A remarkable achievement from a writer who just keeps getting better.
Another character-rich, atmospheric, thematically complex tale from Humphreys (The Fireman's Fair, 1991, etc.), set in a "piney lower corner of North Carolina" during the Civil War era.
Narrator Rhoda Strong, daughter of a Scots immigrant and a Lumbee Indian, lives in Scuffletown, a multiracial community forged by the Indians. Scuffletown's gentle patriarch is Allen Lowrie, whose son Henry leads a band of men hiding in the swamps to escape forced labor during the hunger-ravaged summer of 1864. Rhoda is 15, longing for the kind of love that sustains her parents in an unjust world subject to the arbitrary incursions of "macks" (whites) like Brant Harris, the drunken head of the Home Guard; and Deputy Rod McTeer, who orders the brutal execution of Allen Lowrie. Rhoda and Henry have just made love for the first time when they witness this execution, and their subsequent marriage is haunted by its consequences. Driven to acts of deadly revenge for the macks' crimes, Henry remains an outlaw after the war; he makes stolen visits while Rhoda raises their children alone in Scuffletown, whose inhabitants are still feared and persecuted by the defeated whites. When Henry is finally forced to flee North Carolina in 1873, Rhoda chooses to stay behind, and it's a tribute to Humphreys's artistry that we understand that decision despite the passionate marital love the author has depicted. The many full-bodied characters, from Rhoda's proud mother to the white lady who proves a loyal friend despite her prejudices; the loving evocation of local customs and practices, including a bravura description of making turpentine; the detailed life of a people engaged in daily moral resistance to a diseased social order—all create a bond of community that Rhoda (and the reader) cannot think of shattering. Though the story is at times almost unbearably sorrowful, it is too richly full ever to be bleak.
A remarkable achievement from a writer who just keeps getting better.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-89176-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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