A hopeful but sometimes saccharine story about family renewal and the power of prayer.
Hart goes straight for the heartstrings in his debut novel about a virtuous woman determined to smooth out the rifts within her family.
While Gail Rollins is on bed rest in the hospital during her pregnancy, a nurse brings a little girl named Lexie into her room and into her life. Lexie survived a car crash, but her parents were taken to a different hospital. Gail promises the injured girl that she’ll be there for her. To cement that promise, she gives a small stuffed dog toy to Lexie (after detaching it from a stuffed-dog “family”). But just after Lexie returns from surgery, Gail is discharged and leaves the girl behind in the hospital, alone. Sixteen years later, Gail is still haunted by her inability to keep her promise. In the throes of prayer, she receives a strong “impression” that compels her to hold a family reunion in her house at Christmastime. During the reunion, Gail butts heads with her neglectful sister-in-law, cleans up after her tornado of a nephew, manages her own two children, and reconnects with her brother Dale, a diplomat. She also has an unexpected encounter with long-lost family members at the food court in the mall. The sweetest relationship in the book is between Gail and the prodigal Dale—one marked by frustration and misunderstanding as well as tenderness and forgiveness. Mostly, though, Gail passes the reunion putting out fires. Throughout, Hart focuses a good deal on Gail’s reliance on prayer and on what the family is eating. At one point, for example, due to a kitchen mishap, Gail’s homemade food is replaced at the last minute by a local caterer’s canceled order for a Mexican feast. Characters opine on the dangers of Mexican cuisine, becoming gratuitous and slightly xenophobic in their fixation: “I’ll need to buy some air fresheners for the house by the time your family has eaten Mexican food for a week.” The opening scenes at the hospital are the most narratively potent and stirring portion of the book. The remainder of the story, though, tends to be sentimental and righteous in tone.
A hopeful but sometimes saccharine story about family renewal and the power of prayer.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8429-7
Page Count: 202
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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