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HILL COUNTRY

Name: HILL COUNTRY
Author: Janice Woods Windle
ISBN: 1-56352-522-4

by Janice Woods Windle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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Texas history, and its larger-than-life personalities—including a substantial appearance by that quintessential Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson—turns a fictionalized story of the author’s grandmother into a scattershot dash through time. Windle, whose first novel, True Women (paperback), became a 1996 CBS miniseries, now takes the incomplete autobiography of her paternal grandmother, Laura Woods, and converts it into a novel that is as much a celebration of a person as a place. The story begins in 1877, when Laura’s family is farming in the Texas Hill Country and Apache brigands roam the land. While her father is away, seven-year-old Laura, bathing in the river with her siblings, catches sight of an Apache band heading their way. The children warn their mother, who wounds the leader and forces his cohorts to flee. But Laura can’t forget one of the band, handsome Herman, a white boy who was stolen and raised by the Apache. Later, Laura meets up again with Herman and falls in love, but he can’t give up his outlaw life, so instead she marries Peter Woods, a local horse breeder. Her life continues to be full of incident as she tries to outwit Mexican Revolutionaries while entraining horses to Galveston, and as she watches Peter behead a man who ran down his cattle. Laura, though, harbors political ambitions. Her mother had once met Lincoln, and Laura continues the tradition as she encounters Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and, of course, Lyndon Johnson, whose mother Rebekah is her best friend. She longs for Peter to be elected governor but has to settle for appointive positions in Texas politics. In her 90s, she is still remembered by LBJ, who calls her every Christmas. Laura is brave, indeed, but her chilling self-regard makes her hard to like or admire. Still, a lively if uncritical reprise of recent Texas history.(First printing of 100,000; $250,000 ad/promo; author tour)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-56352-522-4

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Longstreet

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.