Australian writer Jones (Julia Paradise, 1987) wades into the murky past, recruits three historical figures as his protagonists, and returns with a mottled, half-throttled view of malaise and mystery in the Great Northern Woods of Wisconsin. In 1892, an odd (and entirely fictional) convergence of forces brings photographer Charles Van Schaick, his half-breed assistant Billy Sunday, and young historian Frederick Jackson Turner, soon- to-be-author of the frontier theory of American history, together in the lakeside village of Balsam Point for the summer. The town, kept alive by summer trade and nearby logging, retains a shadow of its earlier frontier character, with a few diseased Indians still living nearby. But something in the village casts a longer, darker shadow: As Van Schaick pursues his interests in photographing the spirits of the place, Billy has visions of a native woman in the woods and one day comes upon a rotting female corpse. Since teenage girls have been disappearing from town, never to be found, his sighting is believed even when he can't find the body again—and is accused of her murder. Billy escapes by jumping into the lake (where he finds another corpse) and soon after joins the circus. Turner, meanwhile, has been having visions, too, but they are familiar ones and are the primary reason he returns every summer to spend time fishing and daydreaming by the lake. At 16, he had a romance there (his first) with a beautiful Indian girl—an affair abruptly terminated when she became pregnant. He never saw her again but returns annually to the woods where he believes her spirit still lingers. . . . Too many disparate plot threads here to weave together tightly, and the attempt to catch America's identity crisis at the end of the century by focusing on these three men isn't persuasive. Still, the primary setting, an ancient forest in summer where pleasure and horror can almost merge, makes the presence of the past keenly felt.
Pub Date: June 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-4272-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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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