A dramatic, historically illuminating soap opera about a woman’s adventures in a Canadian lumber camp.
A debut historical novel captures the international turmoil following the Napoleonic Wars.
Susan Anderson was raised in London to be a genteel woman at ease among cosmopolitan sophisticates, but she is eventually struck by a sense of adventure. She travels to the hinterlands of northern Canada in the late 1830s with her widowed father, Rev. Thomas Anderson, who ventures there to make his missionary rounds. The two stay in a lumber camp established in an unforgivingly rustic environment, and Susan’s beauty unsettles the men, unused to such company. A drunken ruffian, Henri Lalond, assaults her one night, and she is saved by Dan Little Deer, who kills the attacker and flees. The relationship between the lumber company and the indigenous population is a delicate one, and the trial of Dan for murder could be potentially explosive. Susan also contends with complex romantic opportunities; a man close to her father’s age proposes to her and offers to whisk her away to the tropical climes of Jamaica. Then she starts to fall in love with the camp manager, John McIver. Meanwhile, her father is badly injured and grows dangerously ill. A journalist, Holt-Johnstone has produced a historically astute novel, capturing the collision of native North American culture and European exploration in the 1800s. The plot unfolds briskly, and the author artfully constructs an atmosphere of dangerous expectancy. Sometimes the dialogue can be wooden and halting, even for the mid-19th century. At one point, John asserts: “If it were not for the simple skills I learned as a child watching my father in his practice at Annandale, and the use of herbs the Indians gather here in the forest, mortality among my men would be much greater.” But the author does an admirable job developing Susan’s character; she’s both callow and precociously wise. In some ways, she represents the spirit of the age, hopefully adventurous but a touch naïve. It seems bizarre that her father brought her to Canada in the first place—he informs no one at the camp in advance of his trip that she’s accompanying him, and he should know he’s possibly putting her in harm’s way. But despite its flaws, this book remains an entertaining and well-researched work.
A dramatic, historically illuminating soap opera about a woman’s adventures in a Canadian lumber camp.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63135-966-8
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
