The glory years of frontier life, fresh and rich.
A second in the author’s Rendezvous series (So Wild a Dream, not reviewed), about the early days of the fur trade.
Blevins (Westward: A Fictional History of the American West, 2003, etc.) is often mystical when writing about Indians, and his gritty fiction brings to mind the fur-trade novels of Frederick Manfred (Lord Grizzly, 1954) and Vardis Fisher (Mountain Man). In So Wild a Dream, set in the 1820s, Pittsburgh’s white-haired, impressionable young Sam Morgan, finding Pennsylvania dull, lights out for the West, becomes a hand on a riverboat, has many adventures on the frontier, then heads into the unmapped West on a grueling 700-mile trek, alone and on foot, across the Great Plains to the Rockies, where men blaze trails across the mountains. Between Missouri and the Pacific, he falls in with various Indian tribes and learns crafts for living in the wilds. Now, after two years trapping beaver, he goes home, fights with his family, heads back west. Downhearted, he dreams himself joined to a Spirit Buffalo (named Samalo), decides to seek his beloved Indian maiden Meadowlark, and sets off with his pet coyote to find her. Sam and three friends, including Third Wing, a Pawnee, go up Wind River to look for her. Meadowlark is glad to see him, but Sam is humiliated by a Crow archery game that awards him the name No Arrows. Nor can he ride as well as Crow. When another Crow courts Meadowlark, Sam must become a real Crow if he’s to win her, but after he’s captured by Lakota Sioux (and escapes), he’s too poor to woo her. And he’s responsible for a young Crow’s death. Meadowlark’s parents believe a prophecy that White Men will overrun the land: Thus Meadowlark mustn’t marry a White. But soon the Pacific beckons them both.
The glory years of frontier life, fresh and rich.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-765-30574-7
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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