Ambitious writing undercut by an equally ambitious political agenda as Jamaican-born Cliff (Bodies of Water, 1990, etc.) reclaims the life of African-American Mary Ellen Pleasant, a co- conspirator in John Brown's ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. In prose that veers from the lyrical to the polemic, Cliff makes the story of Mary Ellen the centerpiece of a novel that's as much a reprise of the wrongs done to the historically oppressed- -blacks, Jews, native peoples, lepers—as to Clover Adams, wife of the famous Henry. Mary Ellen, the daughter of a daring sea-captain who'd escaped from slavery in Jamaica and a Gullah-speaking mother from the South who'd fled as a young child to Martha's Vineyard, mostly tells her own story in the form of letters written (if not sent) while traveling—letters to wealthy abolitionist Alice Hooper and fellow conspirator Annie Christmas. She recalls her parents; how she met Annie at an antislavery meeting in New England; how her chain of prosperous hotels in California provided not only shelter for runaway slaves but money for John Brown's raid; and how she barely escaped death when that raid failed. Annie Christmas, daughter of wealthy French freed slaves, who'd dedicated her life to revolution, adds to both the story and the political agenda with her own recollections. Now living in a cabin on the banks of the Mississippi in Louisiana, she has befriended the more symbolic than real inmates of the nearby leper sanitorium—including a descendant of Hawaiian ``feathered kings''; a woman, Rachel, whose family had fled the Spanish Inquisition for the New World; and a hill-woman from Kentucky who'd witnessed a brutal raid of runaway slaves. And to broaden the polemic, Clover Adams's tragic suicide is retold with a feminist slant that blames her father as well as Henry for her death. A potentially great story lost amid too many flights of lyricism and litanies of wrongs.
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93704-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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