A bright, brash, candid novel with a compelling story about one family in a rough part of town.
A troubled family in a hardscrabble Nevada trailer park longs for success and uncovers a family secret in Case’s (I'm Going to the Doctor?!, 2015, etc.) novel.
Janice Sloan has never given up on her dream of being a singer, and at 48, she knows that time is running out. The karaoke contest at the local bar comes with a sizable prize, and Janice plans to win it and finally take off for Nashville. She seeks happiness, “The kind that could give her goose bumps on a hot summer day for no other reason than the sun warmed her skin.” But she has seven kids, an alcoholic husband, and has been trapped in the run-down Bengal Trailer Park for 30 years. Her husband, Harry, has just woken up with bloody knuckles after a drunken binge, and later in the day, he strikes Janice, who kicks him out. Teenage daughter Carrie has been saving for college and making plans to escape the trailer and live a better life. She’s an excellent student, but her parents haven’t cooperated with filling out the student loan forms. Adult son WJ belongs to a local gang. Discharged from the military after being exposed as gay, WJ has turned into a rage-filled aggressor who deals drugs to people in a community that doesn’t have many happy outcomes. As the family clings to stability, the layers of the past begin to unfold, centering around Janice’s roots in Minnesota. An old secret has the potential to tear apart the family but may also lead to peace of mind for those who need it most. Case’s tightly plotted novel dives right into the center of the cast’s working-class problems. The characters’ dreams and ambitions are palpable and tend to propel the family through each crisis no matter how bleak. In frank but polished writing, Case has created imperfect characters that have a remarkable knack for hanging on through tough times. This trailer park is where almost everyone fails, but the conclusion is infused with an optimism that highlights the strength of the world Case has so carefully created.
A bright, brash, candid novel with a compelling story about one family in a rough part of town.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997015-5-3
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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