An entertaining ride despite relatively few action scenes.
Hightower debuts with a feel-good Western about a young man determined to make a fresh start in the New Mexico Territory in the late 1870s.
Nineteen-year-old Rob Wilson’s world recently crumbled: Both his parents and his kid sister died from typhoid fever. He sells the family ranch to fund a new beginning, and he and his best friend, Jessie Hatfield, leave West Texas, set on becoming ranchers in New Mexico. When they arrive at the Tularosa Basin, they’re sure that they’ve found the perfect location for their new venture—an area known as Dog Canyon. Now they must buy horses and cattle, and, of course, build the ranch itself. They soon find that they have much to learn about the unfamiliar environment. Fortunately, they meet up with Paco Mórales, an elderly Mexican trail cook who’s just survived a stampede during a cattle drive and is looking for work with a new outfit. Rob hires him on the spot. Next, they meet two Mescalero Apache: the elderly Wise Elk, who has a broken leg, and his grandson, Little Deer. Gradually, Rob and Jessie gather an eclectic group that includes ranchers and cowboys. Together, they head into the formidable territory of Llano Estacado in search of stampeded—and hence free—herds of cattle. Readers would do well to have some snacks nearby as they embark on this adventure, because there are more descriptions of food in this novel than one might find in a culinary guide to Paris. Even in the middle of a roundup, Paco and his Dutch ovens produce tempting fruit pie to top off some sumptuous chow. Overall, the narrative is light on violence and long on good fellowship, but it does have its tense moments during the skirmishes with inevitable bad guys. Although character development is minimal, Rob comes off as a charming young hero, and Hightower supplies intriguing details along the way about the day-to-day difficulties of early homesteading and ranching. The inclusion of Duke, a devoted coyote who befriends Rob, is an extra treat.
An entertaining ride despite relatively few action scenes.Pub Date: June 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4050-4
Page Count: 226
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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