Murky mysticism meets historical saga in a lyrically written but fragmented account of a storyteller's attempt to unearth and overcome the buried history of her black family and its hometown, sleepy Kingston, NY. In 1966, Carla March has spent half her life waiting for her beloved Max to return to Kingston. When Miles, a light-footed, smooth-talking golf caddie, breezes through town, she briefly chooses love over brooding before talking herself out of it, driving him away, and resuming her futile vigil. Carla soon realizes that memory lane is the route to happiness, so she recounts the traumatic past of her town and family. The convoluted history begins with the fiery riots that followed a 1924 lynching in Kingston; in the riots' aftermath, Carla's parents adopt an abandoned white infant, Max, whom they revere as God's prophet and raise to be a heretical preacher. Shortly after teenage Carla gives birth to his retarded mulatto son, Max burns down the family home, killing two siblings and scarring Carla, then disappears. Expecting that the equalizing forces of nature will counter tragedy, Carla begins her wait. Meanwhile, Junkman, the mute son of the lynched man, indulges in a one-night stand with Carla's friend Lucinda and is unjustly thrown in jail for rape. In a dissatisfying and inconsistent conclusion, the characters' gnarled lives are straightened out with sappy emotions and forced happy endings: Junkman realizes whom he really loves, and friends help ease Carla's violent grieving, from which she ultimately recovers to claim a new life. Perry (Montgomery's Children, 1983) comes up with some tender, satisfying bits and pieces, but her sugarcoated ending doesn't make this story any easier to swallow.
Pub Date: June 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11595-0
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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