A layered, challenging fusion of genres.
A sci-fi debut about a biotechnologist, a blacksmith, and an odd biological phenomenon’s effect on history.
In 1999, biotechnology engineer John Samuel Weston runs the Haddonfield, New Jersey–based consulting company Haddon Life-Tech with his business partner, Bob Fenwick. One day, he wakes up in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden County, New Jersey, where he was admitted three days ago with an abscessed insect bite on his neck. Dr. Caldwell informs John that when he came in, he was dehydrated, delusional, and insistent that he “go back and save” an unnamed woman. Later, Bob’s wife, Katie, tells John that his partner was committed to the Lakeland psychiatric hospital after becoming obsessed with a secret project in his basement and some sort of “messianic mission.” Bob also suffered a severe insect bite while fishing the nearby Delaware Bay. The bites could be from greenhead flies bred by GenAvance, a company that John and Bob are courting for a biotech design contract. In a parallel plotline, set in 1774 Greenwich, New Jersey, an arsonist has been striking terror into the locals with a string of fires. When tragedy hits blacksmith Thomas Whitman, he joins forces with a Lenni Lenape Native American named Dan Fire Cloud and a slave named Isabel to find help from an unlikely source. In his debut novel, Goldhahn swings for the fences, combining complex historical and scientific themes. A deep reverence for history informs the colonial-era scenes, set on the eve of the American Revolution, which reveal such details as “Coffeehouses were enjoying a surge of popularity...as coffee was fast replacing tea as the politically correct beverage of choice.” Goldhahn also explains scientific terms well, such as an “epigenetic” phenomenon, which he describes as when “something from the environment...triggers the expression of the gene or genes.” Occasionally, narrative padding, in the form of travel details and trivia (such as the explanation of the phrase “Shay pah”), drains the momentum from an otherwise heady mystery. However, the bold ending makes readers’ investment in the characters pay off remarkably.
A layered, challenging fusion of genres.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9965551-0-4
Page Count: 534
Publisher: Rigel Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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