The Huntress delivers exciting aerial sequences and intrigue worthy of a Hitchcock movie. The book’s psychological and dramatic elements combine for a powerful and satisfying finale. To paraphrase one of the characters, Ms. Quinn’s book is 'dynamite in print.'
...a pleasantly rambling mixture of family chronicle, biography, and cultural history ... [the] prose is amiably meandering and conversational, each page a cascade of digressions and asides that are just as engaging as the main storyline itself. This biography moves Alicia Patterson’s legend beyond the realm of family lore and establishes her as a singular and inspiring figure in 20th-century American history.
...a vivid and entertaining biography ... The seamless collaborative authorship of The Huntress has produced the best of all possible results. On the one hand, it is obviously a labor of love, a tribute, although never an intrusive one, to a revered aunt who died when Alice Arlen was in her early 20s. On the other, it is a dispassionate, though engagingly written, biographical chronicle.
The authors devote more than 300 pages to her personal and professional life but, regrettably, overlook or ignore the tremendous barriers that existed in Patterson’s day for women in the workforce and in journalism. By not putting Patterson’s life and work in the context of that male-dominated era or the virtually all-male world of newspapers, the book plays down her accomplishments ... A modicum of discussion of the struggles of women in journalism would have strengthened this biography of a fascinating woman.
...[a] carefully researched and compelling biography ... For all its merits, The Huntress does not offer the definitive history of Newsday during the Patterson years ... Their biography is admiring but not uncritical, and the narrative is smooth and polished from start to end. It’s also sometimes painfully vivid.
Patterson’s dramatic history is matched by the authors’ sparkling storytelling ... Some of the meanderings into the minutiae of high society, including a litany of all the presidents the Patterson family knew personally, starting with Lincoln, seem extraneous. The story starts to crackle when the authors focus on Patterson’s journalism career ... The heyday of print journalism may be long gone, but thanks to this rollicking biography, the path-breaking Alicia Patterson will continue to inspire another generation of newshounds.
