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MAYBELLEEN

Name: MAYBELLEEN
Author: Kathleen Wallace King
ISBN: 0-8050-3600-8

by Kathleen Wallace King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 13, 1995

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King's second novel (after The True Life Story of Isobel Roundtree, 1994) is a tight, hortatory tale about justice denied (to Native Americans) and the redemptive power of love. A tall order, not quite fulfilled, in spite of some interesting perceptions. The story this time deals with two world-weary women six decades apart: one, a frontier outlaw hanged in 1902; the other, her great-niece, also headed for hanging. In 1958, New Yorker Margaret has, she says, ``gone off her rocker.'' When her husband leaves her, she returns to ancestral Kentucky and discovers the grave of her (briefly famous) great-aunt, the hanged outlaw, Maybelleen MacGregor. Margaret, still sufficiently far from her rocker and enamored of Maybelleen's fate, also tries to hang herself. But she's rescued just in time and cared for by relatives. The story then switches back to 1899 as Maybelleen, a Kentucky schoolteacher, escapes her cushioned despair by marrying a handsome preacher, Dr. Brown, who's come to the ladies' circle to plead for help for the poor Indians. Once in the Oklahoma Territory, though, Maybelleen discovers that the Indians have been robbed not only of their land but of their culture. Prevented from giving real help as a teacher, Maybelleen just rides off, a shrieking Dr. Brown following. She then falls for Bill—a half-Mexican and half ``all- tribes''—who robs to collect money for a ``gathering place'' for Mexico's Indian tribes. The end comes just after the last heist and before the border. Later, Maybelleen tells the sheriff simply: ``I only wanted love and I got it.'' As for Margaret, she also finds love and ponders the link (with a surprise kink) with Maybelleen: ``We carry nations inside us.'' King's language is fresh and strong, but her way of relying on a mythic frame rather than a character results in a novel that hovers a bit too high off the ground. Still, King has an Oatesian intensity worth the flight.

Pub Date: April 13, 1995

ISBN: 0-8050-3600-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.