With help from an unlikely ally, a hard-boiled Israeli battles renascent fascists to a bloody standstill throughout Italy in another (his tenth) slick thriller from Easterman (The Night of the Apocalypse, 1995, etc.) Yosef Abuhatseria, a militant Sephardic Jew who served in one of Israel's elite antiterrorist units and later settled in the Occupied Territories, arrives in Sardinia at the request of his brother-in-law, a hotelier whose son Yoel has been abducted. Aided by Maryam Shumayyil, a comely Arab ÇmigrÇ who serves as his interpreter, the Moroccan-born Yosef manages to rescue the missing child from a mountain hideaway (leaving four bodies behind). There's no reunion, however, because unknown parties have brutally murdered Yoel's parents. After delivering the traumatized youngster to family members in Israel, Yosef is unofficially encouraged by Mossad to delve more deeply into the puzzling case. Further killings and several attempts on his life convince him that he's uncovered crucial pieces of a wide-ranging conspiracy. Having become ardent lovers under the threat of mortal perils, Yosef and Maryam evade their pursuers long enough to reach the mainland, where they join forces with a Jewish self-defense group in Turin. This band of irregulars has been gathering evidence against a revisionist historian on trial for claiming that the Holocaust never happened. His suspicions confirmed, Yosef is drawn into a deadly endgame that pits him against an aging SS officer bent on establishing a new, racially pure Reich throughout Europe. Having survived a lethal encounter with his neo-Nazi foes in the subterranean caverns that underlie Turin, however, Yosef finds that he's no longer capable of virulent hatred—for Palestinians or any other presumptive enemy. At the close, Yosef and Maryam leave for an uncertain future together. An absorbingly far-fetched tale that blends tomorrow-the-world villains with heroic protagonists. Notable for above-average complexities, exotic locales, and a wealth of slam-bang action.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-109206-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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