Roxanne Reeves, a restoration expert and director of the Clarksville Pilgrimage Tour of Antebellum Homes, is asked to...
A well-intentioned debut of a woman finally rejecting the social and racial dictums of small-town Mississippi.
Roxanne Reeves, a restoration expert and director of the Clarksville Pilgrimage Tour of Antebellum Homes, is asked to research the possibility of offering an African-American tour of her town (suggested by the group’s newest member, a Connecticut transplant who doesn’t understand the nuanced tension between the blacks and whites in Clarksville). Hesitantly, Roxanne contacts Grace Clark, an 89-year-old ex-schoolteacher to help her uncover Clarksville’s neglected history. Roxanne has no interest in the town’s black history; according to her “the War is over and the blacks got their rights, so why do we have to dwell on the past?” But she does want to impress Louisa Humboldt (who needs her mansion restored) and so Roxanne is willing to traipse around Clarksville with Grace as she is shown ramshackle testaments to the hardships faced by Mississippi blacks during segregation. Grace shows Roxanne the old schoolhouse for black children, now the lumberyard’s warehouse (whose owner, Del Tanner sadly discovers his father was in the KKK and involved in a lynching); the house of her best friend, Adelle Jackson, whose father was the town’s first black doctor; and the black-owned Queen City Hotel, where Louis Armstrong played. Grace’s youth is revisited through these tours, allowing Roxanne, who seems woefully uninformed regarding Jim Crow, to gain appreciation for the black community she and her social circle prefer to ignore. Along the way, Grace’s tragic story unfolds, centering on the tale of her brother Zero, his quest to become a doctor and the violent fate he met at the hands of Del Tanner’s father. Roxanne builds powerful bonds with the strong black women she encounters, which enables her to finally reveal the secret of her own less than glorious family origins.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-23228-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: NAL Accent/Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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