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Reader Reviews Unconvincing daydream, July 28, 2003 Reviewer: A reader from Mid-Atlantic USA This book reads like someone's fantasy life. The protagonist, Kate Shugak, never makes mistakes, never loses an argument, and never has to compromise. She can terrify men with a glance and stop armed combat with her bare hands. She can also seduce a cold-blooded murderer and hypnotize a room full of men with a change in her voice. She claims to love men, but doesn't "expect much of them." The only man she maybe-loves, from many miles away, warms her heart by his casual reply to the report of a bear mauling someone to death, but she ridicules such bravado ("manly-man" behavior) in anyone else. She professes an abiding commitment to her oath to uphold the law, but commits a petty crime, and for petty reasons, minutes later. She rescues an irresponsible husband (for the second time), when he is bound naked, spread-eagled, and gagged, from the rifle of his hysterical wife, but "sides with the tribe" when she tells a state trooper that their children are not in danger. The book goes on and on this way, asking the reader to believe that a five-foot-tall woman is actually some kind of superbeing, able to cope with any kind of problem, no matter how absurd or wrong-headed her methods might be. If she were real, her mother would be Wonder Woman, and her other mother would be Marilyn. (If it were up to her, I don't think Kate Shugak would _have_ a father.) She can kick ass or make doe eyes, whichever the moment requires, and always with 100% success. Like Alda's "Hawkeye" character, everything always just seems to work out her way. She never has to deal with mistakes or meaningful opposition to her wishes. This was a really well-written book about a dreadful person living a charmed life. I can easily imagine the audience that makes it such a success. But, I found it so far below credible and so self-indulgent, that I'd give it one star if it weren't for a few snappy scenes that prove Stabenow could be a good writer if she'd only grow up.
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