A vibrant tale of 1950s Chicago.
Joseph offers a sweeping saga highlighting how race and religion shape people’s lives in the second book of his Chicago Trilogy, following To Love Mercy (2006).
It’s 1952, and a project of so-called “Urban Renewal” is in full swing in Bronzeville, Chicago’s predominantly Black neighborhood. With Jim Crow laws still in effect, the government is using the power of eminent domain to destroy the community, forcing families out of their homes. However, the novel’s plot centers mainly on a lost family heirloom—a small silver piece with Hebrew markings. Steve Feinberg, a white Jewish boy from Hyde Park, and Jesse Owens Trimble—a Black youngster from Bronzeville known around the neighborhood as “Sass,” due to his “smart mouth,” as Steve puts it—live very different lives. They’re connected through Mattie, Sass’ mom who works at the ticket counter at the Calumet Theater, which is owned by Mister Nate, Steve’s grandfather. The two leave the theater to search for the “silver thing” after Mister Nate loses it and unjustly accuses Sass of stealing it and they end up traveling all over the city. Later reunited by chance in high school, Steve and Sass’ shared love of jazz has them joining an a cappella group together, eventually leading them into the orbit of alto sax player and notorious gangster Mister Lucky. Intriguingly, the work goes on to explore how Chicago’s 1950s jazz scene served as an extension of the local civil rights movement. Sass’ troublesome older brother, Isaiah, known as “Nubby,” works for Mister Lucky running numbers, bringing trouble into his loved ones’ lives. The richly developed characters, including Dora, an aging Sunday school teacher who works for the Feinbergs as a maid, and Ezell, a boy with a stutter who has a natural ability to defuse conflict, are among the book’s strengths. Throughout the story, Joseph frequently reminds readers how socioeconomic factors influence how people interact with the world. The cast is large and diverse, and their often charming, relatable interactions will draw readers deeply into the story.
A vibrant tale of 1950s Chicago.Pub Date: May 16, 2025
ISBN: 9798990440944
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Key Literary
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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