A superlative novel.
Those who enjoy Bruce Catton's and Shelby Foote’s Civil War histories will find a fictional equal in Peters’ retelling of the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.
Combining character study, strategy, and battle scenes, Peters (Cain at Gettysburg, 2012, etc.) focuses on the great, small, and those in history’s shadows, like U.S. Gen. Emory Upton, "an enigma, a hardened Christian, mean as a Turk…a brilliant, intolerant merciless young man." Famous names also appear: Union Army Gen. Philip Sheridan, all pugnacious Irish temper; tobacco-chewing Confederate Gen. Jubal Early, "a spitting, crook-back man and harsh-mouthed as a heathen"; and future president Rutherford Hayes, who learned "War made it hard to credit a merciful God." Peters draws from contemporary sources, including writings of the 61st Georgia Volunteer Infantry’s George Nichols, country boy and confused Christian: "Nichols had gotten himself a new pair of shoes, assured by Elder Woodfin it was not theft to remove them from the dead Yankee." His writing vivid with cannon smoke and screams, clashes between generals and brigades, Peters begins with disgraced Gen. Lew Wallace—pilloried for supposed errors at Shiloh—rallying rear-echelon ragtags to prevent Early’s capture of Washington. There at Mononacy Junction, Peters introduces another patriot, grizzled Army Gen. James Ricketts, key in denying Rebels the Shenandoah’s easy passage north and its fertile farms. Peters details the battle at Winchester, the rout at Fisher’s Hill, and the decisive confrontation at Cedar Creek. With alluringly literary language—describing a warrior’s newborn child as "the promise that a man’s blood would go on, a swaddled, mewling hint of resurrection"—Peters is deft with dialogue and setting, but it’s his characterizations ("Custer was a bloody-handed instrument") and battle scenes ("without a muchness of guns to give things a shake") that make this a must-read for Civil War history fans.
A superlative novel.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7403-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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