An engaging, bittersweet saga about finding a place to belong.
An orphaned 1980s teenager travels through time to the Jazz Age to discover the mystery of her identity in this sweetly confected historical fantasia.
Found as a newborn in a Denver dumpster in 1966, Jett Oxford is a scruffy 16-year-old street kid when she finally finds a haven at the Watson’s Candies store, whose 70-something proprietors, Henry and Jay, take her in, teach her the pastry trade, and give her the loving family life she’s never known. Then a kitchen explosion hurls her back to the year 1927, which is all Model Ts and stiff foundation garments. She feigns amnesia and is deposited at the local orphanage, but she’s soon taken up by the now young and handsome Henry and his blithe flapper fiancee, Josephine Doyle (who might later be called Jay, Jett surmises), the daughter of a rich family. The Roaring ’20s has its pros, such as glamorous retro fashions and swell parties, and its cons, such as anti-Irish bigotry and a tragic lack of antibiotics. Despite having to learn contemporary slang (“That would just be the ant’s ear!”) and scandalizing everyone with her own unladylike outbursts—“THAT BITCH!”—Jett soon fits right in. Alas, her knowledge of things to come causes dilemmas: as a teenage girl, she has trouble persuading the grown-ups that the Great Depression is about to happen and that they need to sell their stock and withdraw their money before the banks collapse; more poignantly, she has to suppress her growing feelings for Henry, since she believes his marriage to Josephine is the key to her own future. Poague’s time-travel conceit makes no more sense than is strictly necessary to serve as a hook for a winsome melodrama. The story unfolds in blossoming friendships, makeovers, light romantic intrigues, and, finally, deeper familial joys and heartache. The author’s yen for intrusive economics lessons—“The system of state arbitration will drive labor costs up, rendering German goods uncompetitive on world markets” is typical dinner-table repartee—sometimes slows things down. Still, Poague’s vibrant characters and piquant period details make for an entertaining voyage into the past.
An engaging, bittersweet saga about finding a place to belong.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ben Briar Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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