This uplifting book should resonate with those looking for a simple and inspiring rags-to-riches tale.
A historical fiction novel presents the story of a woman succeeding against all odds.
Padgett Harvey, the daughter of mixed-race parents—one white, the other Native American, of the Maliseet tribe—grows up in the 1950s near the small town of Houlton, Maine, in a comfortable, loving home. Things take a turn for the worse for Padgett, however, as her parents are killed in a hate crime. Without a home, she must move to her Grandma and Uncle George’s house in “The Flats,” a disadvantaged part of town where Native Americans live. Despite these setbacks, Padgett is able to flourish at school, making friends and becoming a star student. On the eve of starting high school, though, her grandmother’s house burns down, and Padgett must go into foster care. Still, she remains undaunted, and continues to excel in her studies, receiving a scholarship to study finance at Syracuse University, and graduating from high school as valedictorian. In her graduation speech, Padgett promises that she will “return to Houlton, to the people who have supported me, and dedicate my time and whatever fortune I may have, to improving the lot of my tribe, the Maliseet. I want to see them out of the shacks at the dump and living in real homes as part of this community we all love. That is my goal, and also, I believe, my destiny.” This directive, along with Padgett’s work in the New York financial sector, makes up the back half of the book, as she and Sean Patrick McGuinness, another Houlton native who prospers despite a meager upbringing, plan an event that will help the Maliseet gain federal recognition. Fields’ (The Ghosts of Evergreen, 2015, etc.) novel commendably discusses issues of racism and the challenges that Native Americans have faced in this country, but his characterization often lacks nuance—the villains in the story can be cartoonish, and the heroes lack any flaws, making Padgett’s eventual triumphs unsurprising. Emotionally, though, it’s hard not to feel good reading a success story like this, and there’s enough humor to keep the narrative moving along briskly. But a smattering of copy errors throughout detracts from the reading experience (for example, the character Erika Fitzpatrick is later spelled “Erick”).
This uplifting book should resonate with those looking for a simple and inspiring rags-to-riches tale.Pub Date: May 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5089-3865-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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