A knotty, engaging tale of lost hope and lonely nights.
An elderly woman remembers her romantic difficulties during the 1960s in this novel.
Cassie Mae Carter is a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, raising a sickly son in Duck Springs, Georgia, nearly on her own, as her long-haul truck driver husband is so rarely at home. Paul Hamilton is a handsome and rakish construction worker who loves to be outside, to use his hands, and to enjoy the freedom of independence. When Paul joins a crew that is expanding a portion of road adjacent to Cassie’s farmhouse, both their lives are changed forever. After admiring Cassie from afar, Paul finally finds the nerve to approach her when he sees her tussling with a wayward calf on the farm. After playing hero to this damsel in distress, Paul finds he cannot stay away from her. Following a few more interactions, Cassie and Paul acknowledge their undeniable attraction to each other, and they begin devising clandestine ways to meet. Paul finds himself falling deeply in love with Cassie, experiencing emotions that are foreign to him but exhilarating just the same. Unfortunately, Cassie feels that divorce is not an option for her, and she knows that she and Paul will have no future together. During one of their many meetings, she asks him to give her a child so that she may have something to remember him, a piece of him to keep with her after his road crew departs. Paul struggles with this request and mourns the doomed nature of their relationship. As Jones (Lonely Magnolia, 2017, etc.) effectively creates one obstacle after another for Cassie and Paul, he also explores deeper questions about personal choices and the different forms that love takes. Although the story is ostensibly told by Cassie, most of the narrative flows from Paul’s point of view. Even so, this fast-paced novel deftly tackles complicated questions of sacrifice, loyalty, and grief while keeping the suspense high until the story’s final twist. This book should especially appeal to fans of star-crossed romances.
A knotty, engaging tale of lost hope and lonely nights.Pub Date: July 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9743790-2-9
Page Count: 168
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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