Meditations on some of life’s biggest questions as told through some harrowing experiences.
A caring counselor with all the answers is sent into a tailspin after a tragic climbing accident on Mount Everest.
When Roberto Sanchez is first introduced, he’s a surly, bitter shell of a man, unable to cope with the horrible loss of his legs—the grim result of surviving a sudden avalanche on the world’s highest mountain. Each day the man wheels into his therapist’s office, he appears darker and more despondent than the day before. His loving wife, Monique, and steadfast daughter, Jenny, are at wit’s end, fearing that although Roberto has survived death, he remains stubbornly locked in the icy clutches of a life-sapping grief. Only when his journal is cracked open, and stories of his many encounters with at-risk kids emerge, is Roberto’s true identity revealed. Despite the nihilism that seeped into his battered and traumatized heart, Roberto was one of the most upbeat and insightful human beings anyone would ever want to meet. Through his work, Roberto practically single-handedly rescued scores of marginalized children from the depths of the bleakest despair. Langedijk’s dialogue-heavy narrative comes alive during these often profoundly moving and genuinely touching vignettes. For instance, Kong, an overweight loner mentored by Roberto, moonlights as an anonymous online angel for other depressed kids like himself while also meticulously describing his efforts to connect in the real world. “I don’t know if you remember,” he tells Roberto, “but purple, purple is where someone says hi or even waves or nods. Well, I don’t know if you noticed but when I first did this I never had any purple, but now every day—purple….Purple!” If that doesn’t loosen a tear, there’s the story in Roberto’s journal of a cheerful doorman named Aaron, who started life as boy-soldier in Joseph Kony’s ghastly Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Aaron isn’t actually one of Roberto’s young clients, but like Kong and the rest of Roberto’s former charges, he helps the maimed counselor reclaim his passion for life. Langedijk has lots to say about courage, compassion, redemption, and self-worth. Although those life lessons are more compelling than the actual drama unfolding around Roberto’s post-Everest experience, they more than make the journey with him worthwhile.
Meditations on some of life’s biggest questions as told through some harrowing experiences.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9937586-1-4
Page Count: 388
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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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