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
Not for the faint of heart, perhaps, but an ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction.
Violent, often surrealistic Wild West yarn, Cormac McCarthy by way of Gabriel García Márquez.
Håkan Söderström is a force of nature, a wild giant whose name, in the frontier America in which he has landed, is rendered as the Hawk. On the docks back in Gothenburg he was separated from his brother, Linus, and he has sworn to find him in a land so big he can scarcely comprehend it. The Hawk lands in California and ventures eastward only to find himself in all kinds of odd company—crooks, con men, prophets, and the rare honest man—and a tide of history that keeps pushing him back to the west. Along the way, his exploits, literary scholar Diaz (Hispanic Institute/Columbia Univ.; Borges, Between History and Eternity, 2012) writes, are so numerous that he has become a legend in a frontier full of them; for one thing, says an awe-struck traveler, “He was offered his own territory by the Union, like a state, with his own laws and all. Just to keep him away.” The Hawk protests that most of what has been said about him is untrue—but not all of it. As Diaz, who delights in playful language, lists, and stream-of-consciousness prose, reconstructs his adventures, he evokes the multicultural nature of westward expansion, in which immigrants did the bulk of the hard labor and suffered the gravest dangers. One fine set piece is a version of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which religious fanatics dressed as Indians attack a pioneer party—save that in Diaz’s version, Håkan tears his way across the enemy force with a righteous fury befitting an avenging angel. “He knew he had killed and maimed several men,” Diaz writes, memorably, “but what remained most vividly in his mind was the feeling of sorrow and senselessness that came with each act: those worth defending were already dead, and each of his killings made his own struggle for self-preservation less justifiable.”
Not for the faint of heart, perhaps, but an ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-56689-488-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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