After eight fine westerns detailing the exploits of Barnaby Skye as a mountain man during the 1850s and '60s, old pro Wheeler (Sierra, 1996, etc.) fills in the blanks in his colorful protagonist's background—beginning in 1826, when the frontiersman- to-be arrived in North America, through his backwoods apprenticeship in the Rockies. Shanghaied by a press gang off the streets of London at age 14, Skye spends 7 years aboard a Royal Navy frigate before he's able to jump ship at Fort Vancouver. Evading both the British sailors and Hudson's Bay Co. minions directed to bring him back alive, the seaman makes his way to the Columbia River basin. Once slated to attend Cambridge like his merchant father, young Skye hopes to reach Boston, enter Harvard, and secure the education that will ensure him his birthright. Along his wayward way, however, he falls in with friendly Shoshone Indians who conduct him to a so- called Rendezvous, an annual trappers' fair in the Cache Valley, safely outside Canadian jurisdiction. While at this hinterland jamboree, Skye wins the respect of such high-country legends as Jim Bridger and Jebediah Smith; he also encounters Many Quill Woman, the Crow lass who will soon become his wife. Still bent on reaching the New World's Cambridge, Skye then sets out on his own for St. Louis. Soon relieved of his horses and kit by marauding Blackfeet, he has little time to link up with a crew of freelance nimrods before hard snows hit the mountains. After further adventures, he joins forces with his new associates in the Yellowstone area, helps make the beaver trapping season a financial success, and winters with the Crows. Eventually finding the call of the wild a whole lot stronger than the lure of the classroom, Sky marries his dusky maiden and, come spring, sets out with his westering comrades on another hunt. A promising start in what appears to be an absorbing, authoritative series.
Pub Date: Dec. 9, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86319-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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