First-novelist Hillmer has written a coming-of-age tale that's also an adventure yarn, a romance, and a sensitive portrayal of how men relate to each other. The surprise is that it all works. Unable to find other employment, 19-year-old Roy signs on with Kern River Search and Rescue—known unofficially as the hookmen because of the grappling hooks they use to pull the bodies of drowned campers and tourists from the turbulent waters of the Kern. The crew is led by an acerbic old man named Crawdad. Under his tutelage, Roy becomes a skilled rafter and pushes himself to acts of physical courage. He finds an enigmatic friend in crewmate Walker, a Vietnam veteran who obsessively kayaks the most forbidding stretches of the river and creates twisted abstract sculptures. Roy, in turn, is haunted by the faces of the river's victims—especially the first one he sees, a young woman who looks as if ``one touch could bring her back. One kiss.'' Meanwhile, his mother and sister have moved away from his father, fleeing his drunken rages, and Roy assumes financial and emotional responsibility for him. When he meets Rita, a vulnerable woman with a secret past, they begin, cautiously, to fall in love. With Rita, he finds tenderness and shares an appreciation of the California wilderness. She shows him her cherished part of the river, a serene spot where graceful herons nest, and her delicate drawings of them. When Crawdad asks Roy and Walker to join him on his dream trip of rafting the perilous rapids and cataracts of the upper Kern, all of their destinies intertwine. Events culminate in a breathtaking daredevil expedition that brings resolution to a long-simmering dispute between Crawdad and Walker, and to Roy's relationships with Rita and his father—but not without a surprising and tragic consequence. With its counterpoint of brawny action and poetic description, this finely honed novel has all the pleasing contradictions of the river itself.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87081-348-X
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Univ. Press of Colorado
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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
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