Somewhat flat and two-dimensional, but, still, a good portrait of small-town America at the dawn of the last century.
Debut novel by former White House press secretary Fitzwater (Call the Briefing!, 1995, etc.), this based on the true story of a small-town scandal that took place in 1911 in Kansas.
It was a scandal, the publishers tell us, that Fitzwater’s own family might have had a role in but that he learned of only on his father’s deathbed. The tale begins with the return of Margaret Chambers, newly graduated from a Wichita teaching college, to Nickerly, the small hometown of her childhood. Margaret has come back to teach in the same one-room schoolhouse she attended not that many years before, and she brings all the fire and ambition of youth to her new job. But there is trouble from the start. Although she is a local girl, Margaret strikes many of the townsfolk as somewhat odd—a bit uppity, a bit too quick to change the routines everyone is used to. She wears jewelry, for example, and she shakes hands (just like a man!) when greeting strangers. What’s more, she seems to think it’s all right for her pupils to follow any career they wish—especially if it means leaving the farm and going off to the city for more schooling. Eventually some of the hard men of the town decide that she needs to be got rid of. They get a group together one night, abduct Margaret, strip her naked in front of the mob, and tar and feather her. But they’ve underestimated her pluck: Instead of running away, Margaret brings charges against the toughs in a long, drawn-out trial that brings national attention to the little Kansas backwater before it eventually vindicates her.
Somewhat flat and two-dimensional, but, still, a good portrait of small-town America at the dawn of the last century.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58648-035-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
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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