An absorbing family saga provides a first-person account of Atlanta during the crucial civil rights era while also covering...
A columnist, copywriter, and graphic designer combines a coming-of-age novel and a memoir.
Josephine “Josie” Grace Flint, aka Jaybird, lives a fairly complacent existence in middle-class Atlanta in the 1960s. The eldest of three girls, she has two loving parents—her father, Cooper, a devoted Georgia Bulldog fan, and her charismatic mother, Beverly. Her paternal grandmother and namesake, Annie Jo, lives nearby, taking an active role in her granddaughters’ lives. Then a tragedy involving Josie’s father occurs on April Fools’ Day 1968, forever altering her family’s structure. As she and her sisters, mother, and grandmother reel from their personal loss, Atlanta endures its own heartbreak a mere three days later, when Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. Chapters from Josie’s teenage years alternate with her adult confrontation with another misfortune—Annie Jo’s fatal stroke on April Fools’ Day 2003. Annie Jo’s death reunites Josie and her sisters, along with her extended family, which now includes her stepsister LaDarla Dalrymple. A shocking discovery in Annie Jo’s personal effects leads to the re-evaluation of the murder of Izzy Jackson—the son of the Dalrymple family’s black maid—in downtown Atlanta in 1969. Florence (You’ve Got a Wedgie, Cha Cha Cha, 2016), a longtime Atlanta resident, expertly captures the city in the ’60s, with its indoctrinated, inherent racism, challenged by some but supported by others. At one point, Josie watches a cat rescue tale on the TV news (“It struck me how the cat story got as much time and photos as the Negro man that was dragged behind a car and left for dead”). In addition, the author deftly explores the early influences of the sexual revolution, which hits a little too close to home in Josie’s case. Florence’s long career in journalism is evident in the flawless writing, but the pacing is a bit off. More attention could have been devoted to the murder mystery, which seems like an afterthought but is far more engrossing than the crafts and outfits orchestrated by Annie Jo that Florence chronicles. Nevertheless, the overarching theme of Josie’s complicated relationship with her father, particularly as the true circumstances of his death become known, transcends other story threads. Florence’s skillful portrayal of ’60s Atlanta elevates this novel to striking historical fiction.
An absorbing family saga provides a first-person account of Atlanta during the crucial civil rights era while also covering the early 21st century.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9986781-0-8
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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