Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION TUC | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
In bestselling author Lisa Tucker's latest, a family discovers that it's only when the walls between the present and past crumble that the future can bloom.
Together for over a decade, Kyra and David Winter are happier than they ever thought they could be. They have a comfortable home, stable careers, and a young son, Michael, who they love more than anything. Yet because of their complicated histories, Kyra and David have always feared that this domestic bliss couldn't last - that the life they created was destined to be disrupted. And on one perfectly average summer day, it is: Michael disappears from his own backyard.
The only question is whose past has finally caught up with them: David feels sure that Michael was taken by his troubled ex-wife, while Kyra believes the kidnapper must be someone from her estranged family, someone she betrayed years ago.
As the Winters embark on a journey of time and memory to find Michael, they will be forced to admit these suspicions, revealing secrets about themselves they've always kept hidden. But they will also have a chance to discover that it's not too late to have the family they've dreamed of; that even if the world is full of risks, as long as they have hope, the future can bloom.
Lyrical, wise, and witty, The Winters in Bloom is Lisa Tucker's most optimistic work to date. This enchanting, life-affirming story will charm readers and leave them full of wonder at the stubborn strength of the human heart.
Author Notes
Lisa Tucker's novels include The Song Reader, Shout Down the Moon, Once Upon a Day, The Cure for Modern Life, The Promised World, and The Winters in Bloom. Her books have been published in twelve countries and selected for People magazine Critic's Choice, Amazon Book of the Year, the American Library Association Popular Paperbacks, and the Book Sense list.
Tucker graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She received graduate degrees in English and mathematics and was awarded fellowships in both fields. She taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, the Taos Writers' Conference and UCLA.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The Winters of Tucker's disappointing sixth novel (after The Promised World) lead an idyllic life. David and Kyra are a successful suburban couple with a five-year-old son, Michael, who they adore and believe is so gifted and unique that he must be homeschooled. They are such overprotective parents that Michael has only recently been allowed to be in the yard alone-and only for 30 minutes at a time; it's a terrible irony, then, that the boy is abducted from under their noses. Michael's disappearance forces David and Kyra to confront their pasts and expose troubling secrets about their lives before they met. David's first wife, Courtney, hasn't been well since accidentally causing the death of their child; David fears she took Michael. But Kyra suspects her own troubled sister, Amy, whose refusal to allow Kyra to see her niece years before created tremendous ill will between all involved. Only by arming themselves with the bitter truth will David and Kyra have any hope of finding Michael. Tucker tries to craft a tale steeped in big ideas about family and honesty, but delivers an innocuous, forgettable book saddled with melodrama. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
In a rare misstep, the prolific Tucker takes on the timely topic of overprotective parents but makes them so unlikable that readers will have trouble caring about the outcome. David Winters, still numb from the death of his son from his first marriage, feels that his wife, Kyra, makes his life complete, while she, estranged from her difficult family, feels incredibly lucky to have finally found a home. Their difficult pasts have made the Winters fearful of the world, and, as a result, they rarely let their five-year-old, Michael, interact with other people. In a cruel irony, Michael disappears from their own backyard, and the distraught couple must sift through their pasts to figure out who might have taken him. Is it David's unstable ex-wife, or Kyra's drug-addicted sister? As Tucker spins out one melodramatic plot twist after another, her novel slowly sinks under the weight of too much angst and not enough momentum. Still, fans of Once upon the Day (2006) and The Cure for Modern Life (2008) will want to read her latest.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Tucker's sixth novel (after The Promised World) features Kyra and David Winter, the loving parents of young Michael. Their overprotectiveness seems to stifle their coddled, homeschooled child, who yearns for a glimpse of something outside his home. When the doting Kyra momentarily takes her eyes off Michael, he vanishes from their backyard. As the police question the parents, disturbing secrets from their former lives are slowly revealed. Both parents are convinced the kidnapper is an estranged family member or ex-spouse, and what began as a story of the challenges of modern parenting very quickly becomes a tale of troubled pasts. One fact is certain: the Winters' comfortable home life will never be the same. VERDICT This fast-paced page-turner may satisfy some readers, but others will want more information about Kyra and David's complicated histories. Still, Tucker's suspenseful novels are popular, so this family story is recommended with reservations. Indeed, if the characters had been more fully developed, the novel would have blossomed. [See Prepub Alert, 2/28/11.]--Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One He was the only child in a house full of doubt. In bed each night, though it wasn't dark--the floor lights his father had installed--and it wasn't entirely private--the nursery monitor both parents refused to give up--he rehearsed the things he was certain of, using his fingers to number them. He was just a little boy, but he wouldn't allow himself to sleep until he'd gone through both hands twice. Twenty was a good number, he thought, though of course it paled in comparison with the number of doubts, partly because his parents had had so many years to discover them, but mainly because the doubt list was always growing, towering above him like the giant boy at his old school, the one his father had called a bully. The giant boy, whose name was Paul, had never done anything to Michael, but his parents doubted that Michael could learn in such an environment and took him out of that school. The three schools that followed had led to three other doubts, and now Michael was finishing first grade in home school, even though homeschooling had its doubts, too. I doubt he'll get the socialization he needs , his mother said. I doubt we can teach him laboratory science , his father said, but we'll have to deal with that when the time comes. And then the words his parents didn't have to say-- if the time comes --because the future was always the biggest doubt of all. "I will get bigger." Michael whispered it every night, holding up his thumb. Then he said, touching his index finger, "I will not die before I get to drive a car." He would force himself not to think of all the ways he could die, the hundreds of things his parents had told him all his life. He would also force himself not to daydream about what his first car would be like, because then he would fall asleep before he finished his counting and dream about rows and rows of shiny cars, all with headlights that looked like eyes and grills that looked like mouths. In the morning, he was often very tired. When he slumped down for breakfast, his mother would put her hand on his forehead and ask if he was feeling okay. He hardly ever got sick, except when he was two years old and then he was so sick he had to spend weeks in the hospital, though all he remembered about that now was the pattern of elephants and monkeys on the nurses' clothes. His mother always made him touch his chin to his chest, even if he told her his neck didn't hurt. Sometimes she would take his temperature and inspect his throat and ears with a flashlight and push on his belly to make sure his appendix wasn't about to burst. Only after she was satisfied that he wasn't coming down with something would she ask, "Did you have any nightmares?" He used to tell her, but he'd stopped when he realized that she and his father discussed his dreams the same way they discussed all the books they were reading about Raising Your Gifted Child. So he didn't tell her about the dream he kept having where the ocean came up to his bedroom window and he jumped in a boat and floated off. He only thought of it as a nightmare because he knew it should have been scary--if he was alone in the boat, this meant his parents must have drowned. In real life, he would have cried and cried for his parents: their love for him was one of the things he was most certain of; it was always somewhere in the first five things he counted every night. But in the dream, it never occurred to him to wonder where they were. He was sitting on a flat wooden seat in the middle of the boat, listening to the sound of the water lapping against the sides, blinking at the sun hanging so low in the sky it looked like he could row right to it. He felt like the biggest, scariest parts of the world were all gone, washed away by something that was winking at him in the soft fat cloud that floated overhead. The lady who appeared that day was like the cloud, though she wasn't fat and she wasn't at all soft. Her arms were so skinny that when she bent her elbows, Michael thought of the paper clips he liked to twist apart when he was supposed to be learning geography. He didn't really like geography, though he loved the maps hung up in the room where he studied--the schoolroom , his parents called it, though it was nothing like school, because there was only one desk. The map of the city was right in front of him, and he'd stared at it so many times that he knew the lady wasn't lying when she said she was taking him to the ocean. He'd always wanted to go there, but his father said a jellyfish might bite him, or he might swallow a mouthful of dirty, germy sand, or, worst of all, a tide