Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1954
ISBN: 0399501487
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Coward-McCann
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1955
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Tight, cliffhanging YA fiction studded with demigods and moral dilemmas.
A menagerie of supernatural forces fights for humanity’s spiritual standing.
In this YA novel, Pershing (Ordinaries, 2014, etc.) brings a vast cosmological and theological battle quite literally down to Earth. Tiamanicus, an otherworldly spirit enrolled in the legions of Lucifer—known as the Great One by his followers—finds himself shocked, cold, and struggling as he’s dragged out of a lake near the town of Inspiration, a place “swimming with demons.” This watery entrance marks the beginning of his tumultuous transition from a Whisperer, or disembodied spirit, into one of the human-seeming forms known as a Talker. While Whisperers dedicate themselves to spreading Lucifer’s influence throughout Earth by planting thoughts in the heads of humans, Talkers effect sin and corruption by their actions, using their bodies, and not merely suggestion. Placed in a household with several other Talkers, whose checkered and painful histories he’ll eventually learn, Tiamanicus, now christened Zachary Sable, pursues his task of throwing Emma Louise Green off her holy track. Protected by angelic spirits from the Christian God whom Lucifer opposes, Emma turns out to be a tough assignment. Zachary soon starts to wonder about the depth of his commitment to the mission handed to him by Zagan, a demon in Lucifer’s service. Zachary eventually becomes attracted to Emma. But Lucifer abandons Talkers who fall in love with humans, Zachary is warned; and the Great One represents the only hope for those who, like Tiamanicus and his kin, weren’t made in God’s image. Pershing has fashioned a raucous hybrid of coming-of-age tale and Miltonian epic. Marbled with a handful of plotlines that eventually unify, including a scheme by Emma to unveil the corruption of a local pastor who has been preying on young women, this story of adversity becomes complex but is strengthened by its intricate threads. Zachary encounters daunting obstacles in his new life; at one point, Emma asks him to accompany her to church (“Zachary tilted his head and thought about it. Church. Was it safe? He knew they couldn’t see him, but what if the Selfish One, the Christ, was actually there? Not even a Talker could hide”). A few themes run like currents beneath the sparkling dialogue and rapidly changing scenes, including the importance of placing one’s own happiness above official duties and the fickleness of allegiances and promises.
Tight, cliffhanging YA fiction studded with demigods and moral dilemmas.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9975129-0-8
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fast-paced romantic drama with a touch of Roma magic.
When a teenage girl in 1925 Chicago kills her violent stepfather, her mother takes the blame in this YA novel.
Carola Pawlak, 15, living in Chicago’s Polish Town, is shy, studious, and badly dressed, although other girls sometimes say her looks are “promising.” She dreams of becoming a writer and has few friends other than Stan Carlson, a handsome Roma boy. She and her sweet mother, Maria, walk on eggshells around Carola’s angry, explosive stepfather, Henry Jaworski. That is, until a fight one day in which Carola, trying to protect her mother, strikes back. He attempts to destroy a prized silver amulet that Stan gave her—but it has a hidden knife, and Carola plunges it into Henry’s chest. Maria confesses to the crime, forcing a promise from Carola to go along, and is arrested. Unexpected help then arrives: Louise Lazaar, “the Chicago Tribune’s leading ‘sob sister.’ ” Sensing a story, Lazaar brings Carola to see T.J. O’Malley, Chicago’s best criminal lawyer, who takes her mother’s case. Carola gets a makeover—bobbed hair, cosmetics, new clothes—and Lazaar dubs her and Maria the “Mother-Daughter Angels,” writing stories such as, “‘She Did It for Me,’ Says Angel Daughter.” But Maria’s still in danger from other prisoners, and Carola learns that Stan’s in trouble for giving her the mysterious amulet. Arbeiter (A Mouton Coat: The Hunt for a Mother’s Story, 2013, etc.) offers a sympathetic YA heroine who’s also conventional in that she doesn’t feel beautiful but is, and she wants to be a writer. Her romance with Stan is sweet and provides a little heat, and Carola has a chance to play the rescuer instead of the rescuee, which is unusual in the YA genre. The 1920s setting is also vivid; Arbeiter gives a well-rounded sense of the era’s highlights, such as flappers and actor Rudolph Valentino, and challenges, such as crime and injustice.
A fast-paced romantic drama with a touch of Roma magic.Pub Date: June 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-938812-59-0
Page Count: 239
Publisher: Full Court Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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