Ritter artfully and realistically depicts a rough road to adulthood with a wartime motif.
Coming-of-age experiences contrast with the Korean War in Ritter’s debut novel.
A single mother gives up her son, Timothy, for adoption, and the novel follows his life from childhood to adolescence and, finally, as a soldier in the Korean War. Throughout his life, Timothy struggles. Adoptive parents John and Martha do their best to raise him, but he falls in with two ne’er do wells, Wes and Raymond, who encourage bad behavior, theft and general nastiness. At various junctures in his youth, Timothy takes wrong turns, such as not visiting a potential girlfriend, instead choosing to get drunk. For some reason, as a teen, he is encouraged to babysit 6-year-old Cindy. Undaunted by his surly manner, she is kind to him and teaches him to waltz to Tchaikovsky. The music has a powerful effect, helping Timothy break out of his usual hostility and appreciate beauty. This scene is mirrored later when he helps a lost young Korean girl during the war; the music replays inside his head as he dances with her amid the rubble. Another parallel occurs when he encounters Jake, who helped his birth mother when she was desperate and alone, also aids Timothy in a similar fashion. While the narrative is strong in description, such as Timothy’s vision of a “shimmering paladin,” and in its dreamlike qualities, Timothy is a frustrating protagonist due to the poor choices he makes. When Humphrey is introduced as Timothy’s fellow Marine, the reader breathes a sigh of relief; he is the voice of sanity, reads Ecclesiastes (from which the book’s title is drawn) and actually listens to Timothy. Gunny Talbot, who leads the soldiers’ regiment, also is a mentor and offers guidance. The author has adopted children and his father fought in Korea, lending experience and believability to the subject, which is also enhanced by the author’s cited resources used in researching the war.
Ritter artfully and realistically depicts a rough road to adulthood with a wartime motif.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2006
ISBN: 978-1425920104
Page Count: 329
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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