A latter-day oater, of some interest to fans of the genre.
Cliven Bundy, nothin’. Real Western ranchers pay their taxes—but kick up a fuss when they have to, as McGarrity’s modern Western has it.
Moving the intergenerational saga begun in Hard Country (2012) into the near present, McGarrity serves up a tough but tender cowboy who wants nothing more than to keep to himself out in the Tularosa country of New Mexico. Matt Kerney has been beaten up in love and war. Worse still, he’s about to come face to face with the Air Force, which has been buzzing his spread. Says Matt: “Just tell your general or whoever is in charge of the flyboys to pay me for my two dead ponies.” Says the lackey, you betcha, but without conviction, for it turns out the feds want his place to expand nearby White Sands Missile Range. If this part of the program sounds familiar, it’s because Ed Abbey hit on it with more dramatic force half a century ago in his novel Fire on the Mountain. What McGarrity adds is a finer-grained sense of place and of attachment to New Mexico; when a rancher paterfamilias intones “Don’t let them on our land” anent the Air Force minions, the reader will have already developed a good understanding of what ties those people to a dry and dusty place. A former sheriff, he also has a good way of dealing with the politics of lowland New Mexico and of hierarchical organizations, whether it be Matt’s subsequent misadventures with the ag-extension crowd or a descendant’s bumpy path through the Vietnam-era military. The story lacks much tension, certainly as compared to its own predecessor in the saga, but it has a certain bucolic charm: “After a long day working them, I used to love to come out here in the cool of the evening and see my ponies lazing in the pasture. God, they were as pretty as they come.”
A latter-day oater, of some interest to fans of the genre.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95325-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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