by J.C. Melek ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2017
An earnest but underdeveloped tale of finding faith.
A woman experiences tragedy and grows closer to Jesus Christ as the decades pass in Melek’s debut novel.
Wanda Mae Lindsey gives birth to her first child, Sandra Sue, at the age of 17 on Halloween night 1954, in the small city of Burkburnett, Texas. At the time, an awed Wanda observes that God’s love for her must be even more profound than her adoration of her daughter. She and her husband, Larry Leon Lindsey, have two more children, but the young family is shattered when a car accident kills Larry. As time flies and the kids grow up, Wanda meets and marries her second husband, the handsome but heavy-drinking Curtis Bailey. The couple has two more daughters, but when Wanda’s children attend church, she guiltily stays home with her spouse. Her children go on to start their own families and experience their own tragedies; Sandra Sue’s third child, for example, only lives a few hours. Drinking becomes a larger part of the family’s social life, but things change when Wanda’s son, Lewis, is almost paralyzed after driving drunk. Lewis attributes his healing to a miraculous visitation by an angel and becomes a sober Christian. As an elderly woman, years later, Wanda experiences a car wreck and another terrible setback, but she has a vision in the hospital that gives her reassurance. This book is very short, with decades of Wanda’s life compressed into fewer than 60 pages; as a result, the story suffers from a lack of detail, and the characters are only lightly sketched in. Wanda’s second husband, Curtis, for example, is only mentioned by name once. Some crucial scenes are given short shrift; Larry’s death, for instance, is summarized in less than a page, and statements such as “I knew that I would never really get over it, but I had to be strong for my kids” stand in for dialogue, setting, or description. Wanda’s plea that readers accept Christian salvation is clearly heartfelt. However, the lack of emotionally involving storytelling limits its potential impact.
An earnest but underdeveloped tale of finding faith.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-6732-2
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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