A remarkable Civil War tale about Northern characters fighting for their own freedom as they seek revenge.
During the Civil War, a man and woman from Maine, seeking to avenge a murder, try to track down a Union soldier in this novel.
Zachary Webster is a sharpshooter in the Civil War and has seen plenty of combat. Back home in Maine for a winter furlough, Webster reconnects with his girlfriend, Catherine Brandford, and his younger brother, Elijah, whom he tries to dissuade from volunteering for the war effort. As it happens, Catherine has been spending time with another man, and the jealous Zachary kills him. The victim’s brother, Jedediah Stiller, is an imposing ex-whaler who is “a giant with exotic black-blue tattoos on his cheeks and chin, his long hair tied back with a strip of leather, and both ears pierced with golden earrings.” Jedediah wants revenge and plans to somehow find Webster, who has quickly returned to the front lines. For her part, Catherine desires retribution, too, and decides to become a war nurse in hopes of locating Webster. The two avengers’ separate plans get sidetracked along the way, as Catherine is taken in by a kindly couple whose promises of safety may not be quite what they deliver. Jedediah returns to sea, involuntarily, after being shanghaied and forced into bare-knuckle matches, with the sketchy promises of freedom looking unlikely. Bridgford’s (Hauling Through, 2016) novel begins with some haunting imagery that places readers squarely in the center of its Maine setting: a starving moose pursued by a hungry Webster; a recently deceased patriarch whose body rests “in its coffin in the family barn waiting for the ground to thaw enough to dig his grave.” The conflict’s effect on a small Maine community is an intriguing angle for a Civil War story, and the plot is intensified by the distance the characters have to travel (with many perils along the way) to reach Virginia. Though the war is central to everything in the book, this is mostly a revenge tale that takes a while to get going and can be somewhat long-winded. But as the plot gains speed, Catherine’s and Jedediah’s stories turn into compelling tales full of deception, wickedness, and earthy 19th-century details.
A remarkable Civil War tale about Northern characters fighting for their own freedom as they seek revenge.Pub Date: July 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-107-9
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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