No doubt it's historically accurate, and it is certainly honestly told; however, it doesn't quite succeed as fiction
The title tells readers most of what they need to know.
In 1884, in Washington territory, very close to the Canadian border, a white man of questionable character was found murdered. A 14-year-old Native American boy named Louie Sam was framed for the crime, tracked down by a group of over 100 vigilantes and hanged—by happenstance, on the Canadian side of the line. Louie Sam's death remains the only lynching on Canadian soil. Stewart takes all the history she can find and works to craft a novel from it, but she's only partially successful. Her narrative character, a 15-year-old white boy named George Gillies, is a real-life person known to have witnessed Louie Sam's death. Her writing is clean and fluid and her attention to historical detail admirable. However, this story, constrained by history, does not follow a narrative arc, and Louie Sam cannot emerge as a character, in part because the author hesitates to express the feelings of the Native Americans. George seems to accept automatically the party line that Louie Sam must be a criminal. His very gradual conversion to Louie Sam's probable innocence isn't emotionally moving and has no effect on the story, which, because it follows historical truth, ends without any satisfying resolution.
No doubt it's historically accurate, and it is certainly honestly told; however, it doesn't quite succeed as fiction . (Historical fiction. 11-15)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-439-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Nebula Award–winner and Hugo-finalist Friesner disappointingly offers humdrum fare based on Greek mythology. Meet Helen of Sparta, not yet of Troy. True to Spartan history, she’s a strong female (literally), and prepped by her mother to one day be queen. Though it’s true that the real Helen was probably a legitimate wrestler, Friesner has her spunky, stubborn and contrarian heroine dressing as a boy to be trained in sword-fighting beside her brothers Castor and Polydeceus. She then sneaks off with them to participate in the historic hunt of the Calydonian Boar . . . and at the end of the volume, prepares readers for a sequel by tagging along with Jason’s Argonauts. Friesner uses these legends as a backdrop for a Xena Warrior Princess–type of character of 21st-century sensibilities—with entertaining and popular results, but not uniquely or distinctively, and without much respect for or elucidation of the actual mythology. Some may enjoy the romp. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-87528-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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