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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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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.).

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

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.