Valorous Spanish soldiers, fiery maidens, savage Injuns, flinty adventurers, and a mean herd of longhorns populate this passable but hokey account of the first cattle drive. It's 1775, and the American colonies are preparing for war with England. While on business in Spanish-ruled New Orleans, stalwart frontiersman Ben Cross and his woolly mountaineer uncle Ezra Allen—who punctuates his every utterance with a ripe stream of tobacco spittle—are enlisted by Governor Bernardo de Galvez to help Lieutenant Joseph Menchaca bring badly needed beef cattle to his hungry protectorate. Never ones to back away from an adventure, Ben and Ezra are further persuaded by the fact that Spanish intervention in America's fledgling revolution quite possibly hinges on the drive's success. According to the governor, his plan is simple: Round up a few good men, traipse across hundreds of miles of hostile territory to the Spanish colony of Texas, round up a few thousand head of wild longhorns, forge a trail home, and deliver the goods. So where's the beef? Well, the drive's progress is certain to be hampered by a longstanding rule preventing direct trade between Spain's colonies in the New World. That and a forbidden romance between Ben and Pilar Menchaca, the beautiful but willful cousin of the governor's adjutant, make for unhappy trails- -even before they get to the herds. The return is made even more troublesome when the trade interdict is enforced with officious zeal by Spanish General Ramon Padilla, whose interference halts the drive's progress at the Texas border and nearly allows our heroes to be overtaken by a party of bloodthirsty Comanches. Not to give away the ending, but how many Louisianian vegetarians can you name? An interesting subject, but the trail is littered with corny dialogue and situations long before the first wagons pass through. Still, the brisk pacing helps make this slim debut western a mostly enjoyable read.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1994
ISBN: 0-87131-764-8
Page Count: 210
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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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