From Publishers Weekly
A teacher who suspects that a young pupil is the victim of a toddler kidnapping takes a huge step in Kelman's (Prime Evil) hardcover debut. Beth Logan, a special-ed teacher in a New Hampshire private school, elects to return Pip, the headmaster's purported son, to Connecticut and the family to which she believes he was born. Beth is convinced by the lack of records in his file and the insinuations of a paranoid neighbor that Pip is actually Ethan Haskel, who, six years ago, disappeared mysteriously from his island home in Long Island Sound. But having reunited Pip with this strange extended family and having witnessed the patriarch's cruelty and the mother's nearly narcotic submissiveness, Beth realizes she must get the boy off the island and back to his home in New Hampshire. Kelman's coincidence-ridden, improbable tale asks readers to sympathize with a least likely heroine whose intentions do not redeem her bad judgment.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
From Library Journal
Bethany Logan teaches students with learning problems at a private school in New Hampshire. When she can't find records for the principal's eight-year-old son, she convinces herself that he is the victim of an unsolved kidnapping that occurred years before. Determined to return Ethan Haskel to his parents, she kidnaps him herself. When they finally reach the family's island, Bethany discovers that the place is totally isolated from the mainland. Every August the Haskels spend a week in seclusion, and their activities are unnerving. Almost every Haskel is mentally unbalanced, and some are homicidal. Bethany soon realizes that she has placed herself and the boy in danger. If this isn't enough action, one subplot involves Bethany's sister and a nasty divorce, while another centers on Bethany's guilt over her mother's suicide by drowning and Bethany's resulting fear of water, especially the ocean. To get through the book, readers will not only have to suspend disbelief but abandon it entirely. Purchase only where Kelman (Hush Little Darlings, Berkley, 1996) has a following.
Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
