A captivating and skillfully constructed weaving of history and romantic drama.
A novel set in Harlem during the early 1960s explores competing factions in the civil rights movement.
Jason Tanner has just made a momentous decision. Sitting at a table in Atlanta’s Paschal’s Restaurant with the major leaders of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protest campaign—including a young man named John Lewis, who would become a civil rights icon— Jason volunteers to set up a grassroots outreach storefront in New York City. His parents are not pleased that their eldest child, who had never stepped foot outside of Georgia until he joined King’s march on Washington, D.C., is heading up north to a city filled with danger. Meanwhile, in that very city, Anita Hopkins, born in Brooklyn, is attending a Malcolm X rally. “You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution,” he intones. Anita cheers along with the crowd, handing out leaflets and encouraging his supporters. In September 1963, Jason boards the bus from Atlanta to New York. As passengers disembark at a Philadelphia rest stop, he strikes up a conversation with a beautiful young woman sitting across the aisle. And so the “do-gooder” Georgia boy meets the fiery, street-wise city girl. Their first encounter does not end well. Hill’s enjoyable, well-paced, and deftly structured novel, which features historical photographs, is filled with musical allusions, including a Christmas Motown spectacular at the Apollo Theater. Her descriptions of the sights, aromas, and tempo of Harlem—the ’60s Northern Black cultural and intellectual center—in all its diversity, are vivid and reflected through two strong, fully drawn protagonists. They are opposite sides of a coin—he is shy and uncertain about his future in New York; she is an exuberant poet with a beautiful voice. He is gentle, speaking in a soft Southern cadence; she is passionate and edgy. He is a pacifist; she is a militant. But the vibrancy of Harlem, the excitement of listening to Anita read her poetry at the B-Flat nightclub, and a magnetic connection that keeps each in the other’s thoughts eventually work their magic in this powerful tale.
A captivating and skillfully constructed weaving of history and romantic drama.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64063-829-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sideways Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A thoughtful portrait of one revolutionary’s remarkable resilience, far from home.
One of Mexico’s greatest political leaders enters his wilderness years in the rough streets of New Orleans just before the U.S. Civil War.
In an abbreviated but essential preface, Herrera explains how future president of Mexico Benito Juárez came to live in New Orleans for two years beginning in 1853. Having already served as governor of his home state of Oaxaca but long before he will hold off an invasion by France, he’s been sent into exile by political rival General Santa Anna, along with his brother-in-law Pepe Maza. No one living knows what happened to Juárez in the Big Easy, so Herrera’s suppositions are well grounded between history and creative license. Asked by a new friend what brings him to town, Juárez replies drily, “A slight diversion, a delta, you might say.” Even though Juárez is intimately familiar with Mexico’s brand of corruption, he’s unprepared to be beaten and robbed by the police upon arrival. He’s even less prepared for the realities of an American slave trade at its height. “These people farm people, they breed humans captured at birth,” Herrera writes. “These people fatten up their children, their own children, and then sell them.” The narrative is populated with real historical figures like fellow reformers Melchor Ocampo and Ponciano Arriaga, with one memorable scene featuring a concert on 10 pianos by American composer Louis Gottschalk. In fact, there’s a surprising richness to the milieu of a story mostly about meetings and letter writing. The New Orleans depicted here is carnivalesque, and the surreal spectacle of bear fights, spontaneous parades, and clandestine meetings, added to Benito’s colorful dreams about liberation and justice, give the story a vibrant, almost hallucinatory feel. Meanwhile, Herrera’s portrait of a leader in exile—rolling cigars, printing pamphlets, and plotting a revolution from the sidelines—depicts the frustrating dichotomy Juárez experiences between his lowly circumstances and his dreams of a better nation.
A thoughtful portrait of one revolutionary’s remarkable resilience, far from home.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781644453070
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Vivid characters populate a riveting narrative.
A Dickensian world revisited.
Historical fiction writer Epstein rescues Dickens’ Fagin from his reputation as a slimy character who exploits orphans, training them in thievery in the clotted, filthy streets of Victorian London. Epstein’s Jacob Fagin is a lonely, emotionally wounded man; a master pickpocket to be sure, but also a victim of virulent antisemitism from all classes of English society, which treats the “skinny red-haired Jew” as vermin. Growing up in poverty in a Jewish enclave with a vigilant, caring mother, he takes Hebrew lessons with a neighborhood rabbi in the mornings, and, by the time he’s 11, wheedles his way into becoming the apprentice to a deft, gaudy pickpocket. It’s a skill, he realizes, “he must learn by doing,” and soon practice perfects his sleight of hand. He’s 16 when his mother dies, succumbing to whatever pestilence has swept through their mean streets—cholera, typhus, consumption, scarlet fever, influenza—and he’s left homeless. Epstein traces his fortunes and misfortunes as he manages to survive, settling into an abandoned building that becomes a refuge for orphans and runaways who want to learn his trade: Jack Dawkins, known as the Artful Dodger; Toby Crackit; Charley Bates; briefly, Oliver Twist; and the incorrigible Bill Sikes, who’s fled an abusive, alcoholic father. Sikes graduates from pickpocket to housebreaker, from a swaggering boy to a violent man so filled with anger that Jacob comes to fear for his life. Epstein captures the bravado and vulnerabilities of Jacob’s motley crew of orphans, and the gritty ambience of the alleys, cellars, and seedy pubs they inhabit. She brings to her portrait of Fagin—and even Sikes—a tenderness and empathy that renders them as palpable: men, haunted by loss, longing to be loved.
Vivid characters populate a riveting narrative.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780385550703
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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