A thoughtful, moving tale about adolescent love and spirituality.
A drama investigates the role religion plays in the lives of Mexican-Americans living in southern Texas amid the dangers of drugs and violence.
Nancy didn’t go to the same high school as Paco, something he knew immediately when he saw her red hair; she was a guera, someone who was Mexican but looked white. The two quickly start dating and fall profoundly in love, a connection far deeper than typical teenage infatuation. They come from distant worlds, though—Paco is an altar boy with a keenly inquisitive theological mind; his closest friend is a priest; and he intends to enter a seminary one day. Nancy comes from a family with connections to the nefarious underworld of crime. She was once a shiftless teen addicted to meth, and now she rejects mainstream Roman Catholicism in favor of Santa Muerte, a cult saint adopted by many Mexicans in explicit rejection of a Christianity they feel was imposed by European imperialists. Paco has no trouble accepting her sordid past but wrestles with what he sees as a lack of spiritual devotion and the possibility that his love for Nancy forecloses any attempt to fully answer his religious calling. Nancy, on the other hand, is frustrated that Paco thoughtlessly accepts a religious heritage foisted upon his people and interprets his attachment to it as evidence of intellectual dogmatism. Huerta (Broken Brain: Surviving a Traumatic Brain Injury, 2014) starts his engrossing novel by revealing that Nancy somehow died and that Paco left. Now a priest has come to town to investigate the case, though it’s initially unclear why. An acquaintance of Paco’s from school—Esteban—relates the story to Father Willy, who is apparently intent on discerning whether Paco’s devotion to Catholicism survived the loss of his love. Huerta adroitly explores the racial and cultural schisms that characterize the Mexican community—a history of miscegenation and colonial conquest necessarily produced a diffuse cultural identity. He also deftly captures without sentimentality a world caught between squalor and spirituality, where both degradation and transcendence are equally possible.
A thoughtful, moving tale about adolescent love and spirituality.Pub Date: March 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-365-82820-1
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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