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THE CHILDREN BOB MOSES LED

Name: THE CHILDREN BOB MOSES LED
Author: William Heath
ISBN: 1-57131-008-8

by William Heath ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1995

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In a hazy mixture of fact and fiction, the Freedom Summer Project of 1964 comes alive in the contrasting narratives of civil rights leader Bob Moses and fictional volunteer Tom Morton. The unfathomable oppression of rural Mississippi during its black voter registration drives is depicted with faultless clarity, the result of Heath's ten years of research, though at times the story is so fact-laden that it seems more like a penetrating historical text than a work of fiction. The novel begins with the voice of Tom Morton, a white, midwestern college student whose motivations, earnest though naive, reflect those of a whole generation of students swept up by the idealism of Camelot. Tom describes his experiences in the rural town he was assigned todoing tasks that range from persuading an already tyrannized people to risk their lives by registering to vote, to depicting the beatings he witnessed and of which he was also a victim. The summer begins with promise, but the dangers and obstacles of the situation quickly become clear: The bodies of three missing CORE workers are found, harassment becomes life-threatening, and sexual and racial tensions begin to splinter the group's unity. Tom's chapters alternate with the steady narrative of Bob Moses, a New York teacher who went south to battle a virtual police state. With him, we follow the progression of the early civil rights movementfrom the nonviolent teachings of Dr. King to the increasingly separatist doctrine that spread as real political changes slowed. The writing here has a journalistic feel to it, the characters presented like anonymous witnesses. Still, despite a sometimes wooden and clumsy style, first-novelist Heath presents an illuminating portrait of the time, fascinating for the smaller events he uncovers, chronicling the bravery of those who didn't capture the national spotlight. An absorbing look at one of America's darkest and most courageous moments.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-57131-008-8

Page Count: 350

Publisher: Milkweed

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LONESOME DOVE

A NOVEL (SIMON & SCHUSTER CLASSICS)

by Larry McMurtry ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1985

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This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.