This rollicking romp seamlessly blends characters, history, and adventure into an enjoyable read.
One of America’s greatest tinkerers learns that not all inventions are good ideas.
If an author is going to write a speculative novel, why not start with a folk hero like Thomas Alva Edison, who contributed so much to modern life? Church’s tale begins in 1887, when Edison is inspired to create an unusual invention after attending—with Mark Twain—a séance by the psychic Madame Blavatsky. The story then jumps ahead to 1918 during World War I. Edison has asked his assistant, John Dawkins, to direct a movie in New Jersey featuring Ziegfeld star Emily Auburn and music by her young accompanist, George Gershwin. The production is attacked by Germans on a military mission. Edison tells John that the Germans are “spies” who want “to sabotage my greatest invention.” The Germans later destroy Edison’s resurrector, a device that communicates with the dead. Seeking to escape the Germans, Edison and his party flee to his secret lab in a Seminole village in Florida, where he keeps a second copy of the resurrector. They are captured by a U-boat while attempting to outrun the Germans on Edison’s electric launch. They are taken to Germany, where they discover that a spy inside Edison’s company has built a deficient version of the resurrector, which the inventor is now expected to fix. The group must find a way to escape and warn some newly arrived American troops of a planned German ambush. Like Emily, Church delightfully sings in this rip-roaring novel. He artfully weaves together real-life characters like Edison and Gershwin with fictional ones, including John and Emily, to create a gripping adventure. The author utilizes Edison’s longtime passion for creating a machine that talks with the dead, placing it at the heart of this story. Lending an authenticity to the backdrop of the caper are Edison’s inventions, both successes and failures. With the exception of the wily inventor, the main characters undergo transformations during the turmoil. Church has even introduced a romance between John and Emily, which becomes the primary motivation for both players. The German officers are predictably venal but distinctive. Following a tragic twist, the book’s conclusion still points toward a hopeful future.
This rollicking romp seamlessly blends characters, history, and adventure into an enjoyable read.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-32484-5
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Ferrisville Publications
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© 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.
