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MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER

Name: MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER
Author: Jessica Kaye
ISBN: 1-58234-283-0

edited by Jessica Kaye & Richard Brewer ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2005

Dark, creative visions worthy of the music that inspired them.

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Twenty gritty stories riff on Bruce Springsteen’s song about a small-town hustler.

“Meeting Across the River,” from the Born to Run album (celebrating its 30th anniversary this year), begins: “Hey, Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks / And tonight can you get us a ride . . . . ” The song’s narrator is planning a last-chance hustle across the river so he can make some quick bucks and get back in good with his girl, Cherry, who’s sore that he took her radio and hocked it. The stories here, most written by seasoned mystery and thriller authors who are also devotees of the Boss, offer tangled reconfigurations of similar criminal intrigues. Taking their cue from the song’s film-noir tone, they feature lots of action in bars and stakeouts in cars. Naturally, many occur in New Jersey and New York City, but some transport us to such non-Springsteen locales as St. Paul, Minn. (William Kent Krueger’s “The Far Side of the River”), Montana (C.J. Box’s “Pirates of Yellowstone”), San Francisco (David Corbett’s “Bobby the Prop Buys In”), and Tecate, Mexico (Philip Reed’s “Claustrophobia”). In “Killing Time by the River Styx,” Peter David’s characters are already dead-by-shootout and waiting to be ferried across to Hades by Charon. Time has not been good to these characters; in many of the stories the narrator and Eddie meet again years after the betrayal of their friendship. (“And if we blow this one,” goes the song, “They ain’t gonna be looking for just me this time.”) Eddie is finishing a 25-year prison term in Randy Michael Signor’s “Crossing Over” when he spots the friend he took the rap for pumping weights in the yard. Two authors let the angry girlfriend tell her side of the story. In Pam Houston’s “Cherry Looks Back,” she bemoans her rotten taste in men. “The Other Side” by Aimee Liu remakes her into a published author named Cherie who recognizes her old flame at a book signing.

Dark, creative visions worthy of the music that inspired them.

Pub Date: July 1, 2005

ISBN: 1-58234-283-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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.