A captivating tale about a Scottish family’s turbulent journey.
In this historical novel, a family strives for a new and better existence after the Scottish defeat in the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
Following their battlefield victory, the English forces are determined to punish the remaining Highlanders by burning their crops, killing or seizing their livestock, and pressuring them to flee. The Scottish MacKenzies, Donald and Morag and their children, eventually make it to the coast. But that proves to be just a respite with little future, so off they sail to the New World, specifically Virginia (on the way, their younger daughter dies and is buried at sea). Because they could not pay in full for the passage, Donald becomes indentured and treated no better than an enslaved person, while the rest of the family is taken in by a kindly widow, Mistress MacDiarmid (aka “Missiemac”), on her tiny farm. Robbie MacKenzie, not yet 13 years old, becomes the man of the house. The clan’s overriding goal is to save enough money to free Donald. Besides helping on the farm for room and board, Morag gets work in a tavern and Robbie in a print shop. Life is in many ways good to them; Donald is only a few miles away, so they can visit and keep up his spirits because his daily existence on a plantation is beyond cruel. But many tribulations lie ahead. Rodger is a very earnest writer. Her prose is somewhat arch, often reminding readers of an earlier time, as if she were channeling James Fenimore Cooper. For example: “Great was the need to replenish the fluids expended in the brawl” and “An amused twinkle” flitted “over his countenance at the youthful exuberance.” And there is almost a mismatch between some truly horrific and well-handled scenes of violence and misery, like the episodes below deck on the voyage, the brutalities on the plantation, and Morag’s almost dying in a blizzard (rescued by her son and the family’s heroic collie, Roy), and the happy events and developments. The upbeat episodes can be sentimental and tear-jerking (Dickens would be proud). Rodger is determined that her virtuous characters get what they deserve, even if it means obvious manipulation. Still, this is a story with a heart that will enchant readers who are willing to embrace the author’s feel-good liberties.
A captivating tale about a Scottish family’s turbulent journey.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2018
ISBN: 9781732585409
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Lillibett Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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