The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. ![]() Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference - but not from dangers their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. (First printing of 500,000 author tour)Ī first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy - and the close of childhood years. Certain handkerchief heaven for many, while others may experience the stirring of-well, let's just say other feelings. But the healing spirit of human love and hope and goodness will not be destroyed entirely, living on in the muted but unquenchable goodness of MaryAnne's heart in Evans's perfectly choreographed little flurry of symbols at the close and even in the transformation of one of those pure villains into purely sensitive penitent. In the beginning, there will be marriage, birth, and immeasurable happiness and then, with purest villainy as its catalyst, there will be profound and equally immeasurable sorrow. In Evans's world of tears and truth, people are by and large either all good or all bad, and if MaryAnne's perfections include being attractive, spunky, quick, principled, courageous, loving, and morally unwavering, the qualities of the base and degenerate villains who reduce her life to ashes are her perfect opposites not in some but all ways (``The men entered clumsily, growling in foul and guttural tones, drunk with whiskey and hatred''). How MaryAnne achieved such wisdom (quick answer: through suffering a lot) is the real subject of this book, and Evans out-Dickenses Dickens in his facile uses of melodrama in getting to his desired end. We go back to Salt Lake City, this time to 1908, when David Parkin-thoughtful and sensitive person, millionaire head of Parkin Machinery Co., and collector of clocks-hires as his secretary one MaryAnne Chandler, the young woman (originally from England) destined to become David's wife, to live in his big mansion, and, in time, to become the benevolent, devout, mysteriously wise widow of The Christmas Box. The prequel to Evans's mega bestseller, The Christmas Box, is longer than the earlier book, has its same cartoony thinness, is just as creaky at the joints-and reveals, if anything, a considerable rise in the tears-per-page ratio.
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