A cinematic but refreshingly unsentimental take on the classic Western, starring a woman who is no romantic heroine, but a...
After two novels re-imagining the history of her own New England ancestors (The Heretic’s Daughter, 2008; The Traitor's Wife (originally entitled The Wolves of Andover, 2010)), Kent turns her attention to post–Civil War Texas, where law and morality are far more elastic.
In 1870, Lucinda Carter steals away (steal being the operative word) from the Fort Worth brothel where she’s worked in semi-slavery as a prostitute. But do not expect her to have a heart of gold. Despite the occasional seizures she hides from most of her clients, she is tough, conniving and deadly when necessary. Having procured a teaching position under false pretenses, she heads to Middle Bayou, Texas, where legend has it that the pirate Lafitte buried his gold and where she hopes to meet up with her secret lover. Meanwhile, young Oklahoman Nate Cannon joins the Texas police force and is assigned to work with veteran Rangers George Deerling and Tom Goddard. As Lucinda manipulates her way into the hearts of her new employers, a community of former land and slave owners from the Deep South, Nate and the Rangers track ruthless killer William McGill. Goddard, a former medical student with an intellectual bent, takes Nate under his wing, but Nate finds he needs to prove himself to the more coldblooded Deerling. Shortly after Deerling finally accepts Nate and confides that he once had a daughter he mistreated, the experienced Ranger is killed by one of McGill’s henchmen. Goddard tells Nate that he loved and married Deerling’s daughter, although, as a child, she was permanently damaged by her father’s decision to place her in an asylum for her epilepsy. She ran off while pregnant, and Goddard does not know what happened to their child, but his wife has become Lucinda. After McGill and Lucinda’ Middle Bayou plans go awry and Nate and Goddard close in, all hell breaks loose.
A cinematic but refreshingly unsentimental take on the classic Western, starring a woman who is no romantic heroine, but a definite survivor.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-20612-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
PROFILES
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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