An impressively executed novel of love and the law in antebellum America.
A debut historical novel tells the story of a mixed-race family trying to secure an inheritance from its white patriarch before the Civil War.
As the Willis family disembarks from the Cincinnati quay in 1855, it attracts some strange looks from passersby. The members are racially mixed—Elijah Willis is white, his wife (and former slave), Amy, is black, and their seven children run the spectrum from fair to dark. The stares become worse when Elijah suddenly grabs his chest, falls to the ground, and dies. In Elijah’s pocket is his will, which bequeaths his entire estate to Amy and their children. Unfortunately for Amy, most of that estate is in the form of land—land in South Carolina held by Elijah’s avaricious white relatives (“This was a sizable fortune for the time, amounting to more than three thousand acres of land valued at upwards of $150,000, not including cash and furnishings”). Now Amy, with the help of a sympathetic team of Cincinnati lawyers, will have to wage a legal battle against the entrenched forces of racism and slavery to secure what should be hers by right: her husband’s material legacy, and recognition that her family is as legitimate as any other. Based on a true story, this novel covers the full history of Elijah and Amy’s relationship, as well as the case that took the Willis family all the way to the South Carolina Supreme Court. Stucky writes with a historian’s eye for detail, taking care to recreate the voice (and minutiae) of the times. “Since last I wrote,” goes a letter from Elijah, “we have endured a political uprising designed to malign and intimidate me; the birth of a son; the ravages of yellow fever on my plantation; a bout of excessive rain nearly ruining the cotton harvest.” At 750 pages, the book is a doorstop. Every epic has its down moments, and there are a few passages here that feel a bit dry. That said, the comprehensive nature of Stucky’s inquiry into this little-known incident in American history, breathing life and color into its biographical details, is such an immersive experience that the reader should stay with the story all the way to the epilogue.
An impressively executed novel of love and the law in antebellum America.Pub Date: May 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-692-21860-0
Page Count: 762
Publisher: Eastcliff Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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