WILDFIRE

Name: WILDFIRE
Author: Mary Pauline Lowry
ISBN: 978-1-62914-497-9

by Mary Pauline Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2014

Lowry’s novel portrays the rich life and culture of a hotshot crew but struggles to make that world’s inhabitants equally...

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After failing out of college in her final semester, Julie joins a forest firefighting crew in this fast-paced novel.

Lowry (The Earthquake Machine, 2011) paints a vivid portrait of life as a hotshot, a firefighter specially trained in wildfire suppression. The Pike Inter-Agency Hotshot Crew must react quickly when a burning tree falls in the wrong direction or a walkie-talkie runs out of batteries. In such scenes of true-to-life suspense and well-rendered detail, it's easy to forget this is a novel and not a work of nonfiction. Indeed, the writing is strongest where it reveals the extreme physical endurance of and deep camaraderie that forms in a hotshot crew. Julie’s personal story, by comparison, is far less convincing. In the prologue, Julie explains her obsession with fire: “After my parents died I started to set things on fire.” When she's forced to quit her pyromania, Julie starts binging and purging as a coping mechanism. After joining the Pike crew, Julie is still sneaking out after dinners to throw up. Despite the depth of her psychological struggles, her compulsions fade away without ever being discovered, confronted or treated directly. Julie's social situation feels similarly thin. As the only woman on the crew, she fights predictable sexism to gain acceptance from her team. One particularly closed-minded hotshot, Tan, only warms toward Julie after she saves his life. Julie's story is rife with melodrama and overused tropes: She falls for a crew member, reconciles with her controlling grandmother and beats the boys at their own game multiple times. The seams show around the obvious plot devices. When Bliss appears in their camp, Julie feels threatened by the presence of another woman; after the two become friends, Bliss has served her purpose and is never heard from again. Characters are fairly flat, and when the story reaches its tragic ending, the reader knows it's coming and remains unmoved.

Lowry’s novel portrays the rich life and culture of a hotshot crew but struggles to make that world’s inhabitants equally real.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-62914-497-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.