Mystery casts a 50-year shadow over a Toronto family, until letters out of the past take a middle-aged man on a quest for his long-lost uncle. When Leo Nolan's mother dies, her last wish is to see her baby brother Jack, who vanished into Ohio at age 23 during the height of the Depression. After her death, fifty-year-old letters from Jack inexplicably begin to arrive, placing him in Ashland, Kentucky, and spurring Leo to seek answers. He visits Jack's old hotel in Ashland, receiving a curious welcome from Stanley and Teresa, the elderly couple owning the place, who clearly know more about Jack than they're willing to say. Finally, Leo's wanderings in town take him into Woolworth's, where he meets pretty Jeanne, a lunch-counter waitress whom he gets to know better. But one night's ramble also brings a chance encounter with Jack, as the past and present suddenly coalesce. Leo follows his uncle on a walk, only to have him disappear into thin air; but their walk is repeated each night, until Leo finally speaks to him—and finds himself 50 years in the past. Without revealing who he is, Leo gains Jack's confidence, learning of the young man's affair with Teresa as well as of a desperate plan to tunnel from the hotel basement to the bank across the street. With heavy rains, the robbery becomes increasingly dangerous, and indeed the tunnel finally collapses, with Jack and two others inside. Thinking his uncle dead, Leo finds himself back in the present, but since still more old letters arrive to show that Jack somehow survived, he finds incentive to take care of his own affairs, romancing Jeanne and welcoming Jack and Teresa's secret daughter into the family. Hokey, sentimental, and at times implausible, yes, but with disbelief willingly suspended this second novel from Green (Barking Dogs, 1988) possesses enough quiet wonder and innocence to come pleasantly to life.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-85958-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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