A distinguished epic of war, courage, and love, with a memorable heroine of passion and intelligence. Splendid. N.B.: The...
A remarkable debut chronicles the challenges a young woman, falsely imprisoned as a spy during the Civil War, faces when her home is destroyed and her heart given to the enemy.
Missouri native Jiles, a poet and memoirist (Cousins, 1992), sets her story in the Ozarks and vividly details one of the most brutal if little-known chapters in the Civil War: the destruction of civilian property and the killing of women, children, and elderly men by an unregulated Union militia. Each chapter is prefaced with extracts from relevant records, adding to the horror; this is war with a very human face—not set-piece battles and glorious charges, but pillage, plunder, and murder. Adair Colley is 18 in the third year of the war when the Union militia, made up of the dregs of the St. Louis waterfront, comes to the Colley family’s farm and assaults their father, a judge and scholar who has refused to take sides in the war, and takes him away after stealing food and horses and setting the barn and house on fire. Adair and her two younger sisters salvage what clothing and supplies they can and set off to find their father. But when a malicious family of horse thieves tells the authorities that Adair is a Confederate spy, she’s put in the women’s prison in St, Louis, a horror out of Dickens or Hogarth. There, she contracts tuberculosis but also falls in love with Major Neumann, her Union interrogator. After he helps her escape, she starts her long journey home, an epic test of bravery, endurance, and resourcefulness as she meets up with the militia, retrieves her stolen horse, and follows lonely and dangerous mountain trails. As Adair struggles to reach home, Neumann, though wounded in action, sets off to find her.
A distinguished epic of war, courage, and love, with a memorable heroine of passion and intelligence. Splendid. N.B.: The BOMC, which has revived the tradition of a celebrity panel to recommend books, has announced that Enemy Women is its first pick, chosen by panelist Anna Quindlen.)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-621444-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
An excellent debut that combines wit, humor, and emotional intensity.
A woman refuses to be with her soul mate, but life intervenes, making her choice harder and more heartbreaking.
Josh meets Kristen with a bang, literally, when she slams on her brakes and he runs into her. There's minimal damage, so she disappears. Minutes later they discover that their best friends are engaged to each other and they were slated to meet that day at the fire station where Brandon and Josh work. Josh is immediately smitten, but Kristen has a boyfriend, Tyler, who’s deployed overseas. Counting down the days until he gets home for good, Kristen adamantly puts Josh in the friend zone, refusing to acknowledge their growing closeness and her spiking attraction. Then Tyler reenlists, effectively breaking up with her. Kristen and Josh sleep together, but she slams the door on his hope for a real relationship, telling him it will never be more than a friends-with-benefits situation. Josh thinks Kristen is mourning the end of her relationship with Tyler, but really, Kristen realizes Josh is her perfect match. Unfortunately she also knows Josh wants children, which would be nearly impossible for them due to her malfunctioning reproductive system. The two reach a painful impasse, but when tragedy strikes, they find themselves reevaluating their relationship. Josh knows he’ll never be happy without Kristen, but he’ll have to think outside the box to convince her to take a chance on them. Jimenez tackles a myriad of issues in her debut and hits each one with depth and sensitivity. Kristen’s take-no-prisoners attitude is smart and sassy and perfectly balanced by Josh’s easygoing resourcefulness, though at times her lack of transparency while jerking him around makes her seem more immature than self-sacrificing.
An excellent debut that combines wit, humor, and emotional intensity.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1560-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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