Although the pace can be as slow as a humid bayou afternoon, the conflicts eventually ignite, leading to a cathartic close.
A debut novel about an African-American woman who struggles to salvage the Louisiana sugar cane farm she inherited from her father.
Recently widowed, Charlotte “Charley” Bordelon feels compelled to take advantage of an odd inheritance from her father, Ernest. Unbeknownst to his family, Ernest had sold off his valuable California real estate holdings to purchase a failing sugar cane spread in his Louisiana birthplace. Now, Charley has no choice but to farm the land: Her father’s trust prevents a sale. Going into meticulous and occasionally numbing detail, Baszile describes how Charley manages to find seasoned advisers to educate her on the mysteries of growing cane and how, with very little equipment, scant capital and much sweat over one steamy summer, the farm is gradually reclaimed from utter desuetude. But obstacles mount: Two local white corporate sugar moguls sling racial slurs and veiled threats. (As an African-American and a woman, Charley is a minority of one among the county’s sugar cultivators.) A hurricane sets back months of arduous weeding and planting. A white colleague is proving dangerously attractive, until he makes a racially insensitive remark. But Charley’s main hurdles are closer to home. Her grandmother, Miss Honey, with whom she and daughter Micah are living, can be irascible and stubborn; her favorite aunt, antagonized by Miss Honey, stays away, but Charley’s chief nemesis is her older half brother Ralph Angel, also widowed. Resentful about being cut out of Ernest’s will (presumably since he squandered his father’s money on a drug habit), he has shown up, with his son Blue in tow, to pressure Charley to share her marginally profitable legacy. More detail on past traumas, for example, the profound depression that led Charley to neglect her daughter and the drug addiction that resulted in the death of Ralph Angel’s wife, would have deepened readers’ understanding of these characters’ present behavior.
Although the pace can be as slow as a humid bayou afternoon, the conflicts eventually ignite, leading to a cathartic close.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02613-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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