A beautiful pair of love stories and a thrilling peek into a lost world.
In this debut novel’s two parallel tales about a Florida tribe, a young man struggles to overcome grave danger to be with the woman he loves.
In 1513, Willow is 20 years old and a member of the Calusa Tribe that has occupied Florida for millennia. While out fishing, he catches a massive snook—the biggest one ever snared in Calusa history, a distinction that makes him widely known and admired. As a result, the king grants Willow a wish, and he chooses to take a series of tests to join the Wiseman Council, the “most revered club in the nation.” While Willow passes the prohibitively difficult exams, securing an important role in tribal political life, he’s much more excited about pursuing a relationship with Cylee, the “most beautiful woman in the Calusa nation.” But the Spanish are preparing to invade, and Willow’s duty is to risk his life to join the fight against their advances. Watkins artfully places this story alongside another strikingly similar one set two centuries later, in 1710. Again the protagonist is named Willow, and he’s elevated to the status of a “national hero” when he bravely defeats a company of Spanish soldiers with the assistance of his friend Bonee. This Willow is also elevated to the Wiseman Council and is revered by many as a “god in disguise.” He falls in love with a princess, Leah, and is made a prince himself, a conversion that allows him to marry the girl for whom he’s pined for years. But in this second plot, the danger to this union isn’t war but the spread of a disease carried by the Spanish that proves deadly to the Calusa, a terrible turn of events affectingly described by the author. Watkins vividly brings to life the intriguing culture of the Calusa and manages to fit two moving tales of love into one brief novel. His prose is plain and sparing but precise and powerful, though the dialogue, especially in the second narrative, can be earnestly wooden. The author provocatively raises questions about the inescapability of destiny but wisely withholds any facile answers, permitting readers the liberty to ponder them on their own.
A beautiful pair of love stories and a thrilling peek into a lost world.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69735-471-3
Page Count: 215
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 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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