In her debut novel, Dzikowski explores the social and racial growing pains of mid-’60s America through the eyes of her plucky but impressionable sixth-grade heroine, Andi.
Orphaned at a very young age, Andi searches for proof of life after death in the hope of being reunited with her late parents. Along the way, she ventures across the invisible border between the white and black areas of her small town to befriend Ezra, wise owner of the bait shop and candy store, then teams up with her crush, John Malone, to hunt down the ghost of Abraham Lincoln—“living” proof of the afterlife—who is rumored to haunt their school auditorium. Dzikowski’s use of period detail adds texture and context to Andi’s world, from accounts of disciplinary “paddling” to the smell of fresh mimeograph ink and a gym class chorus of “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!” Dzikowski incorporates history into her narrative without lecturing the reader, offering plenty of fresh, interesting Lincoln factoids. When Andi catches two male teachers in a compromising position, her bemusement is both age- and era-appropriate. The novel’s memorable supporting characters are carefully, quirkily drawn; schoolyard bully Bertha could easily be two-dimensional but garners understanding when readers learn her front teeth were demolished by a violent stepfather. Dzikowski never sentimentalizes her central character, allowing Andi to have dark moments, but, on occasion, the author veers from Andi’s point of view into an adult voice, narrating at one point, “Mr. Banner scooped her off the ground as tenderly as a stillborn baby.” Dzikowski throws one too many social issues into the mix when Andi overhears John admit to being molested by a priest. Dzikowski should trust her considerable talent. She doesn’t need to justify the actions of her brooding preteen bad boy by giving him a tragic back story; her characters are believable products of a violently segregated society struggling toward tolerance. A prologue introduces readers to Andi and John several decades after novel’s end, adding a heavy note of dread that doesn’t serve Dzikowski’s subtle storytelling. But these are nitpicks, not glaring faults. In her first novel, Dzikowski has created a world complete enough to transport the reader back in time and a spunky protagonist whose emotional journey breaks the heart. Dzikowski’s poignant, engrossing historical novel vividly parallels the last brutal days of segregation with the experiences of a small town girl coming of age in a racist society.
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0984030507
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Wiara
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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