bookshelf

The Late Unpleasantness

Name: The Late Unpleasantness
Author: Pamela Wielgus-Kwon
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8554-1

by Pamela Wielgus-Kwon ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 27, 2016

A solid, if mostly unsurprising, novel of the post-Civil War American frontier.

bookshelf

In Wielgus-Kwon’s debut historical novel, a Chicago nurse ventures into the Wild West.

In 1867, the brutality of the Civil War is only two years in the past. Maura Spencer spent the war years treating Confederate soldiers in Chicago’s Camp Douglas, a Union prisoner-of-war camp, alongside her mother, Sara. Unable to find her place in the postwar calm, Maura accepts an invitation to visit her pregnant friend, Clare Cameron, a fellow Union nurse in the frontier settlement of Mission, Wyoming. Although Maura is conflicted about the fact that Clare has married a former Confederate soldier, she’s drawn west by friendship and restlessness. But when Maura arrives in Wyoming, she discovers that Clare has died as a result of a miscarriage. Almost immediately, Maura witnesses a deadly Sioux raid and has charged encounters with men she once treated when they were prisoners of war. However, she soon discovers that the frontier needs a nurse and that she needs the frontier, so she stays on despite the physical and emotional dangers. From there, the plot rolls forward like a stagecoach, and although the book is brief, considering its scope, new conflicts and flashbacks of the war come rapidly. Wielgus-Kwon’s decision to focus on the postwar years, rather than on the war itself, is a smart one and provides the novel with subtlety and a chance to explore trauma, both of which are often missing in research-heavy historical tales. In other ways, though, the novel is less unique; although she has a strong command of her prose, Wielgus-Kwon doesn’t shy away from the over-the-top language of the Western and romance genres. In one typical scene, Maura contemplates two men’s final resting place: “Gazing now at these pathetic prairie graves before her, she was quite certain no one would ever queue to see them. But that mattered little. Immortality, she knew, need not mean a crypt in England.” But although she breaks little new ground, Wielgus-Kwon fully captures the feeling of the time and place in both detail and speech. Fans of frontier narratives will devour the book in one sitting.

A solid, if mostly unsurprising, novel of the post-Civil War American frontier.

Pub Date: April 27, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4602-8554-1

Page Count: 234

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

bookshelf

Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.