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
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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