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Third Willow

Name: Third Willow
Author: Lenore M. Skomal
ISBN: 978-1478192497

by Lenore M. Skomal ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 23, 2013

A haunting reminder about the loss of innocence.

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In Skomal’s (Bluff, 2012, etc.) YA novel, a group of children in a small Midwestern town learns about the harsh realities of life after the Korean War.

The children of Sand Flats, Neb., may be off from school for the summer, but they’re definitely not on vacation. It’s 1954, and Hap, Patsy, Beah and Raz meet amid the fallout of the Korean War, which has ravaged their lives. Hap, who looks “like a wax museum statue of Peter Pan,” is as lost and motherless as the boy who wouldn’t grow up. He’s abused by his father and tries to build his own, better world. Hotheaded Patsy just moved to town (after being suspended from her last school for fighting) and must learn to deal with her brother’s serious injury, which he sustained during the war and has sent him to the VA hospital. She also must come to terms with her brother’s secrets, which threaten the family’s stability. Then there are Beah, who lives in the shadow of her deceased older brother, and Raz, who is Jewish and has an “innate beauty” that sets her apart from the others. This coming-of-age story follows the group’s members, who meet for the first time that fateful summer and contend with murder, lies from their parents, lies to their parents, missing limbs, homosexuality, theft and abuse. Together, they learn the importance of friendship, truth and honesty, and they also learn that life is rarely easy. It’s a dark story about a dark world, but Skomal makes the story readable and lovely via her prose. Sand Flats—a deep-rooted cattle-farming community 20 miles from Omaha that “came to life thanks to the Union Pacific Railroad’s western push to develop the rail clear to California in the late 1800s”—itself becomes a main character. By placing this group of children, their parents and other townspeople in this distinct geographic location, Skomal has created a world that couldn’t take place anywhere else.

A haunting reminder about the loss of innocence.

Pub Date: March 23, 2013

ISBN: 978-1478192497

Page Count: 290

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 13, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.