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The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride

Name: The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride
Author: Joe Siple
ISBN: 978-1-68433-040-9

by Joe Siple ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2018

A sweet, albeit by-the-book, tale of human connection.

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A sick young boy and an elderly man looking for something to live for form a deep bond in this debut novel.

Murray McBride is turning 100, but he’s in no celebratory mood. Still mourning the death of his beloved wife, Jenny, 18 months ago, Murray feels his life has run its course. He’s outlived not only his wife, but also his two sons, who died after long lives. His only remaining family, his grandson, Chance, seems to only be after his money. Murray’s Roman Catholic faith has been the main thing keeping him from suicide recently, but he resolves to make his 100th birthday the last day he takes the daily pill his lungs need to function, figuring such a death doesn’t really count. Vaguely hoping to comfort the ailing on his last full day, Murray wanders into a local heart ward and meets someone who changes his life: 10-year-old Jason Cashman, who desperately needs a transplant and must tote around an oxygen cart. After Jason leaves the hospital with his cold, money-driven father, Murray finds a list of the boy’s five wishes to be granted before he dies. Murray mourns lost time spent with his own sons due to his professional baseball career with the Chicago Cubs, and sees an opportunity to atone. With the assistance of Jason’s wise-beyond-her-years neighbor, Tiegan Rose Marie Atherton, Murray sets out to help the boy kiss a girl, hit a home run, and fulfill his dreams. Siple’s plot devices, messages, and character types will feel very familiar to fans of Hallmark movies and other inspirational tales, and these predictable beats mean his players sometimes feel more like moving cogs than fully complex human beings. But his story is still readable and well-told. Murray’s struggle to find meaning after outliving almost everyone in his life who mattered to him is one of the book’s most sensitively rendered elements. Jason’s reckoning with mortality provides some touching moments as well. But Siple struggles to capture the speech and mannerisms of a 10-year-old boy (Jason’s emails and ebullient statements are peppered with “Schweet!” and “Dude!”), which limits his impact as a character.

A sweet, albeit by-the-book, tale of human connection.

Pub Date: June 28, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-68433-040-9

Page Count: 234

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

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.