A poignant exploration of a timely political topic.
In Klepper’s debut novel, a stay-at-home mom longing for greater purpose returns to work as a pro bono lawyer and finds herself representing a Syrian refugee seeking asylum.
Jessica Donnelly worked as a high-priced corporate lawyer for a white-shoe firm but walked away from her career in order to raise her three children. Ten years later, she feels unfulfilled, especially as she watches her husband’s career bloom. She decides to return to work as a volunteer for the International Asylum Project, a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting refugees seeking safety in America from political persecution and war. Jessica takes Amina Hamid’s case. Two years ago, Amina fled the violent tumult of Syria to stay with relatives in Baltimore. She’s reluctant to accept Jessica as her lawyer—her previous lawyer was uselessly incompetent, and she’s unimpressed by Jessica’s complete lack of experience. Jessica convinces Amina to give her a shot, but the odds are heavily stacked against asylum seekers, and Amina is painfully reticent when it comes to revealing the details of her flight from Aleppo, information necessary for Jessica to mount a successful case. Slowly, Amina discloses the horrifying truth—soldiers murdered her younger brother, attacked her mother, tortured her father, and her husband simply vanished one day—a gruesome tableau affectingly described by Klepper. Jessica tries to help not only win Amina asylum, but also find a job, and both encounter shrill prejudice that sometimes crescendos into violence. The author sensitively captures the anxiety the nation experiences regarding immigration from countries plagued by anti-Western extremism; Jessica’s husband, Danny, an educated man who works in cybersecurity, surprises her with the depths of his skepticism. Also, Klepper artfully depicts the ways even the quotidian aspects of life can be challenging for the radically displaced: When Amina is asked to provide her college transcripts as part of a job application, she tersely replies: “No. I... I do not know that I can get a transcript sent. There’s a war.”
A poignant exploration of a timely political topic.Pub Date: July 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948051-11-8
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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