From Publishers Weekly
A mystical valentine to JFK's media-savvy presidency and a Pollyanna-ish portrait of the early Civil Rights movement serve as backdrops of this melodramatic tale of a self-reliant woman reporter discovering liberated love in conservative Belvedere, Md., in 1963. Mary Springer strikes up an acquaintance with President Kennedy when assigned to cover the White House for her paper, the Belvedere Blade. Crisis looms in her life and the life of the country. While Martin Luther King Jr. prepares to march on Washington, racial violence erupts in Belvedere and the president tragically goes about his last days, Mary is immersed in her own problems: learning to live separated from her alcoholic husband while raising their daughter alone. She also finds herself falling in love with sensitive photographer Jay Broderick, and the two end up dangerously involved with local Civil Rights activists. Former Washington correspondent Rivers (Slick Spins and Fractured Facts: How Cultural Myths Distort the News; Indecent Behavior) takes us into the minds of Jay and Mary, often through rather unfortunate fantasies involving Sigmund Freud and the Nixons. Civil Rights leader Donald Johnson appears in first-person entries from his journal, and the inner musings of JFK himself?including ominous premonitions of his demise?are also woven in. The effort is doomed by superficial characterization, contrived plotting and Rivers's tendency to simplify this dramatic era, the nuances of which have already occupied so many biographers and historians.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Rivers (Indecent Behavior, Dutton, 1990) offers a picture of the early 1960s mainly from the perspectives of two twentysomethings at a small-town newspaper outside Washington, DC. Mary Springer, the paper's White House correspondent, captures President Kennedy's interest and even meets with him. Meanwhile, she falls in love with the paper's photographer, Jay Broderick (she's separated from her alcoholic husband), and together they cover car accidents, White House press conferences, and the decision to demolish a neighborhood of low-income houses. Interspersed with this story are chapters in Kennedy's voice describing his feelings about his family and Vietnam. As if this weren't enough, Rivers also includes Mary's husband's story as well as that of a young black man contemplating a writing career. Rivers manages to include all the elements of the Sixties, but she is so busy setting up the background that she fails to bring her characters to life. She has written better novels in the past; let's hope she'll write better ones in the future. Not recommended.ANancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
