An epistolary novel that, while not scanting the hardships and tragedies of pioneer life, luminously evokes a pristine northern New Mexico. When Abigail Reynolds heads to the Southwest with her great- great-grandmother Abigail Conklin's letters in hand, she discovers not only a home for herself but family long thought to have disappeared. And between this discovery and the making of her new life, she offers the first of Abigail's correspondence, both as a family record and a testament to what becomes a lifelong love affair with a place. In 1867, with the Civil War over and prospects for Abigail's husband, Clayton, thin in his native Virginia, the Conklins joined a wagon train heading to California via New Mexico, where Clayton had been promised work in the mines. As she writes to her sister Maggie, who will be the primary recipient of her letters over the next five decades, Abigail not only defends Clayton's decision but records their travails and triumphs, along with her own growing attachment to the land. A son is drowned on the passage out; Clayton's mining ventures fail; and Abigail has to ask her Virginia relatives for money. When the Conklins abandon the rough and tumble of mining camp for farm life, however, Abigail, has found her home. She's determined to stay on even when Clayton is often away, water is scarce, and she has only her eldest daughter, Amy (who will eventually leave to study and marry in the East), to rely on for help. Three other children are born, two of whom survive, but Abigail is a survivor, too—a woman of independent spirit and loving heart who's not ashamed, though her Anglo neighbors shun her, to rear in her old age her runaway daughter's half-Indian child. The letters here, though richly detailed, are secondary to the landscape that Osborn, a poet and novelist (Patchwork, 1991), renders as a splendidly vital presence, vying with Abigail for center stage. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-14123-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
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
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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