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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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