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
Mimi Smithers knew right from childhood in Lubbock, Texas, that she was destined for an extraordinary life—and she gets just what she's always wanted in this uneven, often sexually explicit, comedy of manners by Plunket (My Search for Warren Harding, 1983). Ambitious Mimi, a Bronxville matron who loves to shop, tells her own story, beginning with a disastrous party for an arts group at which Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III is the honored guest. Bored with suburban life and husband Boyce (who, for the necessary plot resolution, works for Union Carbide), Mimi tries analysis, but a chance encounter with debonair Tom Potts while shopping is more what's needed. Tom has his own firm and asks Mimi to be his assistant. Mimi, smitten by Tom, is thrilled, but Tom is gay, which takes Mimi a while to figure out (she tends to be a little slow), though that doesn't stop her from having fun as she accompanies him and his friends around 1980's gay New York. At a picnic she meets gay-porn star Joel, an ambitious hunk, who employs her to run his profitable mail-order business. Besotted, she funds the great porn film that Joel writes and directs, and gets to know a lot of lowlife people—but then the film flops, Joel dumps her, and Mimi's left with the bills. Rescue is at hand, however: husband Boyce, who's been working in India, conveniently dies in the Bhopal disaster. With the money Union Carbide pays out to her, Mimi can pay her debts, buy an apartment on Sutton Place, and, with Tom now dead from AIDS, set out to take over his job. ``It was going to be fabulous,'' she trills. An absurd plot, obvious satire, and humor more sleazy than black—plus a heroine who's just plain dumb, and unappealingly so. Thin camp.
Pub Date: April 22, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-016660-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
A stunning supernatural Southern gothic.
The remote Arkansas bayou is a swirling kaleidoscope of murder, greed, and dark, ancient magic in Bram Stoker Award finalist Davidson’s second novel (In the Valley of the Sun, 2017).
The rotting Holy Day Church and Sabbath House, where the preacher Billy Cotton held his congregants in his thrall, serves as a painful reminder to 21-year-old Miranda Crabtree of the night 10 years ago when she and her father, Hiram, the boatman, took the midwife (and witch) Iskra there to deliver Cotton's son. As soon as Cotton laid eyes on the infant’s mottled, scaly skin and webbed hands, he called him an abomination and tried to kill him. Iskra had other ideas, and the baby, whom Miranda called Littlefish, survived. But Hiram disappeared that night, and she’s since dreamed of finding his body (because he’s surely dead) and laying him to rest. It's Miranda’s love for the mute, goodhearted Littlefish that has kept her going, and with Iskra's help, she's spent years running her father's general store and eventually running dope for Cotton and his cruel and corrupt deputy, Charlie Riddle, to make ends meet. Now, Billy Cotton’s kingdom has crumbled around him and his body is riddled with cancer. Before dying, he’s desperate to appease the angry ghost of his wife, who died in childbirth, but he’ll need a sacrifice. On Miranda’s last run for Riddle, she’s ordered to deliver a young girl to Cotton, which she’s not about to do even though she knows her refusal will start a war she might not survive. But she’s ready, and the time for a reckoning has come. Davidson’s captivating horror fable combines the visceral violence of Cormac McCarthy with his own wholly original craftsmanship, weaving rich, folkloric magic with the best elements of a gritty Southern thriller. The book's lightning-fast pace doesn’t come at the expense of fully realized, flawed, and achingly human characters. Ample bloodshed is offset by beautiful prose, and the bad guys are really, really bad. Luckily, Miranda, a young woman forged in hardship and grief and buoyed by her love of a very special child, is a perfect foil for the evil she’ll have to face.
A stunning supernatural Southern gothic.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-53855-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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