As mysteries unfold, so does a loving portrait of small-town life, both on and off the reservation, but not in the way we’re...
A masterful tale that combines the wit of Sherman Alexie with the old-fashioned storytelling of Olive Ann Burns.
When Tecumseh and older cousin Lum witness a woman throwing a suitcase from a cliff into the Shield River, and then following it with herself, the small mysteries begin. The body is found, the suitcase not. Then Soldier, Tecumseh’s dog and best friend, finds a child’s skull with a hole and a red ribbon. Son of a practical mother and a dreaming, sometimes drinking, mostly scheming father, Tecumseh lives in the contemporary flux made up of the two towns of Truth and Brightwater, one in Montana and one in Canada—and one an Indian reservation—separated by the glacial Shield River. He also lives in his own flux between childhood and adulthood, and in another between his separated parents. Dad augments his living as a carpenter, with schemes no odder than the government’s—smuggling hazardous bio-waste across the border, for example—and Mom’s a beautician. During the long days of summer, Tecumseh wanders back and forth between them, Soldier nearly always at his side. Lum is his second best friend, a top-flight runner in training for the contest that will cap the annual end-of-summer Indian Days Festival. Tecumseh’s aunt, Cassie, makes one of her many returns, but this time, mysteriously, she doesn’t leave (together, she and Mom carry a multitude of secrets). Also returning is Monroe Swimmer, Famous Indian Artist, the reservation’s most notable son and once a close friend of Tecumseh’s father. Tecumseh takes a “job” with Monroe, who has bought the old Methodist church and is painting it—a magical trompe l’oeil—into oblivion.
As mysteries unfold, so does a loving portrait of small-town life, both on and off the reservation, but not in the way we’re accustomed to seeing in contemporary Native American fiction: King (Green Grass, Running Water, 1993), more interested in being human first and Indian second, accomplishes his aims without “characters” of mystic eccentricity, violent guilt, racism and self-loathing, and alcoholism being upfront and center.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-87113-818-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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