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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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.