An engaging tale that combines sports, religion, and politics.
An athlete and his coach team up to save a city threatened by heightened racial tension and violence in this historical novel.
Nehemiah Garvey is a man of faith and a high school basketball star in Newark, New Jersey. It’s the 1960s and the city has been torn apart by riots (or rebellions, depending on one’s perspective). Nehemiah wants to keep playing ball at Sagamore High School, where the talented Mickey Marcus is the coach. But Mickey is the only white coach left in the city and many powerful figures in the black community would like to see him go. Nehemiah and Mickey undertake some basketball diplomacy to help turn Newark’s reputation around. As one writer comments, “Sports can be a great racial equalizer.” Mickey keeps the reins and with Nehemiah leading the community on and off the court, the team launches a bid to win the national title. Little (After Obama, 2014, etc.) sets his fictional tale during the very real and turbulent events of the ’60s, using Newark as a window into the changing demographics of urban areas across the country. Racism is rampant and, as the author demonstrates when his narrative jumps forward in time, it’s still a pressing topic today. Decades later, Nehemiah and Mickey are still fighting to make Newark a peaceful city where whites and blacks have a fair chance for success and equal access to opportunity and safe housing. The author creates two admirable characters in Nehemiah and Mickey, and their multifaceted relationship is a high point of the novel. Little also includes scores of excellent quotes from U.S. presidents, activists, and scholars of the past and present, firmly situating the Newark events on a national stage. Yet the main arc of the narrative is a fictional story, despite the presence of historical figures such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. A clear explanation separating fact from fiction or an annotated cast of characters would have provided clarity, especially for those interested in history.
An engaging tale that combines sports, religion, and politics.Pub Date: June 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-88906-0
Page Count: 324
Publisher: MLPR Books
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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