An overly expository but moving tale of love and marriage.
A young couple tries to make their marriage work under the trying circumstances of the American West during the1880s.
Linse (Deep Down Things, 2014) has set her first historical novel in the Old West. Sara Moore begins the novel as a dutiful daughter, caring for her siblings and her widowed father. However, when her father attempts to arrange a marriage for her with his odious business partner, Chester O’Hanlin, Sara refuses and is savagely beaten by her father. Her path soon overlaps with that of James Youngblood, an ex-convict trying to redeem himself and making his way by doing odd jobs. Sara and James meet unexpectedly and are instantly attracted to each other. When Sara eventually finds herself cast out by her father, she impulsively decides to elope with James. Linse handles the natural complications and ramifications of that decision and the ups and downs of marriage very well. Her stark, spare style evokes the realities of the obstacles that Sara and James cope with as they set out for Kansas City and try to carve out a life together amid the “hundred thousand individual voices, mournfully calling” on the city streets. There are a few too many instances where Linse’s characters tell their feelings instead of demonstrating them organically. The narrative progression of the novel is a little uneven as well: it drags a bit in the middle only to speed up to a wildly dramatic climax and denouement. But on the whole, Linse has done an admirable job telling the story of a marriage and of the particular time and place that shaped it.
An overly expository but moving tale of love and marriage.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-0990953319
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Willow Words
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.
A star-crossed romance captures the turmoil of pre-revolutionary Iran in Seraji’s debut.
From the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, life looks pretty good to 17-year-old Pasha Shahed and his friend Ahmed. They’re bright, funny and good-looking; they’re going to graduate from high school in a year; and they’re in love with a couple of the neighborhood girls. But all is not idyllic. At first the girls scarcely know the boys are alive, and one of them, Zari, is engaged to Doctor—not actually a doctor but an exceptionally gifted and politically committed young Iranian. In this neighborhood, the Shah is a subject of contempt rather than veneration, and residents fear SAVAK, the state’s secret police force, which operates without any restraint. Pasha, the novel’s narrator and prime dreamer, focuses on two key periods in his life: the summer and fall of 1973, when his life is going rather well, and the winter of 1974, when he’s incarcerated in a grim psychiatric hospital. Among the traumatic events he relates are the sudden arrest, imprisonment and presumed execution of Doctor. Pasha feels terrible because he fears he might have inadvertently been responsible for SAVAK having located Doctor’s hiding place; he also feels guilty because he’s always been in love with Zari. She makes a dramatic political statement, setting herself on fire and sending Pasha into emotional turmoil. He is both devastated and further worried when the irrepressible Ahmed also seems to come under suspicion for political activity. Pasha turns bitterly against religion, raising the question of God’s existence in a world in which the bad guys seem so obviously in the ascendant. Yet the badly scarred Zari assures him, “Things will change—they always do.”
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-451-22681-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
Lunge-Larsen and Preus debut with this story of a flower that blooms for the first time to commemorate the uncommon courage of a girl who saves her people from illness. The girl, an Ojibwe of the northern woodlands, knows she must journey to the next village to get the healing herb, mash-ki- ki, for her people, who have all fallen ill. After lining her moccasins with rabbit fur, she braves a raging snowstorm and crosses a dark frozen lake to reach the village. Then, rather than wait for morning, she sets out for home while the villagers sleep. When she loses her moccasins in the deep snow, her bare feet are cut by icy shards, and bleed with every step until she reaches her home. The next spring beautiful lady slippers bloom from the place where her moccasins were lost, and from every spot her injured feet touched. Drawing on Ojibwe sources, the authors of this fluid retelling have peppered the tale with native words and have used traditional elements, e.g., giving voice to the forces of nature. The accompanying watercolors, with flowing lines, jewel tones, and decorative motifs, give stately credence to the story’s iconic aspects. (Picture book/folklore. 4-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90512-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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