Melodramatic contrivances test the reader’s credulity, but appealing characters and a deft, non-linear structure generate...
Baker’s sprawling debut recounts the woes of a wealthy Midwestern family from the turn of the 20th century to the dawn of the 1950s.
The imposing, vacant Mickelson house attracts the attention of 20-year-old housewife Dolly Magnuson when she arrives in Pine Rapids, Wis., in 1950. Her husband Byron, part owner of a Chrysler dealership, is content with their undistinguished bungalow, but Dolly, ambivalent about a life of dutifully following Good Housekeeping recipes and other dictates for happy homemaking, dreams of restoring and someday owning the Mickelson mansion. She pieces together its history while attending gossipy meetings of the local Ladies Aid and befriends one of the family’s youngest and most troubled members. The narrative circles back to follow a second story line beginning in 1896, when newlyweds John and Wilma Mickelson move into the house built by his father, Knute, a Norwegian immigrant who amassed a fortune in the lumber industry. Wilma, a talented pianist who sacrificed school for marriage, is instantly smitten with her brother-in-law Gust, and he with her. Although they repress their desires, her less-than-wifely feelings torment Wilma, especially after Gust dies in a logging accident. Years later, her grief is compounded when favorite son Chase joins the Marines with his older brother Jack and is killed in World War I. Built on land that may be cursed, the house seems to doom successive generations to lucklessness in love. Jack’s daughter Elissa falls for a Southern corporal who unwittingly holds a catastrophic family secret; her alcoholic brother JJ, who lost part of his leg in World War II, has an unsettling effect on his Uncle Harry’s fiancée—and on Dolly, when she meets him. But Dolly and JJ, as well as the other remaining Mickelsons, may yet find the means to forge their own destinies.
Melodramatic contrivances test the reader’s credulity, but appealing characters and a deft, non-linear structure generate interest and suspense.Pub Date: July 17, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-6635-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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