In this novel, a beautiful, wealthy Texas woman falls in love with a married member of Spanish nobility.
America Jane Harvey, a tall Texan, is being detained by Spanish authorities, with plenty of time to contemplate the last 12 years of her life—“From castles in Spain to a Spanish prison.” The novel then examines the choices that led her there. After her young child died in 1971, America escaped into her work as a professional jet pilot. She built up a courier service into a thriving business and, in Spain to attend her best friend’s wedding, met Alfonso, the Duke of the Castle of Tarifa. A respected banker with a wife and eight children, Alfonso explained that his was a marriage of convenience, and he and America began a passionate affair. The Boyars (co-authors Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr., 2012, etc.) describe Alfonso’s background, his trauma suffered in the Spanish Civil War and the development of the couple’s affair against the backdrop of developments in post-Franco Spain, including some legal shenanigans having to do with moving cash out of the country. The sympathies here tend to be reactionary: “[T]here was no drug problem in Spain because of a mandatory throw-away-the-key seven years in prison for anyone caught entering the country with even one marijuana cigarette,” the Boyars note rather approvingly. They also discuss Spanish court protocol with respect: Spanish society members “were all Grandees, almost two hundred of them, Dukes and Duchesses because Dukedoms automatically carried grandeza, plus various Barons, Counts and Marquis whose titles had been given grandeza by the King who had bestowed them. The table seating was always according to Court Protocol, the importance and age of a title being the arbiter.” For some readers, the obsession with status, money and power will be tiresome, while others will enjoy the wish-fulfillment aspects of America’s and Alfonso’s lifestyles in the 1 percent.
A tale of surviving and prospering amid the hardships of fortune.
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0971039254
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Marbella House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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