LEDBETTER STREET

Name: LEDBETTER STREET
Author: Susan P. Baker

by Susan P. Baker ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

In a departure from her mystery novels, Baker uses her knowledge of the law to compellingly depict a riveting custody battle.

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In Baker’s (Death of a Prince, 2013, etc.) novel, Marian Reid is a mother determined to gain custody of her autistic son—40 years later.

Marian has secrets, but until her 40th high school reunion, most of those secrets had stayed hidden. She’s the owner of Reid’s Ritzy Rags, a secondhand clothing store in Galveston, Texas, on Ledbetter Street. The store owners on Ledbetter Street are like a family: Eva, who owns Coffee & More across the street, is Marian’s best friend and confidante. Just as Marian and her high school boyfriend, Bryan Mosley, reconnect, her life gets more complicated. Unbeknownst to Bryan, the reason Marian left town the summer before senior year was to have their baby, Robert. Marian’s mother forced her to give him up for adoption. Later, Robert was discovered to have autism and thrust into foster care. Dorothy, Robert’s foster mother and guardian, allowed Marian to visit Robert and build a relationship with him over the years. The courts deemed Dorothy a good caretaker for Robert, but when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Marian must enter into her third custody battle for Robert, now 40 years old. Thanks to Marian’s mother, all of Marian’s past struggles are brought to light during the hearing. But Marian, knowing she understands his needs, is determined to get custody of her son. Baker, a judge, draws from her knowledge of the law as she has in her previous novels but this time moves away from the mystery genre. When Marian can’t rely on her mother or even her old boyfriend, she learns she can rely on the people of Ledbetter Street to support and sustain her. Although Marian is caught up in her own courtroom drama, she takes time to help a young battered woman. Baker introduces the many characters of Ledbetter Street, painting a picture of Galveston’s community of artists and business owners as well as the homeless and downtrodden—a welcome layer to the story despite an already full plot. Those many plot threads cause the book to feel a bit bloated, which distracts from its heartwarming message. Still, punchy writing and a colorful cast of characters rescue the novel.

In a departure from her mystery novels, Baker uses her knowledge of the law to compellingly depict a riveting custody battle.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.