A smooth, gripping yarn, though it doesn’t quite deliver all it promises.
A kind man whose violent outbursts rob him of all he loves is the protagonist of Hyde’s third novel, slightly glib but possessing some of the quiet poignancy of its predecessor, Pay It Forward (2000).
Like a modern-day Job, Hayden Reese has been sorely tried. It’s bad enough that his hound Jenny, beloved companion of many years, died; that his lover, Laurel, went back to her husband; that he takes out his pain on the vet in his backwoods California town and ends up in jail (again); that Laurel comes around after he’s out and gets him to rescue her teenaged daughter, Peg, working against her will in a Nevada brothel; that Peg falls for him and sets in motion events that lead to Hayden lying in the dirt outside his house, bleeding from a shotgun wound inflicted by Laurel’s husband. Somehow (a bit too miraculously) he survives all of that, and angry, guilty, brawling Hayden gets another chance with Allegra, the daughter he hasn’t seen in 15 years. He’s angry because the wife he helped put through medical school left him when he nearly pummeled Allegra’s first date to death after the boy pawed her against her will. He’s guilty because he was having a first sexual encounter of his own when his reckless younger brother, whom Hayden had been ordered to be responsible for, decided to climb a transmission tower using a grappling hook and was electrocuted. And he’s brawling because that’s the way his strapping, archconservative father was; although he hates the man and beat him up before leaving home for good, using brute force was the only way he learned to cope with adversity. Now Allegra is getting married and wants him there, but first he has to make peace with the demons that have beset him for so much of his life.
A smooth, gripping yarn, though it doesn’t quite deliver all it promises.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-7432-1118-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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