An engaging, fast-paced story about bringing change to the military establishment.
A female soldier rises in the ranks and challenges the military’s silence about sexual assault in this novel.
Mylander describes this book as a follow-up to her 1974 nonfiction book The Generals. It introduces Maggie Malone, a U.S. Army major on her way to Afghanistan on a rescue mission in the late 1990s. The story circles back to Maggie’s childhood on the West Point campus, where her father coaches at the gym and she dreams of becoming a soldier. Maggie is accepted to West Point in 1981, soon after the school starts admitting women, but her career takes a detour when she confronts the commandant, Julian Gard, who’s gotten her younger sister pregnant. Gard agrees to support the child but assigns Maggie to attend medical school, hoping to drive her out of the Army. Maggie becomes an orthopedic surgeon at Fort Hood’s hospital, in Texas. She’s raped by a superior officer but doesn’t report it, fearing reprisals, and she finds herself transferred to a base in Yuma, Arizona. Her career stagnates, but she finds love with Ross Ivans, a fellow soldier. After she successfully operates on visiting congressman Mil Franklin, he becomes her advocate and her career finally progresses. However, problems arise in 1997, when her fellow soldiers leave her behind during a mission in Afghanistan and she’s taken prisoner. She remains a prisoner until the 2001 U.S. invasion, when she returns to find Ross married to someone else. Maggie throws herself into her career and rises to the post of Army chief of staff, which brings her back into conflict with Gard. However, she sets her sights on changing the military’s culture regarding sexual assault. The author delivers an engaging read with a fast-paced plot that will keep readers turning pages. Maggie is a strong protagonist, and the secondary characters are generally well developed. The author grew up in a military family, and her deep knowledge of Army traditions and the realities of military life add to the book’s feeling of authenticity. There’s a touch of wish fulfillment in Maggie’s journey to the top, but it’s justified by Mylander’s portrayal of how the military's current structures and policies make advancement for women exceedingly difficult. The prose is solid and often insightful (“Bachelors are welcomed as prospective husbands and escorts….But single servicewomen of any age are considered loose cannons, threats to the wives and to the established order”), and U.S. Senate confirmation hearings are particularly compelling in Mylander’s hands. There are occasional moments of melodrama—for instance, Maggie’s mother reveals a long-held family secret just seconds before she dies—but they don’t detract from the overall narrative. The concluding chapters are set in the near future, but the story feels very much in the moment, as it deeply engages with contemporary discussions of sexual harassment and assault, representation and tokenism, and leadership and ethics. It will appeal to military fiction enthusiasts as well as those interested in women’s issues, and it’s likely to be thought-provoking for a wide range of readers.
An engaging, fast-paced story about bringing change to the military establishment.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68603-711-5
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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