A slender tale of surviving without men that haphazardly stitches together the fabric of some women’s lives.
From Dallas (The Persian Pickle Club, 1995, etc.), a transparently homespun tale of pioneering women facing tough challenges when their men go off to fight for the Union.
The story, which awkwardly mixes period settings with contemporary politics, is told in the form of letters from Alice Bullock to married sister Lizzie in Illinois. Alice, a recent bride now living on a small farm in Iowa, begins the correspondence as husband Charlie is about to go to fight Johnny Reb. She is also a quilter who delights in piecing fabric together and making squares: each chapter is framed with a commentary on quilting, which adds to the folksiness, but, since quilts by now have become feminist icons, they also add a discordant contemporary note. Alice, who has just fallen pregnant, is left to help taciturn and critical Mother Bullock run the farm. Alice soon miscarries but is somewhat cheered by getting together with neighboring women to make quilts for the soldiers. Life gets tougher, though, as the war continues: Charlie is taken prisoner, money is tight, and Alice is pursued by a malevolent Southern sympathizer, Samuel Smead, who tries to rape her. But Mother Bullock warms up to Alice and defends her when she’s accused of murdering the unpleasant Smead, whose decaying body is found near their farmhouse. Alice also describes her relations with the local women (whose friendships are not always dependable); Mother Bullock’s terminal breast cancer; and the difficulty of farming without a man’s help. Her advice to Lizzie, though, who has problems with her husband, and her observations on sex and birth control, often sound more like the stuff of the 21st century, as opposed to the 19th. The war eventually ends, as do the letters, and Alice, weary but proud, is ready for a new future and new quilting experiences.
A slender tale of surviving without men that haphazardly stitches together the fabric of some women’s lives.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-20359-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
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
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