More successful as history than fiction, which should intrigue readers with an interest in Oregon’s past.
Inspired by real-life pioneers, Marlen’s (Inside the Hatboxes, 2008, etc.) historical novel offers an unflinching look at life on the Oregon frontier.
Disgraced alcoholic physician William Bailey arrives in Oregon Country in 1835 hoping that life on the wild edge of North America might tame his demons. He quickly builds a life for himself among the Native Americans and French fur trappers along the banks of the Willamette River. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Margaret Jewett Bailey struggles to reconcile her Methodist faith with her fiery passions. Her restlessness inspires her to “sacrifice every earthly object” and become a missionary. Against her family’s objections, she makes the arduous journey to Oregon. There, she falls in love with William, and these two troubled, difficult people struggle to make a life together in a harsh, unforgiving environment. Marlen’s story is inspired by historical events: William was an early political leader in Oregon; Margaret wrote a thinly veiled autobiography, the first novel published in the region. Research is extensive (photographs and copies of Margaret’s letters accompany the text), and Marlen carefully marries historical truths with the fictional embellishments. Yet attempts to accurately depict the past occasionally veer toward the didactic, as when, on their wedding day, Bailey pauses to define an unfamiliar local term for Margaret: “Do you know about [a capote]?...It’s a coat made from a wool blanket. All the French Canadian trappers use them; they’re usually made from a Hudson’s Bay Company point blankets.” Extensive back story in the first half causes the book to drag: Margaret and William don’t meet until the book’s midpoint, and their courtship is brief and hurried. Their married life gets more attention, and this is no sugarcoated view of frontier romance. William’s Jekyll-and-Hyde personality—kind and thoughtful when sober, cruel and violent when drunk—dooms the relationship. After years of abuse, Margaret files for divorce, a bold move that mirrors her earlier efforts to escape her controlling father. She may be headstrong and selfish, but her fiery independence serves her well in an environment where the old rules don’t survive.
More successful as history than fiction, which should intrigue readers with an interest in Oregon’s past.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0977975280
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Sunbird Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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