Will appeal mainly to Kingsbury devotees, as well as lovers of religious tracts…and basketball.
Another weeper from Christian-fiction diva Kingsbury, this time featuring a prayerful NBA star and his long-lost first love.
Kingsbury appears to concede that a slavish adherence to the sterner side of Christianity can subvert that religion’s founding principles, as happens when Alan Tucker, a Marine drill instructor, casts off his wife, Caroline, after discovering she is pregnant with a lover’s child. Righteous though it may be, his implacable anger has ruinous long-term consequences. He immediately moves from Savannah to Camp Pendleton, San Diego, ostensibly to save teenage daughter Ellie from the shame of growing up near her disgraced mother and her illegitimate half sibling. (Abortion, of course, is never brought up, nor is the question of contraception.) Ellie is devastated: She’ll leave behind Nolan, her closest childhood friend, a promising basketball player whose moves are described with a sportswriter’s skill. The teenagers, both 15, are chastely awakening to love, and before Ellie departs, they bury letters confessing their true feelings under a favorite tree. They make a pact to return on June 1st, 11 years hence, to dig up the box and read the letters. Cut to the present. Caroline is raising her son, John, and writing weekly letters to Ellie, which go unanswered. Long estranged from Alan, Ellie has forsworn college, has an illegitimate child of her own, daughter Kinzie, and works as a beautician. Nolan, a superstar with the Atlanta Hawks, is far out of her league: There are paparazzi-perpetrated rumors of girlfriends galore. When Alan shows up to beg forgiveness for a shocking transgression, it’s only Kinzie’s faith that causes Ellie to relent. But as June 1st approaches, can she undo 11 years of miscommunication and bad luck? Since deus ex machina is Kingsbury’s go-to plot device, nothing, particularly redemption, is left to chance. Unfortunately, putting everything in the Almighty’s hands leaves mere mortals with little to do, which makes for tedious reading.
Will appeal mainly to Kingsbury devotees, as well as lovers of religious tracts…and basketball.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 9781-4516-4703-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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