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
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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