First-novelist Blake makes excellent use of historical fact and legend to chronicle the life of John Wesley Hardin (1853-95), the most infamous mankiller in Texas history. Although Hardin was too young to be a soldier in the Civil War, he grew up an unreconstructed Confederate. He killed his first man when he was 13; he later slew as many as 25 others (maybe even 40). Some were Union Occupation Troops, sent to Texas after the war; some were the detested state policemen who replaced them. But many of Hardin's victims were merely men who had insulted him, his family, or friends, or who sought to kill him to enhance their own reputations. Hardin claimed he never killed a man except in self- defense. Imprisoned at 25, pardoned at 40, he became a model citizen: a lawyer and a family man. Soon, though, he reverted to his old ways, drinking, gambling, whoring. Then, in August 1895, he was shot in the back by John Selman, a policeman, in the Acme Saloon in El Paso. Blake tells Hardin's story through the individual voices of 50 people who knew him: kinfolks, lawmen, bartenders, prostitutes, friends, and enemies. Some encounters are brief, some extended. But every monologue offers an opinion as to the true character of this legendary gunfighter. The result is an astonishing series of vignettes, each revealing a period of Hardin's life, each rendered honestly and in a unique, evocative voice. Blake's mastery of historical detail, vernacular, and idiom makes for an entertaining chronology, spiced with personal revelations and biases. Interspersed with legal documents, newspaper reports, and excerpts from Hardin's autobiography, this is more than fictional biography; it's also a fascinating and accurate revelation of the time, place, and people who settled a frontier.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-425-14782-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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