This engaging narrative with memorable characters features supernatural overtones that lead to an unsettling finale.
In this debut Old West novel, set in 1880 in the Arizona Territory, the wars with Native Americans have mainly ended, but the prejudice and violence against them still thrive.
Juan Ruben Tellez de Santiago, an aging Navajo, and Morgan Braddock, his business partner, ride to Esther Corbin’s farm a few miles outside of Chasm Creek in search of fresh water and some shade from the desert heat. Morgan is sick; Esther is the mother of four, managing the farm alone while her husband, Howard, is away. She is frightened and picks up her shotgun to warn the strangers to leave. But the weapon goes off accidentally, and Morgan is hit with some buckshot. Guilt-stricken, Esther offers the travelers overnight refuge until Morgan can heal. Within the first three pages, Cox has introduced her three main characters. The two men are here to execute Morgan’s latest plan. Ruben will make a deal with renegade Apaches to round up wild horses; the duo will break them; and Morgan will sell them to the Army soldiers stationed at nearby Fort McDowell. Esther agrees to rent the pair her farm, moving with her children into town to stay at her brother’s currently unused house. Unfortunately, her brother, Jacob Tillinghast, the mescal-drinking, goat-loving town marshal, finds an old poster proclaiming that Morgan is “Wanted for Murder” in the territory of New Mexico. There’s already plenty of material at this point for the coming excitement. But the real drama of this novel involves the heartbreaking backstories of Morgan and Ruben, their friendship, and the relationships that develop between each of them and Esther. Hope and tragedy alternate throughout pages suffused with pathos. Native American mysticism mingles with Western violence as the past haunts the present in a twisting plotline. And the visceral prose is evocative of the dry Southwestern landscape: “They maneuvered around cactus and thorny brush and switch-backed up the steep slope, headed for a saddle between two peaks. The ground was thick with prickly pear, and stands of saguaro cactus towered above him.”
This engaging narrative with memorable characters features supernatural overtones that lead to an unsettling finale.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9993375-0-9
Page Count: 290
Publisher: IRW Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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