A rich subject barely mined for its artistic potential.
A literary portrait of the Daughter of the original Confederacy, Jefferson Davis’s youngest.
Conceived after the Confederate Army’s victory at the Battle of Chickamauga, Winnie was two years old when the Civil War ended, and her father, president of the Confederate States of America, was incarcerated as a traitor. From an early age, Winnie worked to remind the world of the true nature of her literate, heroic father, whom she called Jeff. She shared his intellectual curiosity, and when she returned to the States after completing her education in Germany, she wrote, studied and traveled with him. As Jeff aged and tired, Winnie appeared on his behalf at “Lost Cause” rallies across the South, where unrepentant Confederate veterans dubbed her the Daughter of the Confederacy. Before Jeff died, Winnie fell in love with Alfred Wilkinson, a Boston lawyer and grandson of the abolitionist Samuel May. Although her father approved of the match, public opinion was harsh. How could the “purest lily of the South” marry a Northerner? On this, as at every crossroad of public vs. private, Winnie ceded to her father’s legacy. Told in alternating first-person journal entries by Winnie, her older sister, Wilkinson and others, this well-researched novel offers much detail of the era and profiles of historic personages that included Joseph Pulitzer, who befriended the genteelly impoverished family after the war. Beauvoir, the rundown plantation home a widow deeded Jeff in gratitude for his service to the South, is notably described, as are Winnie’s efforts to support herself and her mother by working as a journalist, novelist and public speaker. It is in the conversion of fact to the aesthetics of the novel that the author stumbles. Oliver (Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky, 1994, etc.) fails to distinguish one character’s voice from another. And the inclusion of much historically interesting material irrelevant to the story undermines the storyline.
A rich subject barely mined for its artistic potential.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8203-2874-X
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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