An intriguing but meandering swamp tale that incorporates shades of Southern gothic and fantasy.
A debut historical novel tells the story of a 19th-century doctor’s adventures in the otherworldly Okefenokee Swamp.
The year is 1885. Recently a resident intern at the Florida State Hospital (the “Asylum for the Insane”), Dr. Ben Bouvier arrives in Waycross, Georgia, to start a private medical practice in what he hopes will be a much more peaceful environment. It turns out to be anything but: After he moves into the town’s haunted house, Ben soon discovers a dying girl left on his front porch for medical treatment. Ben can’t save her, and when the town discovers her body the next day, Ben is suspected of murdering her. Chased out of Waycross by a literal lynch mob, Ben flees into the nearby Okefenokee Swamp. After a snakebite and a broken arm from a run-in with an alligator, Ben is rescued by Hattie, the witchy matriarch of a hidden swamp community. The inhabitants of star-shaped Heks Island are descended from runaway slaves and Army deserters, and they still welcome outcasts in need of a home. “And so we found ourselves a village,” goes their rhyme. “This bunch of castaways. / For mankind cast us off, and we survived / And came to stay.” So begins Ben’s yearslong adventures among the hidden worlds of the Okefenokee, which will take him to places he never could have expected. In this series opener, Harris writes in a detailed, slithering prose that captures the sinister magic of his romanticized vision of the Old South: “The wind’s fury had abated just after noon but pockets of small gusts still complained here and there, with short needle-like blasts of rain for a few seconds at a time, then dampish calm…until the next gust raced down a streambed or chased around a tree.” The book will likely divide readers based on their storytelling preferences. Some will bemoan the episodic structure, the moseying plot, and Hattie’s initially charming but quickly annoying nursery rhyme–style intrusions. But those entranced by the author’s finely crafted mood and setting will look forward to the sequel.
An intriguing but meandering swamp tale that incorporates shades of Southern gothic and fantasy.Pub Date: May 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4751-5165-7
Page Count: 328
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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