An entertaining blend of intrigue and romance, but the spycraft disappoints.
In this historical novel, set during the Revolutionary War, a young Philadelphia woman takes on the dangerous job of spying for the patriots.
Eighteen-year-old Sarah Champion is a dutiful parson’s daughter, so when she’s sent from her Connecticut home to help her aunt, Elizabeth Sage, in Philadelphia, she makes no protest. When Sarah arrives, in September 1777, Mrs. Sage informs her that she plans to give her fine clothing, teach her deportment, and bring her into society, which puts the young woman in a moral quandary. Her twin brother, James, was killed fighting for Gen. George Washington; now she’s living among Loyalists and must often bite her tongue to stay polite. Meanwhile, Capt. Andrew Warren is trying to develop a spy network for Gen. Washington. He wants to find a woman who’d be welcomed at Gen. Sir William Howe’s parties, where she can overhear useful information—someone like Sarah. She agrees and proves herself to be both brave and determined, but she finds herself in danger from Capt. Ian Jamieson, a blackguard British officer. Meanwhile, she becomes close to the kind, humorous Capt. Charles Colborne, Sir William’s aide. As the British withdraw from Philadelphia in 1778, Sarah’s life undergoes major changes—and she’ll need every ounce of courage to survive a dramatic confrontation. West (Overkill, 2009, etc.) provides excellent ingredients in this well-told historical novel, including scheming, flirting, romance, and villainy. There is also some fine period detail that helps to set the scene, such as fashionable young ladies practicing papyrotamia (the art of paper cutting). However, the promising espionage theme isn’t very well-developed. There are no ciphers, no coded letters or invisible ink; indeed, Sarah gets only one real chance to tackle a mission while in disguise. Although some intriguing historical issues, such as back-alley abortion, are discussed, the novel misses out on an opportunity to more thoughtfully look at what the idea of independence means in a slave-owning society.
An entertaining blend of intrigue and romance, but the spycraft disappoints.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-943006-92-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2019
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
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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