An eye-opening story about the atrocities of World War II.
In Kamada’s historical novel, a teenage boy travels to Japan and witnesses the devastation wrought by World War II.
Zachary Whitlock is a young man of the Quaker faith living on Bainbridge Island in Washington. World War II has only recently come to a close, and Zachary is on a quest to find his purpose. Being Quakers, his family members are known as conscientious objectors; this status, combined with their close relationship with their Japanese American neighbors, the Miyotas, has made them targets of bigotry. An acquaintance, the actual historical figure Floyd Schmoe (“A Quaker. A conscientious objector. Almost a legend”), tells Zachary of the newly formed Heifer Project and its efforts to bring livestock to Japan to help the Japanese people rebuild after bombings by the United States. Zachary decides to join the cause and help shepherd more than 200 goats across the Pacific Ocean. To join Schmoe on his mission, Zachary must enlist in the Coast Guard, which is in direct defiance of his family’s deeply held religious beliefs. Zachary chooses not to enlist, but when the requirement to join the Coast Guard is suspended, Zachary quickly begins the long, sometimes perilous, journey overseas aboard the SS Contest. Zachary survives seasickness and typhoons on his way to Japan; once there, he is met with the harsh realities of the United States’ targeted firebombing and nuclear attacks that have claimed countless innocent Japanese lives. Part historical fiction, part travelogue, Kamada’s novel sensitively explores the aftermath of devastation and atrocity left out of most history lessons. Zachary is an empathetic figure and a relatable conduit for such an eye-opening story; however, his position as a white male hints at the “white savior” trope, which is only partially mitigated by the historical context of the Heifer Project. Ultimately, though, this an earnest, well-researched novel and a worthy exploration of an often overlooked piece of history.
An eye-opening story about the atrocities of World War II.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781685136406
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 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
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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