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THE SNOW TRAIN

Name: THE SNOW TRAIN
Author: Joseph Cummins
ISBN: 1-888451-23-8

by Joseph Cummins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2001

An intriguing worldview, meticulously assembled with an artist's inspired touch.

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First-novelist Cummins audaciously enters the mind of a very young boy afflicted by tragedy and chronic disease, attempting to give meaning to the mélange of real and imagined impressions he finds there.

Aside from his green-eyed mama, who writes poetry when she’s not spreading the cream that cools his burning rash, baby Robbie's first crib-centric observations in the 1950s have to do with his older sister Rosemary, whose black eyes and pigtails are practically all he needs to see and whose imagination is more than enough for both of them. Later, his world expands to include the windows and lawn of his suburban Detroit home, changing seasons, and other children, but one hot day disaster strikes: Rosie is run over while racing to the Good Humor truck. A few years later, Robbie inhabits a quieter, but no less mysterious world. Although his rash has grown into a series of interlocking scabs that encase his body and bleed whenever he scratches them (which is often), he still leads the semblance of a normal life. He goes to parochial school along with much of the rest of the neighborhood, puzzles over his aunt's relationship with his dad's top car salesman, and imagines that Rosie's invisible friend Abdo is still in the house. (When a girl challenges his memory of Rosie, he hits her.) But Robbie's illness also puts him into the very different world of the city hospital children's ward for cases like his. There, he meets a speechless boy with boiled skin and a girl with a rainbow face. There, he awaits the transformation that will set him free. Remaining true to his protagonist’s perceptions, Cummins lets the story’s essential mysteries remain as impenetrable as they would for a child.

An intriguing worldview, meticulously assembled with an artist's inspired touch.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001

ISBN: 1-888451-23-8

Page Count: 285

Publisher: Akashic

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE CASE FOR INTERFERON
by Joseph Cummins & Kent Heckenlively

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.