A warmhearted, if predictable, exploration of healing that will have special appeal to dog lovers.
In this debut novel, a severe car accident, and a girl’s injured dog, bring a traumatized war veteran and a widow together.
Thirty-eight-year old novelist Moss Westbury, a veteran suffering from PTSD, lives in the mountain town of Sisters, Oregon. He savors the stillness of his isolated life, in which he tries to avoid “the quicksand of despair.” Two years ago, his leg was blown off by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and he’s finding civilian life difficult, especially after he’s jilted by his fiancee. In Eugene, a two-hour drive away, seamstress Carolina Graham contemplates options for a camping trip with her 11-year-old daughter, Rowan, and their two dogs, Stormy and Zephyr. The latter, a wolfhound-deerhound mix, has eased Rowan’s grief over her father’s death four years earlier. The girl has a special, seemingly telepathic bond with the dog, communicating with her through “mind-pictures.” But as the family van nears Sisters, a deer plows into it, causing a multicar accident. Stormy is killed and Zephyr bolts into the forest. Rowan is airlifted to a Portland hospital with head trauma; she survives, but loses her sight. After reading newspaper accounts of the accident, Moss tries to find Zephyr in the wilderness, and ends up saving her life. Moss is faced with new possibilities when he meets Carolina and Rowan. Blaine (Bound to Love, 2015) effectively places the story of the girl and her dog at the center of her debut novel. Readers will likely be able to see where the story is headed fairly early on, and the author’s handling of Moss’ trauma sometimes feels stereotypical and clichéd. However, the novel is most successful when it gets out of the characters’ heads and allows them to interact directly, as when Moss tells Carolina, “Zephyr opened a door for me—now I know I need other warm-blooded beings around me.”
A warmhearted, if predictable, exploration of healing that will have special appeal to dog lovers.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9779483-6-9
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Berkana Publications
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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