Readers who persevere through the sparse beginning will progress to a more detailed and often heart-rending tale of pioneers...
Fictional diary entries tell the story of two couples who move west to forge new lives during the Reconstruction Era.
Nathan Carter and Rebecca Martin are living in Ohio when the Civil War erupts. Nathan, 13, is left in charge of his father’s store in Eaton when his dad and brothers leave to fight the secessionists. But Nathan dreams of becoming a farmer. Rebecca, 12, is being raised as a proper young lady, as her mother prods her to consider well-to-do suitors. But she has always been smitten with Nathan, whom she sees at the store periodically. He returns her affection and manages to win over her family and secure her hand in marriage. When he announces his intention to move out West with his beloved to farm, Rebecca’s mother is distraught. But Rebecca seems unconcerned about her parent’s worries about “savages.” The couple travel to Independence, Missouri, and join a wagon train, where they meet an older pair, Carl and Hannah Taylor. This is where the story really hits its stride. The journey west is challenging, but reaching their destination, a homestead in Kansas, fails to bring any solace to Rebecca—especially once she realizes she will be living in a house made of sod because there aren’t enough trees in the area to construct a cabin. This is perhaps the least of the trials that the couples will endure. Grief remains a constant throughout their lives. In Kansas-based author Zachgo’s (The Rocking Horse, 2011) historical novel, the prose style differs with every character. For example, Rebecca’s writing is genteel while Carl’s and Hannah’s offerings are less refined. Rebecca’s entries in the beginning of the work are much shorter than Nathan’s and she gets more development through his chronicles than her own. But when the action moves to the prairie, her character gains dimension and her struggles deftly illustrate the loneliness and dangers of life there. At times, these strong passages are wrenching to read. The addition of the Taylors further expands the absorbing story.
Readers who persevere through the sparse beginning will progress to a more detailed and often heart-rending tale of pioneers homesteading in Kansas after the Civil War.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5023-7668-8
Page Count: 406
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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