An entertaining, heartwarming coming-of-age story with a Puerto Rican flavor.
A gift of coffee beans helps a Puerto Rican boy rise from peasant to hacienda owner in this children’s book.
After his father’s death, 12-year-old Ephraim Montalvo helps support his mother by picking coffee cherries for the Hacienda Dominicci. Much hard work has enabled Ephraim to pay off his father’s debt to Mr. Dominicci, money Mr. Montalvo had hoped to use for his own plantation. Ephraim finishes repayment, but his cheerful nature is crushed when the hacienda owner contemptuously refuses to acknowledge this, and it seems he and his mother will always be trapped in poverty. Seeing her son’s despair, Mrs. Montalvo gives him an encouraging letter and a book on the history of coffee left to him by his father. Soon after, Ephraim meets a mysterious coffee trader named Amal, who gives him some magic coffee beans that miraculously grow overnight into many mature trees. Ephraim realizes his father’s dream and starts his own hacienda that becomes so successful that he soon travels to Europe for a coffee contest. When Ephraim’s ship is attacked by pirates, he must face danger and make deals to survive. He graciously reconciles with Mr. Dominicci, who admits his sins and becomes a force for good in his community. Supplementary information includes a glossary, map, and historical photographs. In some ways, Paolicelli (Lightkeepers to the Rescue!, 2012, etc.) tells a classic tale of the poor boy who advances through sweat, honesty, and faith, with a supernatural twist coming from the miraculous coffee beans. It’s a touching story that emphasizes family, generosity, and other virtues, and it can get a little didactic. Ephraim is sometimes too saintly to be true, but there’s enough excitement—especially in the pirate action scenes—to keep the story dynamic and fresh. Young readers have a chance to learn about coffee and its history, the hacienda system and jíbaros (peasants), Puerto Rico, and Caribbean piracy. The book is attractively presented and thoughtful, featuring a burlap background for many of Daly’s (Lightkeepers to the Rescue!, 2012) expressive, lively illustrations in charcoal and pencil.
An entertaining, heartwarming coming-of-age story with a Puerto Rican flavor.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9797641-2-7
Page Count: 164
Publisher: A Caribbean Experience Con Amor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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