Veering off the fast track of vigilante police thrillers, Rosenberg (Mitigating Circumstances, 1992, etc.) spins a cloying tale of supernatural do-gooding. Wispy, nurturing Toy Johnson, a schoolteacher to ruffian kids in Santa Ana, Calif., champions the underprivileged; she is especially fond of children (the sicker the better), not only because she has the empathy of a martyr, but because she and her wealthy but selfish doctor husband, Stephen, are infertile. Toy went into cardiac arrest once in her youth, so her system is delicate. When she finally leaves her insensitive spouse, the strain prompts another cardiac episode while she is visiting Manhattan. A friend brings her to the hospital, and the perturbed Stephen jets to her bedside, but Toy, feeling much better once conscious, escapes to the streets of New York, where she has a narcoleptic attack. When she awakens in the hospital, she is furious to find that a pacemaker has been installed. She fears the device will prevent her from saving the lives of needy children— you see, during her near-death experiences, Toy has been magically transported to the sides of kids around the country in crises (autism, kidnapping, etc.) from which she rescues them. Nobody believes her, of course: Her husband thinks she is batty, and the police, who have captured Toy on videotape saving a child from a fire, accuse her of arson and kidnapping. The kids she has rescued band together for a courtroom climax in the treacly format of a second-rate made-for-TV movie. Rosenberg, whose strength in past books has been her confrontation of violence and unpleasantness, here goes out of her way to be nice, and the button-pushing righteousness for which she is also known doesn't work in a story that utterly lacks conflict. Her loyal readers will likely jump ship. (Literary Guild featured alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93945-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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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