With its celebration of the resilience of Native American culture, a rewarding and often moving story.
Paul Two Persons, the tough, troubled protagonist of Johnson’s Don’t Think Twice (1999), returns in another moody work, part character study and part fast-moving mystery.
Paul runs a fishing lodge on the fringe of the Chippewa reservation in northwest Minnesota, where he is a member of the tribe though his wife Gwen is not. His success in the outside world, where he trained as a scientist, his non-Indian wife, and his determination to make his lodge a success have all contributed to making Paul a curious and troubling figure to many in his tribe. Matters aren’t helped when he finds himself in the middle of a battle over efforts to bring more money onto the reservation. A plan to build a massive new road (cutting across the land Paul leases from the tribe) has aroused opposition; and when an opponent of the project is found dead, a troubled young man who works for Paul is accused. The accused in turn dies, and Paul begins his own investigation, quickly uncovering evidence of massive corruption and discovering that a hit squad has infiltrated the reservation to silence opposition to the development plan—its attention now focused on Paul and his family. To save them, Paul must unmask who’s behind the plot and find out its real goal. Readers may guess the villain before Paul does, and the details of the conspiracy, turning on mineral discovery on the reservation, may seem unduly convoluted. But more important are Johnson’s vivid portrayals of life on a reservation and of the conflict between a traditional people venerating the natural world and an aggressively technological society exploiting it. Also memorable is Johnson’s portrait of his protagonist, a bright, decent man haunted by his failures, anxious to make a better life for his family but unable to let things rest when violence has been done.
With its celebration of the resilience of Native American culture, a rewarding and often moving story. (Author tour)Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60459-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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