If nature’s danger and beauty are extreme here, the characters too seem melodramatically extreme in their sentimental...
In Lansens’ latest (The Wife’s Tale, 2010, etc.), a teenage boy finds himself stranded on a mountain with three women he doesn't know and must overcome not only the natural elements, but his own fears and guilt.
Since the novel is framed as a letter written by Wolf Truly to his son years later, there's no question about his survival; but the letter hints that survival has come at a major cost. The characters’ names tell a lot about Lansens’ schematic approach to her material. There's the protagonist, Wolf; his best friend, Byrd; and Byrd’s beautiful cousin, Lark, with whom Wolf has long been infatuated. Wolf and Byrd met when Wolf was 13, after he and his alcoholic father moved from Michigan to the California desert town of Santa Sophia. They bonded in part because both had lost parents—Wolf his mother, Byrd his mother and father—but Wolf lives in a poor, trashy neighborhood while Byrd’s uncle is a successful businessman. Byrd taught Wolf to love the mountain rising above Santa Sophia. When Wolf is 18, he heads to the mountain, alone, on the first anniversary of a terrible accident Byrd had, for which he feels responsible. He’s planning to commit suicide when an older woman, the recently widowed Nola, asks him to guide her to Secret Lake. Two women hanging out nearby turn out to be Nola’s daughter, Bridget, and granddaughter, Vonn. If Nola is grief-stricken, Bridget exudes desperation. Through a series of missteps, the group gets lost, then trapped in a canyon. As Wolf makes one failed attempt after another to get help, he relives his troubled childhood and becomes caught up in the history and complicated relationships of the women. The conclusion mixes hard-to-believe sacrifice with an equally hard-to-believe happy ending.
If nature’s danger and beauty are extreme here, the characters too seem melodramatically extreme in their sentimental goodness (and evil).Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8650-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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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