Lushly detailed and full of eco-devotion, this candid narrative has much to say about human beings bearing burdens, coping,...
Kuipers (Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado's War to Save American Wilderness, 2009, etc.) returns with a frank, personal, and sometimes-painful account of his fractured family.
The author, who has written about environmental issues for decades, tells a grim but ultimately uplifting story about his family, mostly his father, a serial adulterer in his first marriage but a man whom his three sons loved (despite his dominant personality), a man who eventually, writes Kuipers, became a responsible adult. We learn about his father’s history as well as his two brothers, one of whom has long battled psychological issues. We learn about the women in these men’s lives (more than one divorce) and about their children. But the dominating, unifying factor in their experiences is hunting. Kuipers is quick to assure us—and show us—that they are not mere trophy hunters but rather ecological ones. They eat what they kill, and they kill, it seems, respectfully. (In one scene, the author speaks to a buck he has just shot.) The author’s father believed that if he and his sons restored an old Michigan hunting camp he bought, it would improve their lives—and he was right. Year after year, they have planted, cultivated, and tenderly cared for the land, knowing that doing so would bring back the wildlife. Although the men often bickered and battled verbally with one another, they all eventually recognized the significance of what they created: unity and family. Kuipers alludes often to other writers and thinkers—from ecological scientists and eco-humanists to poets W.S. Merwin and Wendell Berry—and if he sometimes waxes a little spiritual/mystical, it is the magic of the land that animates him.
Lushly detailed and full of eco-devotion, this candid narrative has much to say about human beings bearing burdens, coping, and aiding one another.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-348-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
