by Judith Redline Coopey ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 27, 2019
An engaging tale about a transplanted Southerner questioning the Confederacy as he pursues a wartime romance.
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A Confederate spy and a Pennsylvania Quaker fall in love during the Civil War.
In this novel, Coopey (Full Circle, 2016, etc.) reimagines the lives of two of her ancestors, drawing on both family lore and historical research to produce a well-rounded story. Carter Willoughby is the only remaining son of a plantation-owning Georgia family. After checking in on his parents and sisters, all suffering from the war, he goes to Pennsylvania in disguise. He pretends to be an “anti-slavery, anti-rebellion Methodist” circuit rider named Mark Randolph while actually planning to destroy a crucial part of the railroad system. In Pennsylvania, he rents a room from Susannah Lander, a Quaker who lives in poverty with an aging aunt while fending off unwanted suitors and fighting for support from her stingy uncle. Susannah challenges Carter’s beliefs about the war, and gradually they move from sparring to friendship to love. After Carter reveals his secret and breaks with the Confederate Army, they marry. Susannah is pregnant when he returns to Georgia at the end of the war. Hoping to settle his family’s estate, he loses the remaining wealth and struggles to return to Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Susannah faces trials at home without her husband. Coopey does an excellent job of blending fact and fiction (an author’s note explains the story’s factual basis), and her vivid historical details bring the setting to life. Susannah is a compelling heroine, dealing with problems both realistic and melodramatic in a satisfying way. Coopey never allows readers to forget the bleakness of her life (“I kept up my daily routine of mucking out the barn, pruning fruit trees, planting onions or whatever else was asked of me”). The book’s characters of color remain in distinctly secondary roles. Although Carter’s views on slavery evolve over the course of the narrative, his redemption may be too simplistic for some readers.
An engaging tale about a transplanted Southerner questioning the Confederacy as he pursues a wartime romance.Pub Date: July 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9979351-2-7
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Fox Hollow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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