A darkly witty, smartly demythifying Western by Trevanian, best known for his ever-atypical novels in various genres (The Summer of Katya, 1983, etc.). Twenty Mile, Wyoming, is a sun-bleached ghost town and narrow-gauge train stop halfway between the Surprise Lode and the boomtown of Destiny. Trevanian takes the sociological measure of Twenty Mile back in 1898, when it was slipping into oblivion but still inhabited by 15 residents and a tiny handful of businesses: a livery stable, a three-stall whorehouse, the Mercantile, a tonsorial palace, a boardinghouse, and not too much more. Saturday nights find silver miners from the Surprise Lode blowing their pay on whores and whiskey, then disappearing back to the joint on the Sunday train. Into town drifts the very youthful Matthew Dubchek—a.k.a. the Ringo Kid, a.k.a. Matthew Bradford Chumms, et al.—a self-described compulsive liar given to aliases. Did he kill his parents back in Nebraska? Matthew soon manages to get himself a few odd jobs around town and sets himself up in the marshal’s abandoned office. Then crazy murderer Hamilton Lieder escapes from the state prison with two other equally crazy murderers and arrives in Twenty Mile to rob the train of its silver. Lieder is a strongly conceived patriot/villain who hopes to enlist the silver miners in his crusade against the International Conspiracy, the Yellow Peril, and the immigrants sucking out America’s lifeblood. Lieder and his men round up all the guns in town and await the train. Will Matthew, who appoints himself marshal, be able to match wits against the crazies? Will beautiful Ruth Lillian get to the mine and warn the miners of the thieves? Factually based and richly researched: one of the best Westerns since True Grit.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19233-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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