A spirited young woman encounters murder and deception as Philadelphia battles deadly typhoid in 1895. Married to wealthy, arrogant Irish contractor Patrick Dugan, 18-year-old Rose finds her husband attractive but troubling. When Rose and her friend Nellie volunteer on the park-beautification committee to preserve the city waterworks, she meets the sympathetic chief engineer, Sean Parker, who becomes Patrick’s bitter rival over a controversial proposal to build an expensive water-filtration plant. Sean’s attracted to Rose and feels protective after she receives threatening letters and Nellie is killed under mysterious circumstances while wearing Rose’s cloak. Rose’s loyalty to Patrick wavers when he’s implicated in the typhoid epidemic. In alternating voices tinged with Victorian formality, Rose and Sean relate this story of duplicity, greed and contagion, adding immediacy to the twisted plot and historical detail. A gripping read with a feisty heroine, despite the wordy text, often purple prose and heavy focus on water treatment. (Historical fiction. 13 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7624-3738-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Running Press Teens
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT HISTORICAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jo Kuan leads a double life: a public role as a quiet lady’s maid and a secret one as the voice behind the hottest advice column in 1890 Atlanta.
Chinese American Jo is mostly invisible except for occasional looks of disdain and derisive comments, and she doesn’t mind: Her priority is making sure she and her adoptive father, Chinese immigrant Old Gin, remain safe in their abandoned abolitionists’ hideaway beneath a print shop. But even if she lives on the margins, Jo has opinions of her own which she shares in her newspaper advice column under the byline “Miss Sweetie.” Suddenly all of Atlanta is talking about her ideas, though they don’t know that the witty advice on relationships, millinery, and horse races comes from a Chinese girl. As curiosity about Miss Sweetie mounts, Jo may not be able to stay hidden much longer. And as she learns more about the blurred lines and the hard truths about race in her city and her own past, maybe she doesn’t want to. In her latest work, Lee (The Secret of a Heart Note, 2016, etc.) continues to demonstrate that Chinese people were present—and had a voice—in American history. She deftly weaves historical details with Jo’s personal story of finding a voice and a place for herself in order to create a single, luminous work.
An optimistic, sophisticated portrayal of one facet of Chinese American—and simply American—history. (Historical fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4095-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Did you like this book?
This election cycle, with its exacerbated Islamophobia, makes author Mills' (Positively Beautiful, 2015) fictive meditation on 9/11 and the 15 years after especially timely.
The book opens with Travis McLaurin, a 19-year-old white man trying to protect Alia Susanto, a 16-year-old hijab-wearing Indonesian-American Muslim, from the debris caused by the South Tower's destruction. The next chapter takes place 15 years later, with Travis' younger sister, Jesse, defacing a building with an Islamophobic slogan before the police catch her. The building, readers learn later, is the Islam Peace Center, where Jesse must do her community service for her crime. Between these plot points, the author elegantly transitions between the gripping descriptions of Alia and Travis trying to survive and Jesse almost falling into the abyss of generational hatred of Islam. In doing so, she artfully educates readers on both the aspects of Islam used as hateful stereotypes and the ruinous effects of Islamophobia. With almost poetic language, the author compassionately renders both the realistic lives, loves, passions, and struggles of Alia ("There's a galaxy between us, hung thick with stars of hurt and disappointment) and Jesse ("I'm caught in a tornado filled with the jagged pieces of my life") as both deal with the fallout of that tragic day.
Both a poignant contemplation on 9/11 and a necessary intervention in this current political climate. (timeline, author's note) (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61963-343-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
