An engaging work set in one of the most intriguing locales in Canadian history.
Canadian author Watt’s debut novel blends historical fiction and romance in a tale of two young lovers who brave the British assault on the French fortress of Louisbourg.
In 1744, Louisbourg sits on the island of Île-Royale (now Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia) as an isolated French outpost among British lands. Teenager Marie-Christine Lévesque and her brother, Nicolas, are French orphans, living with an aunt and her contemptuous, nobleman husband, Claude-Jean des Babineaux. Pierre Thibault, the son of a wealthy merchant, is smitten with Marie, but Claude disapproves of his family’s farming roots. Eventually, the British lay siege to the fortress, and Pierre seeks refuge in Quebec as an assistant to the procurator general. Marie goes back to France and lives in style and comfort but misses Louisbourg and Pierre; she also doesn’t want to marry an eligible French bachelor. Louisbourg falls into British hands but soon becomes French again, and Marie returns. Pierre’s law career is looking promising, but then an unknown villain has him arrested for army desertion even though he’s never enlisted. A panicked Marie goes on a long search for him, fearing that he may have been forced into military service or executed. She ends up in the care of her abusive uncle while Pierre languishes in prison. British warships gather, and Louisbourg comes under attack again, endangering Marie and Pierre’s future and that of New France. Watt’s well-researched novel has a spectacular choice of setting—an actual fortress from the time of the French colonization of North America. The novel succeeds in making the place come alive, remote as it is, with bustling streets, politics and drama, barrel after barrel of salted cod, and scrappy yet thunderous military battles. The romance elements won’t appeal to every reader, but they do parallel the important emotional connection that the people of New France had to North American communities, even by the 18th century. The rousing finale, set largely in a hospital during a constant bombardment, deftly balances the novel’s plotlines with period detail regarding war horrors and the era’s medical capabilities.
An engaging work set in one of the most intriguing locales in Canadian history.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77527-221-2
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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