A love story that engagingly merges themes of art and anger.
The Vietnam War comes home as rising political tensions culminate in the 1970 Kent State University shootings in this debut historical novel.
Seventeen-year-old Rachel Morelli is thrilled when her neighbor and longtime crush, Evan Olesson, returns to Kent, Ohio, from his service in Vietnam. She’s surprised to find that he’s lost nearly all the fingers on his left hand and that his dreams of studying music have disappeared. In a classic will-they-or-won’t-they love story, Rachel pines for Evan, but he seems to view her as a little sister. Fedel balances this romance with an exploration of Rachel’s artistic ambitions and her dream of attending Pratt Institute in New York City rather than local Kent State University. Behind the characters’ ambitions, the novel pulses with cultural details of 1969 and ’70: Rachel consumes Nestle Quik and watches Walter Cronkite on the news, and she struggles with what it means that women can wear jeans and that her older sister can be accepted into law school. The changing social mores create a colorful backdrop as Rachel and her peers begin to question everything they know. It all comes to a head with Evan’s return to Kent, as characters grapple with the Vietnam War. Fedel shows the steps of radicalization and—through Evan’s experience—how ordinary people can commit acts of violence. As the story moves ever closer to the infamous Kent State tragedy, during which Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students, the historical and political tensions grow. But the history remains grounded and never expository as Rachel tries to figure out how she feels about events as they happen. The strongest aspect of the book is how its characters use art as a form of resistance—Evan as a musician and Rachel as a visual artist; at one point, Evan explains that art is “fighting back in your own way, and when people see your art and they realize its truth, that’s a protest.”
A love story that engagingly merges themes of art and anger.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-941861-24-0
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Harvard Square Editions
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Energetic melodrama in straightforward style from the ever-popular Michaels (Plain Jane, 2001, etc.).
Just what did happen under the Judas tree so long ago?
Cady Jordan suffered a head injury when she flew through the air on a bicycle attached to a cable slung from the Judas tree—and, years later, she still doesn’t remember much about it. Her childhood buddies dared her to do it, and someone threw a rock that killed Jeff King, the neighborhood bully, who jumped on the bike with her at the last minute. The papers had a field day, even accusing ten-year-old Cady of killing teenaged Jeff, but the case was never resolved. Partially paralyzed for three years after the accident, Cady presently lives alone, in California, writing technical manuals for a living. Now, 20 years later, her ailing grandmother, a former movie star who took a stage name so as not to embarrass the strait-laced family, summons Cady to her Pennsylvania mansion. Cady gets a German shepherd for company and drives off to meet her legendary grandmother. Lola turns out to be quite a character, of course, at once imperious, kind, loving, self-absorbed, etc. She’s buried six husbands and is bedridden with osteoporosis, but she’s determined to help her granddaughter find happiness. When Cady’s friends hear she’s back in town, they convene to rehash the old case, well aware that they’d let everyone think Cady was the guilty party. Andy and Amy Hollister say they were throwing rocks to get Jeff away from Cady. Peter, a lawyer, doesn’t think they can prove it. Boomer Maxwell, now chief of police, gets involved, and the small town is abuzz as reporter Larry Denville digs through old clippings and investigates up a storm. At long last, the culprit feels remorse, tries to wash away the guilt under a scalding shower—and ends up in a burn ward.
Energetic melodrama in straightforward style from the ever-popular Michaels (Plain Jane, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-5778-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
A hard-cover debut from McNaught (sudsers like Almost Heaven and Kingdom of Dreams) links—in a contentious, sizzling-sheets romance—a Chicago department-store heiress/exec and a self-made corporate king. Between the first pash and the final nuptial flight, there're pages and pages of buzz about business and betrayals. Meredith Bancroft, only offspring of the ruthless president of Bancroft & Co., had pushed romance aside—all she wanted at 18 was to fill her father's male-chauvinist trotter-prints to head Bancroft. Then entered Matt Farrell, a lowly mechanic from rural Indiana: ``His features looked as if they had been chiselled out of rough granite.'' Meredith (with ``a nose that sculptors would envy'') was a mere pebble of fate, and there followed a volcanic coupling, a pregnancy, and marriage. But, alas, Meredith, back with furious Daddy, suffered a miscarriage...then waited in vain for Matt—who believed she'd had an abortion and who wanted a divorce. Eleven years later, Matt, having risen to heights at which he's interviewed by Barbara Walters and ``emanates raw, harsh power,'' and Meredith, still held from power by Dad, clash. There's a nasty surprise about the long-ago divorce, and Matt makes some surprising demands. Will they never blurt out their separate versions of what happened 11 years before? Yes, but as romance-readers know, that takes time—here filled with stony silences, the biting of lips, and awesome lapses into Love. There's also a good deal of corporate takeover talk (nothing strenuous), fancy clothes, food, and digs. If not absolute paradise for McNaught fans, at least a sunny easement to the beach—where this will be an inevitable summer companion. (Book-of-the-Month Dual Selection for August.)
Pub Date: July 8, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-60129-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
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