An engaging homefront war novel featuring a sturdy female protagonist.
Moyer’s historical novel charts love, loss, heartbreak, and new beginnings against the backdrop of bustling San Francisco during the latter years of World War II.
It is 1944, and 20-year-old Irene Mary Cleary, abandoned at the Mt. St. Joseph’s orphanage when she was but a week old, is the new proprietor of her own seamstress shop. The shop and its accompanying upstairs apartment were unexpectedly left to her by her recently deceased employer and mentor, Anna Orlova. On Saturday evenings, Irene and her best friend since childhood, Trixie Dubuque, volunteer as junior hostesses at the USO, where servicemen on leave are invited to relax for a few hours, dancing, playing pool, or simply enjoying refreshments in a safe environment. The war is creating its own set of homefront dramas in San Francisco, a city that is changing and growing by the day with the influx of sailors and entrepreneurs. Irene Cleary is about to find herself in the center of a complicated high-society quadrangle of love and betrayal that will threaten her reputation and burgeoning business enterprise. Moyer’s engaging and glossy melodrama bulges with colorful fabrics and elaborate clothing designs. The novel captures the unique beauty and diversity of San Francisco and its plethora of local attractions as the city navigates major wartime upheavals. Especially intriguing are the sections that detail Irene’s involvement in the costuming for the premiere of a ballet that had never been produced in its entirety in the United States: The Nutcracker, soon to become a holiday staple. Despite the novel’s indulgence in an abundance of emotional angst, Irene, Moyer’s likeable narrator, ably conveys her coming-of-age experiences in a voice that alternates between poignancy and exuberance, depicting her innocence, determination, and emerging independence (“A twenty-year-old woman with her own business doesn’t want to look any younger than she is, which was why I’d chosen my most sophisticated hat”).
An engaging homefront war novel featuring a sturdy female protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798896360186
Page Count: 344
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
