An arresting and unpredictable tale of family.
In Hauck’s historical novel set in 1960s Europe, a British woman’s fiance goes missing, and she goes on a journey to Italy that reveals shocking truths.
In 1964, Everleigh is a 26-year-old woman living in London—a self-described “plain Jane” who works as a typist. Her betrothed, Gualtiero, is anything but plain, and he regales her with tales of his small hometown, Vigevano, and his vivacious, loving family that enjoys “enormous feasts that last for hours.” However, a month before their wedding, Gualtiero vanishes without a word of warning and takes with him half of the money they had saved for an upcoming trip to Italy. Both hurt and bewildered, Everleigh makes the bold decision—one uncharacteristic of this timid, unworldly woman—to travel to Italy in search of her fiance. When she arrives at his family’s home, though, she quickly realizes they’ve never heard of her—and even worse, the only Gualtiero among their ranks is not the one to whom she was engaged. Overall, this is a moving novel that’s one part mystery and one part gripping psychological drama, and Hauck’s writing style has a straightforward simplicity that makes the story’s revelations feel all the more powerful. With remarkable subtlety and suspense, the author chronicles Everleigh’s attempt to figure out not only where Gualtiero is, but who he is, with no clues other than letters that his cousin wrote to him. She befriends local young women Marta and Olivia; their lives are connected by despair—Olivia’s brother, Bernardo, was presumed dead in an accident, although his body was never found; he left Marta, his wife, a widow and single mother. As the search for Gualtiero intensifies, all three women are forced to confront the extraordinary truth about their sadly interconnected lives. The author also shows how Everleigh is pushed into an emotional confrontation with her mother over the death of her father during the war—a trauma that is never discussed forthrightly and provides drama that is poignantly depicted by the author.
An arresting and unpredictable tale of family.Pub Date: July 6, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Olive Rose Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 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
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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