A beguiling mix of characters in a sunny story that faithfully emphasizes the positive. Sweet soulfood only.
A noted folk artist debuts with a warmly affirming story, the first in a series, of a congregation’s attempts to save its church from being closed down.
As in the popular Mitford novels, the setting is a fictional small town where everyone knows and cares for everyone else and even the curmudgeons have hearts of gold. In Dorsetville, in New England, the Catholic Church is St. Cecilia’s, and its priests are Father James Flaherty and his elderly assistant, Father Keene. Dorsetville was once a prosperous mill town, but the congregation has shrunk, and on a bitterly cold Ash Wednesday morning, when the ancient furnace, as usual, is not working, Father James gets a call from his superior requesting a meeting to discuss the church’s fate. Father James is a good and caring priest, and he’s concerned that, if the church closes down, his elderly flock will be bereft of the comfort and community it offers, and aging Father Keene will have to go into a retirement home. Told that the church must be closed on Easter Sunday, Father James realizes that only a miracle will save it. As he worries, prayers are answered in unexpected ways: much-liked parishioner Bob, ill with cancer, undergoes a successful bone marrow transplant; Father Keene, lost in a snowstorm, is found sheltering in widow Harriet Bedford’s house; and Harriet, who has been visiting her sister, a Mother Superior, is reunited with her long-lost granddaughter. St. Cecilia’s itself still needs a miracle, which it seems to get when a hologram of the Virgin Mary, created by young computer whiz Matthew, appears in the church. Though crowds flock to see it, Easter Sunday is only hours away. But fittingly, on Easter morning Father James receives a letter that in its way offers a miraculous solution to his problems.
A beguiling mix of characters in a sunny story that faithfully emphasizes the positive. Sweet soulfood only.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03113-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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