A worthwhile read despite a simplification that might put some readers off.
Novelist Milton’s (The Godmother, 2018, etc.) political and ideological thriller is “ripped from the headlines” and should come with a trigger warning for Trump followers.
The book starts off with a bang, literally. Elsa Romero and Karl Reinholdt are facing off at a demonstration for immigrants’ rights. Her sign reads “LOVE WILL PREVAIL”; his, “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.” A shot rings out, and the gun lands at Karl’s feet. Instinctively he picks it up. But Elsa knows that Karl didn’t fire the fatal shot and tells the police so. Thus begins what may be called “The Salvation of Karl Reinholdt.” Karl fell in with the “alt-right” after the factory that supported the town of Freiburg, Ohio, shut down. He lost his job there, and his parents saw their pensions halved. Enraged and depressed, he was eventually persuaded to blame immigrants. Elsa and her friend and mentor, Sister Solana, are both immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Elsa takes Karl in. They begin to trust one another, and ever so slowly, Elsa deprograms him, so to speak. Let it be said that Milton’s heart is in the right place. We are happy to cheer Elsa and Karl on. But it’s rather clear from the start that Karl will be saved, that he is at heart a decent guy and not a racist. Rather, he is an economically displaced white guy desperate to lay blame for how the traditional life he trusted could have come crashing down this way. In fact, one could argue that Milton has made up too easy a case: Karl isn’t the scary true believer who will eventually blow up a mosque or torch a black church. And the scary confrontation with the real killer has a whiff of deus ex machina about it. But these quibbles aside, Milton does a conscientious job of dramatizing the arguments, drawing Elsa and Karl as real people in conflict, and nicely pacing the conversion.
A worthwhile read despite a simplification that might put some readers off.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73206-342-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Nepperhan Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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