A well-structured, compelling historical tale.
A young, Jewish, Polish-American immigrant moves from New York to California and reluctantly infiltrates a pro-Nazi organization in this novel.
Helen Rice, traumatized by her childhood in post–World War I Poland, is happy to be as far away from Europe as possible. At the age of 8, she and her 16-year-old sister, Sarah, immigrated to New York City; their soldier father had been killed in the war and their mother had succumbed to influenza. The two girls lived together until Sarah moved out West with her husband, Harry. In 1936, Helen receives a letter from her sister asking her to come out to California. It’s an opportunity to move even farther away from the gloom of her past—and into the sunshine and warmth of the California dream. She leaves behind her part-time attendance at City College, a bookkeeping job, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Sandy, a member of the Anti-Defamation League. After arriving in California, she learns that Sarah now pretends that she’s from Germany, rather than Poland, because, she says, “Germany has culture.” Soon, Helen becomes privy to her brother-in-law’s backroom bookie operation; then, she’s recruited by Sandy as an ADL spy against the West Coast operation of the pro-Hitler American Bund. Mishook, in her engrossing debut novel, highlights a rarely taught but eerily relevant piece of American history. Along the way, she skillfully weaves together an assortment of disparate themes, including Helen’s complicated relationship with her sister, who strives not to appear “too Jewish”; her insecurities as an immigrant, even though she’s a naturalized American citizen; and the dangers of her espionage assignment. The author’s evocative prose, meanwhile, paints vivid images that get across the magic and allure of California: “Outside the air was warm and breezy, like a fan turned on low. A faint scent sweetened the air, as though a woman had passed by and vanished, leaving only her perfume.”
A well-structured, compelling historical tale.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944376-03-1
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Berwick Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
© 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.
