Maynard is a consummate storyteller, and the thriller elements run parallel to the tough life of the homeless on the streets...
A fictional mélange that's part thriller and part social commentary, set against the beautiful scenic backdrop of the southwest—and it works.
Maynard begins with a timeline of 400-plus years of historical and fictional Santa Fe, New Mexico. William Becknell blazed the original ruts of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821—history. Cinco Becknell, the fifth William, is homeless on the streets of Santa Fe in current time—fiction. He wakes up in El Paso and has no memory of who he is or why he's there. He uses a bus ticket to Santa Fe from his shirt pocket to illuminate the flashbacks he's having of torture, pain and the old scars on his body. Little Jimmy befriends him on the streets and teaches the tricks of survival—how to get food, where to sleep, how to move through the city like a ghost. Jimmy names him Stick, the only name Cinco knows, and they both run from two psychopaths who need to silence Jimmy, who saw them brutally dispose of a woman in the desert night. There's also another person shadowing Cinco's movements—an elegant, mysterious, lethal black woman who calls him Pyat and is a connection to some dark pieces of a Russian memory. A lovely woman from Cinco’s teenage past, Elena, sister of one of three boys whose photograph hangs in her gallery, begins to see the Cinco she knew from the photo in this beaten shadow of a stick man, and a love story sneaks into the action.
Maynard is a consummate storyteller, and the thriller elements run parallel to the tough life of the homeless on the streets of The City Different.Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940425-45-0
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Vandalia Press/West Virginia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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