In Cahoots

In 1953, in a small orange-growing town south of Los Angeles, the inhabitants pool their resources and their wits when they discover Walt Disney's secret plans to build an amusement park in their backyard

California dreams, suburban strangeness and Walt Disney form the backdrop for this deceptively light, engaging novel about an Anaheim real estate scheme set in the early '50s. Bud is a recent arrival to SoCal, a soda truck driver and part-time dreamer who tries to better himself and his family through get-rich-quick schemes worthy of Ralph Kramden. With friends and neighbors, Bud tries to figure out the proposed location of the animation mogul's planned theme park, then to buy a parcel of the land and sell it to Disney at an inflated price. MacPherson ( The Lucifer Key ), a Premiere staffer who grew up a mile from the orange grove that would become Disneyland, captures the loopy, apprehensive anticipation of the new California suburbs perfectly, and he surrounds Bud with a wonderfully quirky cast of couples. At heart, though, this is a novel about family, and MacPherson strikes it rich with his delicate, sympathetic writing about the wonders and limits of the nuclear unit. The conflict between Bud and his adolescent son Callum is particularly sharp and telling, as is the subplot in which Bud hocks his wife's brooch in order to pursue his dream. The flaws are minor: the pace sometimes slows to a crawl, the female characters are mostly superficial and, occasionally, a scene will be a real clunker. But Disney fans especially will delight in this fictional exploration of the goofy legacy of uncle Walt, who "swims through dreams the way a shark swims through the water."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Some middle-aged pals, oddball dreamers, conspire to make money off their hero, Walt Disney, in MacPherson's (The Blood of His Servants, 1984) latest, a sweet-tempered if slow-moving celebration of friendship as a license to goof off. Bud, his wife, Edith, and their three children are part of the postwar migration to Southern California. Unfortunately, they are as poor in Orange County, where Bud drives a soda truck, as they were in New England. Still, Bud has dreams (or ``dream-schemes''). So what if the minks didn't breed and the doughnut stand failed to attract passing motorists? When he hears that Walt Disney is planning an amusement park for kids, he summons his friends and shares his latest reverie: They will discover Walt's prospective site and buy a controlling quarter-acre. To do so, Bud secretly pawns his wife's brooch. But Bud's dream is about more than making money; it's about friends finding love together ``by being foolish, by laughing,'' as the Bible-thumping, ex-Hollywood costume designer Roland tells Bud's young son Callum. Callum prefers the company of adults, especially adults like Mr. Wait, the oracular Japanese- American who strolls through his orange groves and makes ``doing nothing almost meaningful.'' While Bud, guided by a crackpot who communicates with extraterrestrials, is shelling out money for the wrong site, smart Callum, suddenly as devious as his brooch- stealing dad, buys the right quarter-acre. But not to worry. The kid will fess up in a schmaltzy resolution, presided over by Walt himself, which will leave the whole gang richer in spirit. Mildly entertaining evocation of a sunny world in which poverty never pinches too sharply and Disney is treated like royalty. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bud constantly dreams of striking it rich, and when his ten-year-old son Dallum discovers that Walt Disney, the greatest dreamer of all, plans to build his Magic Kingdom right in their own southern California backyard, Bud enlists his friends and relatives in a plan to buy up available land in Orange County and make a killing by selling it to Disney Enterprises at a nice profit. Despite some broad humor and authentic 1950s touches (the Buster Brown X-ray machine, muumuus, a visit to Knott's Berry Farm), this is a disappointing novel. The writing is undistinguished, and the wide cast of characters is never developed enough to make readers really care about what happens to this group of heretofore incompetent dreamers. California libraries should consider purchase.
- Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.