Engaging action on both land and sea with well-drawn characters.
This third volume of a mid-19th-century family saga, set on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Maryland, focuses on a vital addition to a private fleet.
It is 1843, and Benjamin and Sonja Pulaski have won the salvage rights to the schooner Raven, a former slave ship. They have settled in a rented house in Lapidum, facing the canal that runs along the river, just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, separating slave-state Maryland from free-state Pennsylvania. The Raven is a substantial addition to Ben’s fleet of three barges, and the vessel will prove to be a dangerous turning point in the couple’s lives. When the new manager of a bank, at the direction of the villainous Lydia Binterfield, issues the Pulaskis an eviction order, they are forced to move to the nearby town of Havre de Grace. They take up temporary residence in “the Pink House,” run by the irrepressible widow Mamie Stewart. Now that he is the owner of an ocean-worthy ship, Ben can expand his cargo service, leaving the barges for coal runs along the canals and the Chesapeake while he and Sonja use the Raven to convey sugar, rum, and mercantile items to and from the Carolinas. They can also transport rescued slaves and kidnapped blacks to the North. Ben, who had previously hidden a few runaway slaves in his barges, now enters a complicated and treacherous business. Lackey’s (Blood on the Chesapeake, 2016, etc.) series successfully combines nautical adventures with multiple personal dramas while sharply examining the blight of slavery. The novel’s depiction of the increasing hostilities between slave owners and abolitionists serves as a graphic harbinger of the Civil War, still almost two decades away. In contrast to the more violent aspects of the tale is the tender rebuilding of the relationship between Ben and Sonja, each still haunted by traumatic experiences from the earlier volumes. Lackey’s attention to historical details—the process of moving the barges through the canal locks, and the specifics of meals and clothing—deftly brings the era to life. And a few real plot surprises keep the narrative lively.
Engaging action on both land and sea with well-drawn characters.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-83132-8
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Heron Oaks
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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