With its deft plotting, rich characterization and often hilariously poignant dialogue, Crowell’s (Letting the Body Lead,...
A courageous survivor of sexual abuse, Lesley Holloway has always cooperated with social services. That is, until they take her newborn daughter away from her and she has to battle to win her back.
After years of being dragged into the hall closet to be raped by her own father, Lesley runs away. From that moment, she is thrust into the world of child protective services, a world filled with tremendously helpful individuals but also riddled with the very bureaucracy that will rip away Lesley’s hard-won independence again and again. Her case worker, Francesca, tirelessly works to place Lesley in safe homes, although the best she can offer is a hostel populated by skeevy men. Essentially rejected by her mother for bringing shame upon the family, Lesley finds the courage to work at a diner and attend a posh school, where she is reminded daily of her status as a scholarship student. Her English teacher, Mrs. Kremsky, or Miss, becomes Lesley’s guardian angel. Driving her to and from school, offering morning lattes, Miss gradually gains Lesley’s trust. Lesley, though, has farther to fall, as she begins cutting herself to release her emotional pain. The day after her father’s trial, she accidentally cuts too deeply and winds up in a rehab center, arranged by Miss with the assistance of Francesca. Undergoing therapy, Lesley meets her first love, Clare, yet their sweet romance is doomed by Clare’s religiously fanatic parents and the center’s rules. Soon, Lesley is tossed out. With the help of Miss and her family, Lesley slowly claws her way out of the hellhole of PTSD. When Lesley finds herself pregnant, she naively reveals her past troubles to her midwife, unwittingly unleashing her own hell.
With its deft plotting, rich characterization and often hilariously poignant dialogue, Crowell’s (Letting the Body Lead, 2002, etc.) latest is a gem.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3906-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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