A wonderfully concise distillation of one of the greatest advocates of republicanism.
A novelistic depiction of the famed politician and orator Cicero’s lifetime of devotion to the Roman Republic.
As depicted here, Marcus Tullius Cicero is born in 106 B.C.E. in the rural province of Arpino, and he’s an unhealthy baby, expected to die soon after his birth. He survives, although he’s plagued by sickness throughout his childhood and bullied by his peers. In Cicero’s late teens, Gaius Marius takes over the top position of Roman consul and refuses to relinquish power. Lucius Cornelius Sulla organizes an army to oppose his despotic designs. Cicero joins this army out of loyalty to the republic, ascends the ranks due to his sharp strategic mind, and eventually becomes Sulla’s trusted adviser. However, Sulla has tyrannical ambitions of his own, and when he announces his plan to storm Rome after the death of Marius and his henchman, Cinna, Cicero protests and returns home to Rome. He becomes a lawyer and rises to notoriety after he takes a case defending the unpopular Sextus Roscius, who’s accused of murdering his father; in this telling, Cicero proves that Sextus was framed by Lucius Sergius Catiline. Cicero is expelled from Rome as a result and made quaestor of Sicily; there, he opposes the local governor, who bilks his citizens through illegal taxation. Cicero eventually returns to Rome and becomes a senator, and he successfully opposes the power-hungry Catiline for the seat of consul. However, his career never quite recovers politically—he’s simply made too many enemies. Debut author Martin vividly captures Cicero’s unflagging commitment to the republic of Rome in this fictional dramatization. The prose is straightforward and unembellished but powerful, and the author mostly maintains historical accuracy, with some occasional storytelling license. The author also includes a riveting subplot about Cicero’s friendship with Julius Caesar, whose own fidelity to republicanism wasn’t nearly as uncompromising as Cicero’s. The novel is part of the Barbera Foundation’s Mentor Project series, dedicated to the portraiture of historically significant Italians. Besides its biographical content, its depiction of Cicero also movingly captures his stoical composure in the face of grave danger.
A wonderfully concise distillation of one of the greatest advocates of republicanism.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-03-4
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Barbera Foundation, Inc.
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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