THE LYNCHING TREE

Name: THE LYNCHING TREE
Author: Michael Stein
ISBN: 1-57962-071-1

by Michael Stein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2000

Stein shuffles fragments of his climax throughout the novel, a device not all to the good, since it suggests a stronger...

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Short novel about the first black cop in Pompan, New Jersey, and what happens when the world slips out from underfoot.

Stein, a doctor (The White Life, 1999) and teacher (Brown University), deserves praise for adventurous plotting and nicely worked characters. He strives, too, for the crisp style and delivery of James M. Cain, and for a touch of Cain’s surreal bravura during this novel’s most explosive moments. But commenting on The Lynching Tree offers horrible problems, in that even to suggest the utterly minimal plot will deprive the reader of its liveliest surprises and suspense. You really do not want to know what this story is about before you read it. Still, to offer the faintest of sketches: Donald “Cage” Gambell, a college graduate at 23, wants to follow in the footsteps of a revered uncle, a detective in Detroit, and become the same himself. Of course, first he must be a cop and walk a beat. Pompan has just had a lynching—a white man, the town drunk and bully, has been found strung up by his own belt, with some black mannequins nearby. Blacks and whites are divided about whether the murderer was black or white, and, to calm the citizenry, the town’s first black cop is hired fresh from the police academy. And so it is that, on New Year’s Eve, Gambell and his white fellow officer Butras come upon a gang of armed youths in a fracas near Bryant School. The incident leads to an event that later helps resolve the lynching mystery while adding an even deeper tragedy to the tale.

Stein shuffles fragments of his climax throughout the novel, a device not all to the good, since it suggests a stronger close than the story can actually bear. Still, well done, even memorable, if not altogether fulfilling.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000

ISBN: 1-57962-071-1

Page Count: 194

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000

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 WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.