A historically rigorous and emotionally riveting period piece.
Slager’s historical novel, largely set at the end of the 17th century, chronicles the tale of a whaling village on the western coast of the future United States, threatened by natural disaster.
In 1699, Dushuuw is a battle-hardened warrior in Wuh-uhch, where his father, Chahbuhť̓, is a powerful and revered whaling chief. At 19, he’s the youngestson in his family and grows up in the shadow of his 22-year-old brother, Q̓otsik, who’s established himself as a prodigious whaler who’s likely to succeed Chahbuhť̓ one day. Dushuuw’s position within the tribe is compromised when he catches a man, Wiikihbis, having sex with his wife, and kills him. The marriage is a strategic one, cementing an important alliance, so the political fallout is considerable. Moreover, the man he killed was a whaler on Q̓otsik’s canoe, and now he must take his place—a job he doesn’t relish, and for which he possesses little natural talent; it’s a predicament that Slager portrays with great psychological subtlety and dramatic power. Meanwhile, Amuun’ax̱sum, the daughter of another whaling chief,is taken hostage by an invading tribe after they murder her mother and father. She’s later enslaved by Eekbis, the shaman of Dushuuw’s tribe. She longs to recapture the nobility that she now must hide to stay alive. Amuun’ax̱sum and Dushuuw fall in love, but their prospects for happiness seem dim, given the social expanse that separates them. Also, a disastrous earthquake and tsunami threatens to end their lives before they can make a bid for romantic bliss.
Slager’s novel is based on the Makah tribe, who live in the Cape Flattery area of what is now Washington state, and she brings the everyday lives and customs of its people into vivid relief. The natural disaster that waylaid the tribe is a real one, with her research into it and scholarly command of all the relevant source material nothing short of magisterial. Readers get a remarkable glimpse into a whaling community before European contact. However, this book is, first and foremost, a novel, and it tells an engrossing story. Both the principal characters are portrayed with notable nuance, and their budding relationship is both plausible and moving. Some people in Dushuuw’s tribe wonder if he’s more trouble than he’s worth, due to his taste for violence: “A man who takes that much human life—perhaps the spirit of the whale cringes from it, you see?” Dushuuw hears an elderly man say. “Is there really a way to get rid of so much human stench, such darkness of heart?” Amuun’ax̱sum also proves to be a compelling character, and Slager depicts the burden of her grief—over the loss of her family, and of her noble identity—with affecting complexity: “She wanted to fill a river with tears, and shoot her fear to the moon. She wanted a bench, not a mat. To own things, not hide them. A home. A voice. A name—to be known.”
A historically rigorous and emotionally riveting period piece.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798991543514
Page Count: 520
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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