A rushed and incident-filled first novel about Kate Elder, lover of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, told from the woman's point of view. This time out, Coleman (Discovering Eve, etc; the nonfiction Shadow in My Hands, 1993) simulates oral history in a story she culled from period diaries, research, and interviews with Kate Elder's relatives. This frontier woman, born Mary Katharine Harony, travels with her parents from Hungary to Mexico, and then to Kansas. In 1866, her parents die, and young Mary is given into the care of a nearby farmer. When her guardian rapes her, she kills him and flees to St. Louis before heading west. There, Kate marries a gambler named Silas, but the marriage ends when both he and her son die of the plague. Shortly thereafter, she meets Doc. ``You look like hell in black,'' he tells her, but Kate's taken with his tubercular brand of humor and falls in love. Later, she'll kill a deranged man in self-defense, whereupon Doc hides her, becomes her lover, and arranges for her to flee to Wichita with a man who's then killed. Enter Wyatt Earp, his blue eyes as piercing as steel, who introduces her to local madam Honest Bessie. After a brief stint as a prostitute, Mary Harony, now known as either Kate Elder or Big Nose Kate, eventually makes her way back to Doc: ``I could never make our separations stick,'' she says. Together, they travel through Indian Territory on the standard western tour until Doc hooks up with Earp (each was ``part of the other's destiny'') and they do the deed to the Clantons at the OK Corral. Only Kate lives to tell the tale. In the fast, flushed tone of a memoir, Coleman limns the familiar Wild West saga with a feminist slant. This isn't revisionist history exactly, but, rather, a workmanlike treatment of a period of perpetual interest.
Pub Date: May 11, 1995
ISBN: 0-446-51825-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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