An engrossing, satisfying account of the development and disintegration of a lesser-known immigrant community.
Two 18th-century German families risk everything to join a pioneer movement in hopes of forging a better future.
It’s the late 1700s, and 12-year-old Karl Schuler lives in a small town in what is now southwestern Germany. He’s orphaned and sent to a local miller, where he learns a trade and grows up. As he begins to plan his own family, he learns of a government program sponsoring migration to the frontier territory along the Danube River—almost 1,000 miles away. With new wife Inge, he begins the long journey to a new life. Miles away in Eastern Bavaria, Peter Mueller, a farmer and cabinetmaker, struggles to support his family in the face of failed crops and high rents. He also hears that the government is offering free land to those willing to work hard for a fresh start. Leaving in the dead of night to avoid his nobleman landlord, Peter; his wife, Katherine; and their four children set out for the Danube. The two families only intersect briefly on the arduous journey to their new homes, but both show determination and deep humanity as they become part of an extensive German immigrant community on the Serbian border. Six generations later, this community finds itself facing daunting, life-changing challenges as the rise of German fascism creates deep divisions in their new homeland. Fischer’s plain writing style ably animates the various ethnic groups of the Serbian frontier. He skillfully weaves together social history, historical events, and details of day-to-day life, from the workings of an 18th-century grain mill to the construction of a feather mattress in the 1930s. Tender stories of familial love and the joys and losses of pioneer life yield greater themes of belonging and alienation, the atrocities of war, and the complexity of ethnic and national loyalties. If the central characters seem sometimes too upright and decent to be absolutely believable, it’s easily forgiven against the backdrop of the challenges they face.
An engrossing, satisfying account of the development and disintegration of a lesser-known immigrant community.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 678
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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