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PALE MORNING DONE

Name: PALE MORNING DONE
Author: Jeff Hull
ISBN: 1-59228-684-4

by Jeff Hull ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2005

A promising debut: rich in local color and uncontrived dialogue, with a plot that moves like a mountain stream.

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A River Runs Through It meets Deliverance—sort of.

Marshall Tate has none of Lewis Medlock’s macho bluster—he listens to NPR and has been known to drink gin and tonics, after all—but he finds himself in a similar milieu: he’s discovered an exquisitely beautiful corner of the world, and unpleasant locals are bent on making his life there difficult. He has some of Norman MacLean’s pensiveness, too, which is a fitting enough quality for Montana debut novelist Hull, and some of MacLean’s penetrating eye for the landscape as well. Tate has come to his father’s little ranch to pursue a wild hare of an idea: formerly a river guide for well-heeled dude fishermen, he now wants to restore the spread to its former wildness, plant some native grasses, rehabilitate fish-spawning streams. It’s a good place to do the work, for wildness is all around, and biologists have even released wolves nearby—which proves yet another reason for redder-of-neck inhabitants to suspect Marshall and his pals Molly and Alton of being secret agents of the black helicopter crowd. Neighboring land king Bruce Klingman and his son Randy, who, Marshall assumes, “would inherit the Klingman ranch because he had studied his father’s politics and aped them passably,” are certainly suspicious, and they do their best to impede Marshall’s progress and that of the “woofs” alike. Local yahoo Ripley, “sort of a jackass around town,” is another obstacle until, well, he’s tended to in a moment that would do William Golding proud. What’s poor Marshall to do? Mess around with the rancher’s daughter, for one thing, which makes Molly unhappy but sets the ball rolling for a very nicely delivered moment of sweet revenge. In the bargain, perpetual adolescent Marshall eases into a kind of assured maturity, most everyone else gets what they want or deserve, and even the wolves make out okay.

A promising debut: rich in local color and uncontrived dialogue, with a plot that moves like a mountain stream.

Pub Date: June 1, 2005

ISBN: 1-59228-684-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Lyons Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.