham-handedly at times—with issues such as overdevelopment (“And to think it was a sleepy little place just a few years ago,” a real estate agent enthuses) and fracking. Dr. Miller is a plucky, likable hero, but the fate of the ranch is something of a foregone conclusion. Seeds are planted that her uncle didn’t die of natural causes, but the blasé kicking this can down the road (“that’s a mystery for another day”) may frustrate readers.
It’s not Dallas’ Southfork (yet), but this ranch-set series offers plenty of room for growth.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73275-610-6
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Early Hour Press
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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