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
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
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.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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