A messy, overwritten epistolary account of how the West was lost. Joseph Antoine Janis's father was a beaver trapper who took him to Colorado in 1840 and left him to live with the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Oglala Indians to serve as liaison between them and the arriving white settlers. In these letters that Tremblay (Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada, not reviewed) imagines Janis might have written, Janis describes his life's work in a vague, roundabout way. He tells of leaving his home in Missouri, and his mother, who had hoped he would become a priest, and learning to survive in the wilderness with his father. He married a Lakota named First Elk Woman, and with her tried to save his father's West—rugged, violent, and pristine. Unlike his bigamist father who had married Janis's mother and a Cheyenne woman, Janis was faithful to First Elk Woman; their marriage was filled with love and mutual respect. Janis tried to reconcile the various aspects of his existence. He dreamed of creating a settlement where ``squawmen'' like him—men who were married to Indian women—and their families could practice the best both white and Indian culture had to offer. But when the US government forced him to choose between remaining on his homestead without First Elk Woman or joining her people on the reservation, Janis chose to stay with his wife; after much tragedy, including the death of three of his children, Janis couldn't fight any longer. Tremblay succeeds in painting a picture of the pre- settled West as brutal and hazardous, where human life meant very little and personal property even less. Where he fails is in fully explaining Janis's desire to preserve that culture. Janis, in fact, remains a frustrating enigma throughout the book. A good concept, but Tremblay captures neither Janis's voice nor his spirit.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87421-176-X
Page Count: 248
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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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