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THE TUBMAN COMMAND

Name: THE TUBMAN COMMAND
Author: Elizabeth Cobbs
ISBN: 978-1-948924-34-4

by Elizabeth Cobbs ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2019

A stirring fictional tribute to an American icon.

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Cobbs' (The Hamilton Affair, 2016, etc.) third novel follows Harriet Tubman as she leads a crucial raid on behalf of the Union Army.

This novel veers away from what Tubman is primarily known for: engineering the Underground Railroad and smuggling, often single-handedly, fugitive slaves from the South to the North. Now, Tubman, aka Moses, is assisting Union troops hoping to turn the tide of the Civil War, which, as of May 1863, the North is losing. Up to now, there has been a hands-off policy toward civilian property, but it has dawned on the war office that Southern plantations constitute an unbroken supply chain for the “Secesh” resistance. A disastrous defeat in Charleston harbor has led certain officers, notably Col. Montgomery and Gen. Hunter, to espouse a new approach—crippling the slavery-based agrarian economy. Tubman and her small band of escaped slaves volunteer as scouts for a pivotal mission that forms the throughline of this novel: They are to guide U.S. gunboats, carrying 300 black soldiers, from their base on Port Royal Island to the South Carolina coast. On landing, Union forces intend to free hundreds of slaves and destroy the rice harvest. But to further this goal, the scouts must first determine the exact locations of underwater mines planted by the Rebels. Under cover of night, Tubman twice sneaks behind enemy lines to a plantation to gain intel and alert the enslaved. Tubman’s world is vividly brought to life as we see her go about her daily routines: making gingerbread, befriending a cat, taking on humble duties in a military hospital. She is extolled by abolitionists in the North but still greeted with some suspicion on the part of the white Union military. Re-creating the speech patterns and culture of black and white characters alike, Cobbs strives for verisimilitude while avoiding caricature. Although Cobbs allows her heroine a brief love affair, her treatment of her protagonist is so reverential as to render Moses almost superhuman.

A stirring fictional tribute to an American icon.

Pub Date: May 7, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-948924-34-4

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Arcade

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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FEARLESS WOMEN
by Elizabeth Cobbs

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THE HELLO GIRLS
by Elizabeth Cobbs

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THE HAMILTON AFFAIR
by Elizabeth Cobbs

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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SHOGUN

by James Clavell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1975

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In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.