An engrossing beginning of what promises to be an involving generational saga about Irish immigrants.
This first book in a four-volume series highlights differences in the experiences of Irish natives fleeing their homeland in the early 20th century.
The painter Samuel Finlay, Archer’s grandfather, is one of the main characters in this debut historical novel, set during World War I. The author’s mother, Dorothy, appears as the artist’s infant daughter, Dot. Following his sweetheart Liz and hoping to forget the needless death of his younger brother Liam, Samuel migrates to Toronto and becomes an illustrator for the local newspaper. Meanwhile, Collin O’Donnell falls into a life of crime after his mother is killed and his younger sister Claire disappears. Samuel meets the thuggish Collin at the site of a warehouse fire, and sees something of Liam in him. The artist decides to make saving Collin his project. Meanwhile, Claire becomes a slave factory worker before she escapes and then trains as a nurse. She is heading to Europe aboard the Lusitania when a German torpedo sinks the cruise ship in the Irish Sea. She’s rescued by, and falls in love with, Irish revolutionary playwright Tadgh McCarthy, but she has amnesia and doesn’t remember who she is. So everyone is searching for something: Samuel for redemption, Collin for his sister, Tadgh for revenge on the Brits who killed his parents, and Claire for her past. The tale also grapples with what those quests may end up costing the four players. Archer has created colorful, sympathetic characters, all striving for better lives. He packs this dense volume with pungent details, giving the reader necessary context, and even provides eight pages of history at the volume’s end. Despite the abundance of information about the era, the narrative flows smoothly. In this first installment of the series, Archer only hints at the shared history between the O’Donnell and McCarthy clans and the relics that connect them. Frustratingly, he leaves the characters adrift at the book’s end (literally, in two cases), with the reader wanting more. But throughout, the author takes what could have been dry genealogical research and skillfully converts it into a layered historical drama.
An engrossing beginning of what promises to be an involving generational saga about Irish immigrants.Pub Date: March 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908019-4-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Manzanita Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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