A provocative story that shrewdly mixes Western and gothic themes.
A man heads west with his mute son in an ill-fated attempt to get lucky in both mining and love.
Foreman (Toehold, 2007) takes as his hero Gideon, a young man born with a “lazy tongue.” Unable to speak, he sticks close to his father Jubal, who readily intuits his needs and feelings. It’s the mid-’50s (Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline play in the backdrop), and Jubal hopes to make his fortune by heading from Mississippi to Utah to try his hand at uranium mining. Along the way he meets Abilene Breedlove, a good-time girl who preys on men’s ambitions with little concern for morality. So when Abilene and Jubal connect early on, it’s clear to the reader—and Gideon—that there will be trouble. Foreman works in a clean, plainspoken style, writing about the Utah landscape in a manner that evokes other Western writers such as Kent Haruf and Thomas McGuane, though he adds more lurid touches as a love triangle emerges. While Jubal and Gideon work their claim, Abilene begins a lusty affair with Jack, a wealthy landowner. Foreman isn’t subtle about the sinister goings-on here; the patch of land where Jubal drills is called the Dark Angel, and Jack’s last name is Savage. The author’s efforts to give the novel a mythic feel occasionally makes for clichéd prose: “Abilene Breedlove had bored a hole through the skull of Jubal Pickett, crept inside his brain, and searched out all his dreams.” But Foreman expertly intensifies the drama, and he gets away with the occasionally overstated passage by making Gideon a keen observer of the proceedings. As a stand-in for the reader, he seethes at the abuses and manipulations to which his father is subjected, and if Gideon’s own trial by fire in the closing pages seems unrealistic, it’s a fine setup for the satisfyingly vengeful parrying that marks the closing pages.
A provocative story that shrewdly mixes Western and gothic themes.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3574-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2009
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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