Blue's Point

Name: Blue's Point
Author: Richard Ferguson

by Richard Ferguson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 11, 2014

In Ferguson’s (The Thin Line Between Life and Death, 2013, etc.) thriller, a just-released convict and a journalist travel to a small Texas town where racial tension breeds contempt and violence.

Steve Cox returns to Blue’s Point 10 years after his conviction for killing a black man. The prison released him into the custody of old Jim Blue, whose family has owned Blue’s Point and neighboring Freedman’s Town for decades. At the same time, black magazine writer Mykeisha “Mike” Ali rides into town, planning to expose Blue’s Point as a cesspool of racism where the Klan and skinheads run rampant, threatening (and sometimes killing) black people. Both Steve and Mike, however, may be a hindrance to a diabolical plot already underway, and there are men willing to resort to murder to keep the two quiet. Ferguson firmly establishes the story’s racial theme. Mike, for instance, is attacked by skinheads simply for stopping to get gas, and it’s abundantly clear that Freedman’s Town is a community for the blacks unwelcome in Blue’s Point. Ferguson fortunately allows the theme to enhance the novel rather than drive it. Steve, for one, is invested in finding out who killed his father, who had been the Klan’s Grand Dragon, and he quickly learns that the murder that sent him to jail may have been a frame job. The villains, like the repugnant Tommy Saunder, reveal different levels of racism, some derived from ignorance, some from pure hatred. Steve is likable almost instantly when he saves a puppy from a discarded sack in a creek (courtesy of Tommy). Mike, too, is a laudable character. She’s nearly relegated into a supporting role in the suspenseful final act and a little too reliant on Steve while both are fleeing the Klan, but she’s admirably defiant even in the face of danger. Ferguson further augments his tale with drama—e.g., unresolved issues with Steve’s high school football pal, police chief Champ Lee—a hint of romance between Steve and Mike, and a surprising amount of mystery: whoever framed Steve for murder may very well be trying to do it again.

Respectful and astute handling of serious social conflicts in a satisfying yarn.

Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2014

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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SUMMER SISTERS

by Judy Blume ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 1998

The years pass by at a fast and steamy clip in Blume’s latest adult novel (Wifey, not reviewed; Smart Women, 1984) as two friends find loyalties and affections tested as they grow into young women. In sixth grade, when Victoria Weaver is asked by new girl Caitlin Somers to spend the summer with her on Martha’s Vineyard, her life changes forever. Victoria, or more commonly Vix, lives in a small house; her brother has muscular dystrophy; her mother is unhappy, and money is scarce. Caitlin, on the other hand, lives part of the year with her wealthy mother Phoebe, who’s just moved to Albuquerque, and summers with her father Lamb, equally affluent, on the Vineyard. The story of how this casual invitation turns the two girls into what they call "Summer sisters" is prefaced with a prologue in which Vix is asked by Caitlin to be her matron of honor. The years in between are related in brief segments by numerous characters, but mostly by Vix. Caitlin, determined never to be ordinary, is always testing the limits, and in adolescence falls hard for Von, an older construction worker, while Vix falls for his friend Bru. Blume knows the way kids and teens speak, but her two female leads are less credible as they reach adulthood. After high school, Caitlin travels the world and can’t understand why Vix, by now at Harvard on a scholarship and determined to have a better life than her mother has had, won’t drop out and join her. Though the wedding briefly revives Vix’s old feelings for Bru, whom Caitlin is marrying, Vix is soon in love with Gus, another old summer friend, and a more compatible match. But Caitlin, whose own demons have been hinted at, will not be so lucky. The dark and light sides of friendship breathlessly explored in a novel best saved for summer beachside reading.

Pub Date: May 8, 1998

ISBN: 0-385-32405-7

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998

Categories: GENERAL FICTION

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THE PRINCE OF TIDES

A NOVEL

by Pat Conroy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1986

A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.