While slowed by a dry backstory, this engaging tale transports readers to an intriguing village.
A series opener focuses on a hidden settlement in the Smoky Mountains.
Karen Karper Fredette (Where God Begins to Be, 2015, etc.) presents husband and wife Wren and Kyle Makepeace. As the novel begins, the two, both in their early 30s, are out for a hike near the Tennessee/North Carolina border. They follow an old railroad path and come across a woman named Mencie. Wren and Kyle have arrived at Lovada Cove. Mencie informs the couple that people only get to the Cove if they have been “Sent or Summoned.” It turns out the Cove is a village of sorts all on its own with homes, a church, and, thanks to some local ingenuity, reliable internet service. As Wren and Kyle learn more about this community, they also discover a great deal about themselves. Wren, who was raised by foster parents and whose middle name is Lovada, will become acquainted with her sometimes disturbing family history. Kyle, who is of Cherokee descent, will find a connection to his ancestors. Yet the couple will also learn that the Cove is in trouble. Someone even plans to tell the outside world about the settlement. The opening pages of the novel are laden with dull information about Wren and Kyle (for example, he was initially impressed by her “poise as she addressed a conference for compensatory education teachers”). Nevertheless, the pace of the story—which features black-and-white illustrations by Paul Fredette (Consider the Ravens, 2011), the author’s husband—soon picks up. The Cove is an odd enclave if ever there was one. Everything from the thickening mists capable of blocking out sound to a cat with the ability to get people to follow it adds to the vivid, otherworldly atmosphere. The story progresses with a feeling of mystery and later, when the narrative reveals someone wants to betray the Cove, a sense of urgency. Dialogue, on the other hand, tends to lack depth. For instance, Kyle proclaims awkwardly in a time of distress: “At least, let’s get clear of this place!” Yet even with such obvious sentiments, the narrative deftly takes the characters to places that both they and the audience could hardly expect.
While slowed by a dry backstory, this engaging tale transports readers to an intriguing village.Pub Date: March 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72303-058-1
Page Count: 222
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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