Despite occasional compelling scenes based on events drawn from actual diaries of women emigrants, Lee's (Cannon's Revenge, 1995) latest ought to be subtitled ``The Perils of a Politically Correct Heroine Crossing the Continent.'' Even the villain is a second-rate stereotype in this exaggerated melodrama posing as historical fiction. Pregnant, her lover dead, and pressured by her wealthy Philadelphia family to marry, a heroine with the unlikely name of America weds Will Hollis, a young lawyer bent on emigrating west. Hollis is less a character than an explanation for America's presence on the wagon train. In fact, her friendship with Catherine Welborne, a mail-order bride traveling to Oregon, is more believable than her marriage, and her indignation at Isaac Moore's beating his wife seems more deeply felt that her affection for Hollis. In an orgy of heroine-like acts, America champions Indian rights and the abolition of slavery, decries domestic violence, saves the life of Celeste Hayes when her long skirts catch fire, and buries Hollis after he is accidentally killed. Meanwhile, inept the villains, Reverend Tarleton Sandford and his wife, Muriel, are as devoid of virtue as America is of fault and even less believable. Their one successful act of villainy—the burial of America when she lapses into unconsciousness after childbirth, and the theft of her baby—lacks credibility. Not that credible is a prerequisite, as Lee demonstrates in the climax here when America, rescued from her premature grave by the Paiute Indians, steals back her daughter from the Sandfords and rides off to marry the half- Shoshone Black Wolf after first single-handedly rescuing him from hanging. Improbable plot, poor characterization, and stilted dialogue keep this from rising even to the level of good melodrama.
Pub Date: June 6, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-85288-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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
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