An overly didactic tone and patronizing passages hinder this humans-vs.-nature story.
This fictional tale follows a pack of endangered gray wolves fighting for survival as a journalist fights for their protection.
Still reeling from his wife’s tragic death, Chicago-based journalist Jeffrey Reese has temporarily relocated to Montana to report on a subject close to his heart: endangered gray wolves. According to the furious farmers and ranchers in the area, the wolves are dangerous, killing livestock and threatening livelihoods. But Reese knows the intelligent, loyal wolves have more to fear from humans. Reese soon finds his torn heartstrings mending thanks to the beautiful Elizabeth English, who loves the animals despite her rancher father’s aggressive anti-wolf stance. As Reese studies the wolves, even briefly tending to an injured one, the story shifts between his experiences and the saga of a nearby wolf pack: brave leader, Bartok; his devoted brother Lakota; alpha female, Dyami; her precocious son, Yuma; and others. In his debut work, which at times is noticeably similar to Nicholas Evans’ The Loop (1998), Cera’s respect and empathy for his lupine subjects shines through on every page, and his descriptions of nature sparkle. However, the author dictates too clearly who the heroes and villains are, rendering the story more preachy than passionate. The wolf characters are repeatedly described as noble, fascinating creatures, while the humans are either gallant and bland—particularly Reese and Elizabeth, whose conversations and even thoughts revolve primarily around wolves—or monstrously cartoonish men who “thrived on the defenseless, fattening on the flesh of the helpless.” The book also displays an uncomfortably patronizing attitude toward Native Americans with the character of Jacy Cayuse, a 16-year-old Nez Perce boy who borders on being a cultural caricature: “[Reese] knew what every Native American would feel if he could behold what Jacy was seeing. The wolf and the Indian shared similar fates in their histories, Reese thought—both shamefully held in low esteem.” Devout naturalists with a passion for wolves may embrace the book’s larger message, but many readers might find the heavy-handed tone and static characters tedious.
An overly didactic tone and patronizing passages hinder this humans-vs.-nature story.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-0984825004
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Libra Books, Incorporated
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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