Review by Booklist Review
It's 1954 and young widow Jean Waterman is determined to give her seriously ill 10-year-old son, Charlie, and her 12-year-old daughter, Beth, a summer to remember. They head for the Utah desert and fall in with a group of locals whose livelihoods revolve around uranium prospecting, including kindhearted salesman Harry; resourceful, selfless Jo, who is trapped in an abusive marriage; and local motel owner and wiseacre, the unflappable Miss Dazzle. The desert is swarming with prospectors suffering from uranium fever and hoping to strike it rich, and although Jean herself suffers no such delusions, she is seeking a way to recapture a sense of hope. Over the course of the next few weeks, Charlie, almost paralyzed with excitement, flies in a helicopter, hones his mapmaking skills, and wields all available scientific equipment with aplomb. Meanwhile, Beth documents their adventures in high style in a book she titles Uranium Girl.0 Currently the fiction editor of the Kenyon Review0 , Zafris, in her second novel, following 0 The Metal Shredders 2002), invests her offbeat material with deep emotion and tragic undertones. Charlie's debilitating illness and the effects of uranium poisoning (unknown at the time) sit in counterpoint to the loopy banter and endearing cast of characters. Like Marianne Wiggins' quirky, superb Evidence of Things Unseen 0 (2003), this novel 0 s both disturbing and hypnotic. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
With its cast of quirky Ohio scrap-metal workers, Zafris's first novel, The Metal Shredders (2002), revealed her talent for capturing an unfamiliar world; her second accomplishes a similar feat with uranium prospectors in Utah. It's 1954, and widowed Jean Waterman has brought her two children west, hoping that the desert air will soothe the weak lungs of her son, Charlie, and that the desert's soil will yield treasures of uranium. She meets Harry, an ex-Mormon traveling salesman who deals in Geiger counters and other prospecting paraphernalia; Jo Dawson, the girlish wife of a good-for-nothing lout determined to spend his last pennies in a quest for uranium; Miss Dazzle, the people person proprietress of the Stagecoach Oasis motel and a host of colorful folk. In the lonely Utah desert, the wanderers form an unlikely family; there are loves, loyalties and secrets, though nothing much happens. Harry falls in love with Jean and Jo and worries that polygamy is in his genes; Miss Dazzle's cheerful personality hides a deeper loneliness. In this lovely book, Zafris finds power in the slow, mute strangeness of everyday anxiety, the blossoming of hope in a barren desert and the terrible irony of what uranium means to those who seek it. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Like the gold prospecting (18)49ers before them, the uranium prospectors in Utah a century later hoped to strike it rich. In her second novel (after The Metal Shredders), Zafris, fiction editor of the Kenyon Review, brings these adventurers and their quest to life through several zany characters. Young widow Jean Waterman and her two children, Beth and Charlie, set up camp in a rugged, remote area where water is in short supply and paved roads are nonexistent. Enter traveling salesman Harry Lindstrom, a latter-day Don Quixote who offers his services without expecting anything in return. In his truck, he's stocked every instrument, gadget, and accessory a prospector might ever need-including the Lucky Strike Geiger counter for which the book is named. The cast is rounded out by other colorful characters, including Leonard and Jo Dawson, basically squatters on the Watermans's campsite; Miss Dazzle, proprietor of the Stagecoach Oasis Motel; Jimmy Splendid, the Native American sheriff; and Vincent Flaherty, a smooth-talking con man. On one level, all of them are hoping to find uranium ore, doggedly diving into the blazing hot caves, reading old maps, and drawing up new ones; but on another, they are searching for answers to their problems. What a wild ride this book is. The characters are plucky, sympathetic, and memorable, the situations sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and sometimes bittersweet, and the pacing just right. Zafris is a keen observer of the human comedy; highly recommended for all libraries.-Lisa Nussbaum, Dauphin Cty. Lib. Syst., Harrisburg, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