current might pull him out to the sea and he would never, ever come back. The lady had asked him where he wanted to go more than anywhere in the world. She was so nice to him that he felt like it might be true when she said she loved him, even though he'd never seen her in his life until that morning. He was outside the house, in the backyard. It was the second day of the outside alone half hour , which his mother had decided he needed after she read a book about letting kids be free range , like the good-for-you kind of chicken. Michael didn't know what to do outside--his mother had told him to go ahead and do whatever he wanted, but he was afraid to touch anything, because dirt on your hands could make worms grow in your stomach, and he knew he should never climb a tree, he could fall and break his neck--so he walked around in circles and waved back each time his mother waved at him. She could see him perfectly while she did the dishes. So she must have seen the lady, and it must have been okay for him to go with her, like the lady said. It's a surprise! Like on your birthday, except better! He knew he wasn't supposed to even talk to strangers, but the lady said she wasn't a stranger. You're my little buddy , the lady said, and she was crying, which made Michael feel bad for her. She was so skinny and sad, but in her car, she had lots of toys, just like she promised. She had toys he'd always wanted to play with, like robots with little parts that could break off and choke him, and bright red and blue and yellow cars that were probably made with lead paint. He was afraid to touch the toys at first, but then he decided that he wouldn't choke or swallow lead paint unless the toy went in his mouth. And why would the toy go in his mouth, when it was so much more fun to move the robot arms and pretend the cars were zooming up and down his legs, like the lady's car was zooming up the highway? He might have had trouble believing that his parents had agreed to let the lady take him somewhere if he hadn't overheard them just last night, talking about how they had to change. It can't be good for him to be trapped in the house all summer. Other children are out of school, going to camp, playing with their friends. The two of us are doing our best, but it's not enough. He needs more people in his life. His mother was the one who'd talked the most, but his father had made noises that sounded like agreement. So this trip with the lady that his parents had planned must be like the time they replaced the entire heating system in the house, rather than trying to get the old one fixed. Sometimes you have to take extreme measures , his father had said, and then he'd explained that an extreme measure was necessary when the problem was so big, the only way to deal with it was to give up on what you'd done before and start over from square one. Being with this lady, sitting in a regular seat in the back of her car belted in with a regular seat belt, next to another seat covered with dangerous toys he'd taken out of a dangerous plastic bag, on the way to the ocean, was definitely an extreme measure. On some level Michael felt this, but most of him was just excited. The lady was happy now, too; her laughs sounded like Christmas bells. She had a really friendly smile and nice straight teeth, but when she pushed her hair back, he noticed a big scar on her wrist, and he wondered if it hurt sometimes, the way Mommy's scar on her knee did whenever it rained. If they talked about anything important on the way to the Jersey Shore, Michael didn't remember it. What he remembered--and would for the rest of his life--was that afternoon on the boat. It wasn't a rowboat like in his dream; it was a big fishing boat with an upper deck and a lower deck and lots and lots of people. Michael was on the upper deck looking out at the wavy sea when a giant fish jumped straight out of the ocean and landed with a huge splash. It was a humpback whale, the fisherman announced, and everybody on the boat was pointing and talking when the whale jumped up again! It did it seven times, which Michael heard people say was amazing, because a lot of times these whale-watching boats went out for hours and didn't see anything. It's because we're lucky , the lady said. She pointed at the whale's tail, which seemed to be waving before it disappeared back into the water. It likes you. Michael closed his eyes tight, but when he opened them it was all still there: the bright blue sky and the soft pillow clouds and the endless ocean lapping at the sides of the boat. His hand was still tucked in the lady's bony hand, and the boat hadn't tipped over and the seagulls hadn't pecked his eyes out and the big scary fish wasn't really scary at all. "It likes me," Michael whispered; then he grinned as big as he could, in case the whale was looking up at him through the water. In case the whale was like the lady, who'd promised when she appeared in his backyard that all she wanted was to be Michael's friend, more than anything in the world. Excerpted from The Winters in Bloom by Lisa Tucker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.