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THE TATTERED BOX

Name: THE TATTERED BOX
Author: Paul Schumacher
ISBN: 978-0-9979553-0-9

by Paul Schumacher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 16, 2016

A well-crafted, if conventional, time-travel tale.

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A teenager travels back to 1941 and encounters his grandfather in this YA debut.

It’s 2004. John, age 18, is mostly uninterested when his elderly grandfather presents him with a mysterious box one day: “The box was timeworn and resembled a long-lost treasure chest….The musty smell was of a rarely opened attic, and it had a curved top like a prop from an old pirate movie.” John is disappointed that the items contained within don’t possess much monetary value, but he nevertheless sticks the thing in his baseball bag before heading to his game. Later, after being struck in the head by a fly ball, John wakes up on the field of a different game: one that took place in 1941 that his grandfather has been telling John about all his life. John meets his grandfather’s younger self, Bill, and gets to know him as a peer. What’s more, John gets to live in his same house—it was standing back in 1941—but with an entirely different family. One that includes (unlike John’s 2004) a loving father. With his grandfather at his side, John gets to experience what being a teenager was like back in the early ’40s: both the things that were different and the things that never change. “I always assumed school was the same no matter which decade I attended,” John observes. “Boy was I wrong.” He also gets to see a side of his grandfather that he’s never observed before. Schumacher tells his story in clear prose, and John’s first-person narrative is buoyed by an infectious enthusiasm for the world around him. The objects in the grandfather’s box are used as representative totems to unlock different avenues in the tale, and the author makes good use of his setting, which successfully conjures a small Midwestern town right on the cusp of World War II. The novel does not drift far from the expected path, and the ending is a bit formulaic. But overall the book is a pleasant exploration of familial bonds across generations and the timelessness of youth.

A well-crafted, if conventional, time-travel tale.

Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9979553-0-9

Page Count: 270

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).