A sweeping planter-slave tale in the antebellum South, as seen through the prism of 21st-century sensibilities and...
A Civil War–era historical saga that chronicles a couple as they go from Cumberland Island, Georgia, to Groton, Connecticut, by 2011 Georgia Author of the Year McCash (Almost to Eden, 2010).
In antebellum Georgia, beautiful Elisabeth (aka “Zabette”) is the descendant of generations of slave owners and comely slaves. Raised primarily by her white grandmother, French-American Marguerite Bernardey, Zabette straddles the two lifestyles. Aware of her granddaughter’s delicate position, Marguerite exacts a promise from her white neighbor, Robert Stafford, that he’ll prevent Zabette from being sold after her death. Indeed, Stafford takes Zabette into his home to live there as his wife, long before her grandmother dies. A successful planter and businessman, he refuses to allow their six children to be raised as slaves, instead sending them to Connecticut where they can pass as white and live as free people. Eventually, Zabette joins them, while Robert remains in the South, growing increasingly bitter over his inability to possess all of Cumberland Island. Later, when his Southern fortunes are decimated by the Civil War, he allows his disappointment to cloud his relationship with Zabette. This novel transcends what could have been a clichéd tale of a master/slave affair, instead showing the truly tenuous position of African-Americans in the South before and after the war. McCash shows how Zabette’s intelligence and devotion to her children cause her to question Robert’s decisions, and how her long residence in the North educates her on issues that her upbringing never made her think about. In contrast, Robert evolves from a socially awkward, sympathetic character to a heartless, autocratic father to a sad, embittered old man. His deep resentment of the neighboring Cumberland Island planter, Phineas Nightingale, seems unwarranted, and his eventual cruelty toward Zabette inexcusable. Minor inconsistencies in the timeline—Robert is 69 in 1851, but only 67 in 1858—and a lack of character development among Zabette’s younger three children only slightly mar this otherwise well-composed novel.
A sweeping planter-slave tale in the antebellum South, as seen through the prism of 21st-century sensibilities and sensitivities.Pub Date: April 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9844354-8-7
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Twin Oaks Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2015
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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