Unusual historical accuracy distinguishes an otherwise formulaic novel of a plucky Chinese family: a portrait of Tang immigrants, on whose backs so much of the infrastructure of California and Hawaii was built. Sledge's second (Empire of Heaven, 1990) opens as peasant general Pao An and his warrior wife Rulan, an escaped concubine, flee a failed Taiping rebellion by signing on as indentured servants for the sugarcane plantations of Hawaii. But Pao An is shipped instead to California, spending the next seven years building the dikes that tamed the Sacramento Delta floodplains, becoming witness to nature's awesome calamities and the even worse cruelties of racist white settlers. Rulan has an easier time as a much-loved servant in Hawaii for a patrician but childless New England minister and his wife, whose love for Rulan's daughter, Molly, provides a surprising plot twist: On Pao An's return, Molly will hate him for forcing the little family to live in Chinatown's cramped poverty. She also hates her father's orphan-boy companion, Lin Kong, tormenting him every chance she gets—which, of course, means that the two are destined for each other. Throughout, Sledge delivers tremendous set-pieces—a killer flood in California, a dizzy soiree between King Kalakaua and Robert Louis Stevenson on the King's yacht, a nuanced look at the still-controversial annexation of Hawaii by US sugar planters—even though the characters here sometimes have trouble catching their breath while jogging through fires, hurricanes, Tong warfare, love affairs, and economic ups and downs. A superior work of history, then, with some genuinely affecting moments among its fictional characters—and a demonstration of how much of the West was East in the rambunctious Manifest Destiny days of the late 19th century.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-37890-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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
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
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