Perhaps the best of all Mack’s adventures. He even gets to try his hand at some shuttle diplomacy worthy of a Henry...
A chance remark on a call-in radio show throws The One-Eyed Mack into the Oklahoma governor’s race. And it’s not even his remark.
Radio host Sooner Sam, given name Jimmy D. Ramquist, has a gift for drawing out his guests. When he hosts Buffalo Joe Hayman, Oklahoma’s inimitable governor goes on a toot, claiming that “I want to take government out of government” by privatizing every government function his host can name, from the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation to the office of the Lieutenant Governor, which Mack has occupied forever (Fine Lines, 1994, etc.). Arguing that the governor is patently off his rocker, Mack’s wife Jackie and his old friends Luther Wallace, ex-Speaker of the Oklahoma House, and OBI director C. Harry Hayes persuade Mack to do something he has never done before: go head to head with his boss in the upcoming election. No sooner does the infant campaign issue its first press release, however, than its plans run aground when Mack, in Washington for a meeting of the National Lieutenant Governors’ Association, eats one Milky Way too many, passes out from sugar shock and wakes up en route to the St. Francis Memorial Hospital, where he’s mistaken for another patient scheduled for a triple bypass and gets treated to (and billed for) the surgery himself. While Mack convalesces and Jackie and grandstanding Sooner lawyer Slim Gilbert prepare the mother of all lawsuits against the hospital, Luther takes Mack’s place as the man who would be governor. The tabloid accusations he trades with Buffalo Joe, which could have been ripped from today’s headlines, provoke hilariously credulous responses from Oklahoma radio audiences. And the $50 million lawsuit, though its fairy-tale ending defies belief, shows Mack at his most endearing.
Perhaps the best of all Mack’s adventures. He even gets to try his hand at some shuttle diplomacy worthy of a Henry Kissinger with heart.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8061-3915-9
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
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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