A child country-music star, forced to choose between family and success, is guided by an angel in this music-video-on-paper that's been cobbled together by (surprise!) a child country-music star and her adult helper. It's yuletide in Nashville, and 14-year-old Anna Lee is in town to appear at the Grand Ole Opry—having become a sensation her first time around. Daughter of a blue-collar, part-time musician and veteran of nine years on the small-town bandstands of Mississippi and Texas, Anna appreciates the fact that the record- company meetings scheduled for this visit can make or break her career. Yet, when her father's favorite country singer from the '40s, now in serious decline, invites her to kill a day touring the town with her, Anna can't resist. The next morning, though, while Anna's waiting for her new friend (``I can't tell her name''), she receives a call saying that beloved Grandma Teeden in Mississippi is in the hospital with serious heart trouble. Can Anna rush to her granny's bedside? Guiltily, she claims that business concerns force her to stay where she is—and then she rushes off for her day on the town. Strangely, though, Anna's new friend shows her not only the famous old musicians' hangouts but such grittier ``musicians'- life'' locales as the bus station through which the failures shuffle back home. Anna even finds herself on a bus headed out to the countryside, where her companion tells her of a blizzard that once buried an entire busload of people, including herself, for days. The moral? Well, a chastened Anna, filled suddenly with family loyalty above all else, is eager to go back to Grandma and home. But when Anna tells her dad who she spent the day with, he claims that that singer has been dead for years. . . . Consumer product more than creative work, with copyright held not even by an author, but by LeAnn Rimes Entertainment, Inc. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-49087-9
Page Count: 119
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
