An atmospheric, intimate Depression-era family portrait with three distinct, engaging characters.
Whitney’s historical drama vividly captures the fears, desperation, and fortitude of a tightly knit Michigan farm family, depicted through the lives of a trio of sisters enduring the Great Depression.
Three narrators take turns recounting the events of a traumatic year on the Yoder farm. The alternating voices of very imaginative 7-year-old Nellie, narcissistic 11-year-old Irene, and superresponsible 16-year-old Flora reflect the differences in not only their ages, but in their temperaments. It is 1934, and Nellie has completed her last chore—sewing a button on her dress. She is now allowed to run off to greet the farm animals she loves and to explore the woods leading to the creek. On the way, as she fantasizes about finding buried treasure, she spots a small dirt mound. Perhaps this is where she will discover hidden jewels. She begins digging, and to her horror, she uncovers a “TINY BLUE-BLACK HAND.” Terrified, she races home. The sheriff is called and discovers a dead baby. Irene doubts the story since Nellie “gets things mixed up all the time.” But Flora organizes the girls into a club to secretly learn more about the infant’s identity and cause of death. The mystery runs through the entire novel, but it is only one of a series of disturbing incidents. Two girls from a neighboring town have disappeared; a drunk brute breaks into the Yoder food cellar; seedy preacher Brother Johnson arrives on the scene; and Nellie’s life is threatened. This gives the narrative sufficient action, but its greater strength rests with the sisters’ accounts of the simple day-to-day realities of Depression life. Ma and Pa are afraid they will not be able to pay their mortgage or taxes, and customers no longer have money to buy even eggs. And there is never enough food. “Bread, potatoes, and beans are what we eat,” says Flora, which lends special poignancy to the fact that Ma hands out bean sandwiches to the hungry young “train riders.” Unfortunately, the book contains many disparaging references to the Roma people.
An atmospheric, intimate Depression-era family portrait with three distinct, engaging characters.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-70401-990-1
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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