Sharp research meets vivid storytelling in an absorbing novel of the postwar period.
American author Schrader’s historical series-starter charts the events preceding the Berlin airlift from a European perspective.
The author’s Bridge to Tomorrow trilogy examines how the Berlin airlift, a colossal operation to counter the Soviet blockade of the German capital, was a pivotal moment between the post–World War II and Cold War eras. This first installment covers the period between late 1947 and June 1948, when the international crisis first began. Royal Air Force Wing Commander Robert Priestman is a British flying ace with a past reputation for “irresponsible aerobatics” and a playboy image. Priestman accepts the new role of station commander at RAF Gatow, Berlin, which will become the world’s busiest airport. He relocates to Germany with his wife, Emily Priestman, who’s also a pilot; she contributed to the war effort by delivering service aircraft. Among other characters headed for Berlin is David Goldman, who, after receiving a sizeable inheritance, is intent on operating an air ambulance business from the city, and RAF Flight Sergeant Kathleen Hart, a war widow and single parent who’s also been assigned to Berlin; she leaves England in the hope of finding love. The characters find the crime-ridden postwar city in ruins, and the threat from the Soviet Sector of Berlin is clear. Priestman must deal with Soviet fighter planes repeatedly harassing RAF aircraft; a tragedy results in an international crisis, and it seems as if another world war could be on the horizon.
Schrader is a sharply descriptive writer who captures the atmosphere and minute details of life in postwar Berlin with photographic precision: “Behind façades shorn of plaster, people existed more than lived. They cooked a little food over a wood-burning stove, crowded around a radio, perhaps, or read by the light of a bulb dangling from the ceiling.” The author’s research is impressive; in her historical notes, for example, she highlights her quest to pin down an accurate date for the construction of Gatow’s concrete runway. The novel ambitiously juggles several major characters, and the author ably handles the tricky task of making each well rounded and psychologically believable. She provides in-depth background information that reveals not only the various players’ pasts, but also their understanding of one another. In a description of the relationship between Priestman and his spouse, for instance, Schrader writes that “he had never been able to talk to her about being a prisoner, about how it made him feel naked, worthless and helpless. He’d certainly never told her about the brutality he’d experienced on recapture.” One minor criticism is that the author spends much of the first half of the novel simply introducing people, which becomes somewhat programmatic. Although this process could have been more smoothly integrated, one can make a case for its necessity, given the trilogy’s vast scope. Overall, this is a smart and compelling read, punctuated by gripping aerial sequences, political tension, and a dash of romance. It will likely have military fiction fans clamoring for the next installment.
Sharp research meets vivid storytelling in an absorbing novel of the postwar period.Pub Date: June 15, 2023
ISBN: 979-8987177006
Page Count: 516
Publisher: Cross Seas Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
