A fine snapshot of a stalwart individual.
A woman with terminal cancer chooses to live the end of her life to the fullest on an around-the-world cruise.
Jones (Letters from the Skeleton Coast, 2017) recalls events beginning in 2007 with his wife Joanne’s diagnosis of terminal cancer. Breast cancer, which she had battled for years previously, had metastasized throughout her body, giving her only a couple of years to live. After participating in an intensive drug trial that failed to produce results, she continued with traditional chemotherapy but to no avail. In late 2008, they made the difficult decision to discontinue treatment. He writes of Joanne: “The thought of spending her final days in a hospital bed was not an attractive option for her. With the countdown at about three months, she decided on her third wish—the final cruise.” At this point, the story turns its voice over to Joanne through a long series of emails, “unchanged and unedited,” which she wrote to family and friends while aboard the South Pacific cruise. These messages reveal her courageous and optimistic personality, ending with the words “There is a song with lyrics that is my mantra: ‘If you have the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.’ My dear friends—we have DANCED!!” This book first intrigues readers with its title, and then the prologue builds up expectations even more with the line “Well, let me tell you the amazing story of the black pearl necklace.” The tale quickly loses its momentum, however, especially since the drama of the necklace constitutes a very small percentage of the work, and the conflict and resolution behind it are rather anticlimactic. But the author excels at painting a splendid picture of Joanne and her selfless, upbeat character, something that will be particularly inspiring to those fighting cancer. Unfortunately, most of the text recounts simple reminiscences instead of employing salient details to purposefully contribute to plot and character development, elements that are vital in creating a riveting account. While close friends and family should adore this book, it will likely fail to engage a broader audience.
A fine snapshot of a stalwart individual.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 100
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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