A well-crafted, suspenseful novel that highlights difficult historical themes.
Vicars presents a family saga that focuses on cycles of violence from the Civil War era to the present day.
Philip Richards is at the Hilltop bar in Culmine, Texas, contemplating getting the dinner special, when he’s confronted by a woman named Carmen, whom he struggles to recall. She brings up a recent encounter between them and asks him about a mysterious “Valentine’s night promise.” It turns out that he frequently has blackouts while drunk and has stretches of lost time in his past. After his ill father dies, 35-year-old Philip finally faces the family that he’s avoided since he left home at age 15; it’s revealed that his grandfather had sexually abused his sister, Dinah, and that the family refused to acknowledge it. In his father’s home, he finds a manuscript—which may or may not be fiction—written by his father’s great uncle, Sabine Richards; the story involves Philip’s great-great grandfather Russell and an enslaved woman named Feevah. Philip and his new lover, Edith, plan to read the text and contemplate the long history of racism, sexual assault, and violence in his family; she believes that Sabine, too, “longs to understand his own family history.” Soon afterward, Philip gets into a fight with a stranger whom he thinks is sexually assaulting Carmen; after the police arrive, however, the stranger and Carmen falsely accuse Philip of rape and assault. In this emotionally resonant novel, Vicars expertly weaves together past and present events to construct a portrait of a troubled family. The narrative combines elements of mysteries and historical fiction, while also developing realistic relationships that feel authentic. The transitions between the past and present accounts are sometimes abrupt, but it offers readers welcome respites while never abandoning the essential plot. Readers may question the role of characters who are portrayed as seducers and manipulators; however, the novel as a whole expertly portrays the effects of assault and violence.
A well-crafted, suspenseful novel that highlights difficult historical themes.Pub Date: July 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781917214094
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Bloodhound Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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