An evocative period piece with compelling drama and a satisfying final twist.
In the sixth volume of Michaels’ Golden City series, a recent widow confronts a spiritualist cult and a manipulative, dominating mother-in-law.
As the story opens in 1907, Mae Byrne Whittaker is tending to her dying husband, Albert St. John “Sinjun” Whittaker II. Raging with fever, he extracts a reluctant promise from her to continue his missionary work under the guidance that he says she’ll receive from his spirit. The passionate, devout Sinjun had brought her and their son, Liam, to Panama to spread the word of God. Now, malaria threatens to put an end to his aspirations. Mae brings Sinjun and Liam to their native San Francisco in the hope of saving her husband’s life, but he dies a day short of arriving home. He leaves his entire estate in trust to young Liam, and as a result, Mae is effectively penniless. Ida Whittaker, Sinjun’s mother, convinces her to spend the summer with her and Sinjun’s sister, Claire, at the family retreat in Glen Ellen, north of the city. Then Claire implores Mae to attend a meeting of her spiritualist cohorts, led by a medium known as Mrs. Springvale, who claims to be able to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones. However, Mae’s decision to accompany her sister-in-law will eventually lead to Mae’s being committed to a private mental institution. So begins a dark historical melodrama in which almost no one is quite whom they seem. Despite the story’s spiritualist trappings, the malevolent forces that propel the narrative are anything but ethereal. However, Michaels is an able and articulate storyteller who skillfully weaves some bright spots into the tale, including a potential romance for the protagonist. The characters of Cordelia Hammersmith and Dove Rebane, who pursue their best friend, Mae, when she goes missing, provide welcome relief from the wretchedness of the institution and the evil machinations at Glen Ellen. Mae also becomes an inspiration for other oppressed inmates as she plans her escape.
An evocative period piece with compelling drama and a satisfying final twist.Pub Date: May 15, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Red Trumpet Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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