Historical fiction at its most enlightening and entertaining; a must-read for American history buffs.
The adventures of Belle Boyd, real-life Civil War scout and spy, come alive in this blend of fact and fiction that takes readers for a ride on the Confederate side.
Filled with hatred for the Union after the man she intended to marry is killed, 17-year-old Isabelle “Belle” Boyd quickly finds revenge by shooting the soldier who raids her house and assaults her mother. News of her notorious act quickly spreads from her hometown of Martinsburg, Va., through Rebel and Union camps alike. While caught between forces, Belle nurses the wounded in the local military hospital—a vocation that ostracizes her from “polite society” even before she moves on to work as a courier, a scout and ultimately a spy for Turner Ashby of the 7th Virginia Cavalry. Along with her keen mind and a rare courage that leads her across battlefields and on midnight rides, Belle finds a crucial asset in her curvy figure, which beguiles many a soldier and officer into giving away Union plans. The fictional narrative moves swiftly along, following well-established facts about the “War Between the States,” and Hamit offers insight into both sides, as well as the perspectives of the African-Americans over whose freedom the war is ostensibly fought. Particularly engaging is Belle’s servant, Eliza, who becomes no mean spy in her own right. The author built this compelling tale from what scanty facts exist about the real Belle Boyd, imbuing believability and gravitas to much of what must be only conjecture. The depictions of ragged, oft-drunken units awaiting orders, the frustrations and disloyalties of angry civilians, and the meetings of exhausted officers within hastily erected tents are so credible, readers feel a bit like spies themselves, listening in. And although the innocence of Belle and her female cousins may initially read as young-adult fiction, this impression slides into an adult sensibility, just as Belle, by necessity, grows stronger, harder and worldlier. She may view her ruined reputation with chagrin, but she wisely turns it to her favor, as her skillful methods of seduction—there’s nothing young adult about these racy scenes—yield valuable information that she successfully smuggles between breasts and under hoop skirts.
Historical fiction at its most enlightening and entertaining; a must-read for American history buffs.Pub Date: May 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-1595959027
Page Count: 433
Publisher: Brass Cannon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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