A highly recommended rendering of a love affair and mysterious slice of Cuban history.
A young American woman has to choose between her Cuban lover—the father of her child—and the older rico she has married. And in novelist Thorndike’s (Anna Delaney’s Child, 2011, etc.) telling, this fictionalized history plays out against the early years of the Cuban revolution.
Clare Miller, professional photographer, meets Camilo Cienfuegos at a photo shoot at the Waldorf Astoria where he is a line cook. They fall in love; she gets pregnant; he gets deported and joins Fidel Castro’s revolution. In fact, he becomes one of Fidel’s top lieutenants. Meanwhile, Clare travels to Cuba with her daughter, Alameda, hoping to find Camilo, though she fears that he is dead. She meets Domingo Beltran, a widower who offers her work as a photographer. He is a good man, and Clare marries him, if only to give Ala a father. But of course Camilo isn’t dead, and very shortly he arrives in Havana as one of the conquering barbudos (bearded ones). Clare leaves Domingo. Camilo does love her, and Ala may accept him in time, but he is also deeply loyal to Fidel and caught up in the madness of the day. On a flight to the eastern provinces to bring an old comrade to “justice,” his plane disappears. Shortly thereafter, Domingo quits Cuba for Miami. Then the new regime forces Clare and Ala into exile. The historical Camilo Cienfuegos and his pilot were in fact never found. But this is fiction, and he survives. Domingo surfaces again…and we will leave it at that. Thorndike is a talented, experienced writer, and Clare and Camilo especially are fully developed, attractive characters. The dynamic between Camilo and Fidel is fascinating. Camilo is a joyous revolutionary and wants a revolution that really does fulfill its promises to the poor and dispossessed. Fidel, on the other hand, is a dangerous ideologue whose first directive is to eliminate perceived threats. (It’s very likely that the crucial plane crash was no accident at all.)
A highly recommended rendering of a love affair and mysterious slice of Cuban history.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9972644-7-0
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Beck & Branch
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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