An engrossing, drama-fueled addition to Lone Star State chronicles.
Seeber’s historical novel, inspired by the history of the author’s ancestor, explores the period leading to the 1835 Texas Revolution against Mexico.
Sarah Seely was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where she met and married Green DeWitt. He was not her first love; that would be Will Jones, her childhood friend and the boy she assumed she would marry. But when Will, an adventurer, left St. Louis, a heartbroken Sarah feared she would not see him again. Two years later, Will returned to find Sarah married to Green, holding the couple’s first baby. Now it is 1827, and Sarah, Green, and four of their five children are approaching the border of the new colony Green is establishing in the northern Mexican state of Texas. As “Destiny” would have it, Will is traveling with them as Green’s deputy. Green has been appointed Empresario (“land agent”) by the Mexican government for what is to become the DeWitt Colony. In exchange for helping to settle this untamed portion of Mexico’s northern frontier, he will receive a sizable land holding. Although reluctant to leave St. Louis, Sarah puts her trust in Green’s vision (“blue-eyed, silver-tongued, smooth-talking Green conjures the future from thin air”), despite the plethora of hardships—in addition to the primitive living conditions and the constant political wrangling between the Mexican government and the Anglo settlers, there are the ever-present dangers of disease and Comanche raids. Seeber’s novel is prodigiously researched and richly detailed (the narrative contains a wealth of historical nuggets), a textured and atmospheric recreation of time and place with a vividly drawn female lead. Through Sarah’s personal struggles and development, readers are viscerally brought into a piece of history that is traditionally dominated by accounts of the military battles. This is a story of female grit and determination in the face of overwhelming challenges. There is enough romance, tragedy, and excitement—especially in the section where Sarah is kidnapped by a band of vengeful Comanches—to keep the pages turning. A concluding glossary of Spanish and period-relevant English terminology is a useful addition.
An engrossing, drama-fueled addition to Lone Star State chronicles.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781954805910
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Bold Story Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
© 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.
