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THE WATERMAN

Name: THE WATERMAN
Author: Tim Junkin
ISBN: 1-56512-230-5

by Tim Junkin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 1999

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Debut novel from a Washington, D.C., lawyer that tries to give an insider’s view of life among the watermen who work the Chesapeake Bay. Clay Wakeman, a 20-year-old college boy at Georgetown, leaves school and moves back home when his father, George, vanishes without a trace from the Miss Sarah, the Chesapeake Bay crab trawler he—d worked off for years. In his will, George has left the Miss Sarah to his son, a legacy that Clay sees as an opportunity to give up on college altogether and make a life for himself on the Bay. His Georgetown classmate Matty, and Matty’s girlfriend Kate, think this is a genuine and courageous way to live, but Clay is more modest: the Bay is what he knows best. So he teams up with his childhood pal Byron and sets off to follow in his father’s footsteps. By 1972, though, it’s hard to make a living from crabs: the Bay is fished out, and the waters are increasingly polluted. Clay considers running pleasure cruises for a shady businessman named Brigman, then decides instead to move his operations farther afield to Virginia, where the waters are better. But life soon becomes complicated. Byron stumbles onto a drug-running operation that makes use of inland waterways to evade the Customs patrols, and Clay and Kate find themselves in love. This means trouble—with Matty, with the cops, and with Brigman (who turns out to be even shadier than he appears).Can Clay find his way back to shore? There’s no better navigator in the world than a waterman born and bred, after all, but the Bay can swallow you in a wink. Too long, too slow, too obvious, and too full of nautical lingo (“Barker . . . gave Clay the foresail sheet, and his brother, Earl, the main. Byron was to work the jib sheet . . . “) to stay afloat. Landlubbers steer clear.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1999

ISBN: 1-56512-230-5

Page Count: 312

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
BLOODSWORTH
by Tim Junkin

- BOOK REVIEW
GOOD COUNSEL
by Tim Junkin

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.