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HALO

Name: HALO
Author: John Loveday
ISBN: 0-15-600113-6

by John Loveday ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 1994

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Poet Loveday's Whitman-inspired first novel is narrated by a young man named Scrag who's traveling west with a wagon train. Scrag is alone in the world, but his fellow travelers become his family. Among them are Justly, a girl who is turning into a woman; Lorelei, Justly's mother; and Sylvester, a photographer there to record the trip ``as it was.'' What Sylvester does with images, Scrag achieves with words. He describes daily life—making fires, tending the animals, skinning rabbits—and tells of the exceptional occurrences, such as the travelers' encounter with a dead Indian, or Scrag's own sexual awakening at the sight of Justly wading. Along the trail, Lorelei teaches Scrag about love while Sylvester teaches him about poetry. In one of the book's loveliest scenes, Sylvester reads aloud from Leaves of Grass by candlelight while Lorelei gently holds Scrag and Justly sleeps. These are Scrag's ``halcyon days,'' as Sylvester tells him. In the wilderness, the love between a young man and an older woman can flourish and the unschooled can appreciate poetry, but Scrag knows that the trail must eventually end. When the party reaches Halo, a violent frontier town that belies its name, things that were beautiful and innocent in the wilderness are defiled—a chambermaid leers at Lorelei and Scrag, and townspeople seize Sylvester's pictures and destroy them. Sylvester himself is arrested for perversion, and he is tried in a kangaroo court by a judge who knows nothing of art. The wagon train moves on, but with the sadness that accompanies reality. When they reach Oregon, Scrag leaves his extended family and goes on to Oregon City with Lorelei and Justly. He takes with him the lessons he learned on the trail and a purpose in life: to record truth as Sylvester has recorded it—the way it was. A haunting story told with unaffected elegance.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1994

ISBN: 0-15-600113-6

Page Count: 286

Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994

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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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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.).