A second collection, like Morgan's first (The Blue Valleys, 1989), that's set in the Blue Ridge Mountains and ranges from post- Revolutionary times to the present. It deals mostly with poor whites who are faced with death, betrayal, and greed. The best pieces include a historical element or personal quest and rise above mere local color. The title story concerns an old woman in a nursing home who has lost a foot. She's lived through two marriages, but near the end of her life she's drawn to search out the facts surrounding the death of her first fiancÇe in the war. Likewise, in ``Death Croon,'' the narrator visits dying Alice. The female narrator was ``Alice's favorite in the family,'' but now the dying woman smells ``like some electric spark, a warm radio,'' and Morgan again vividly splices together past and present instances until Alice reaches the release of ``beautiful death.'' ``Poinsett's Bridge'' is the saga of a chimney-builder who goes to South Carolina to help build a bridge and stays until it's finished—despite flash floods and the mistreatment of paid help and slaves—because of his pride in workmanship and his sense of historical mission. The other pieces too often make too much of nothing: in ``Frog Level,'' a wife enters a local mall and sees her philandering Vietnam-vet husband with yet another woman; the ensuing chase, far too long, becomes a kind of travelogue. In ``The Bullnoser,'' a mother and her grown unemployed child (the narrator) talk about the debt their Daddy left them; the narrator then tries to recoup the family's loss by taking on the white trash who suckered Daddy out of his home—but the story veers off and never quite finds its center. A collection notable mainly for its vivid regionalism. Some of these pieces appeared originally in Epoch, Pembroke Magazine and Southern Review.
Pub Date: June 15, 1992
ISBN: 1-56145-049-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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