An engaging and morally thoughtful tale of a tumultuous time in American history.
In this novel set just before the Civil War, a young man grows up fast traveling with his abolitionist church congregation through Illinois in hopes of reaching Kansas.
In 1858, Addison J. Freeman’s biggest problem is romantic—he desperately pines to marry the beautiful Lizbeth Waverly. But his father, Adolph, the deacon of Addison’s Illinois church, refuses to grant his permission. Addison’s life gets considerably more complicated when Preacher Larrimer peremptorily announces that the entire congregation of the Found Church is moving to Kansas in order to support keeping the territory free from slavery. Larrimer condemns slavery as an abomination and considers the self-exile to Kansas a “holy crusade.” He convinces his flock to back the establishment of the New Found Grace Church in “Bloody Kansas.” Yet the journey across Illinois is a perilous one—the crusaders encounter all manners of hostility, including virulently pro-slavery advocates. Addison is made a wagon train scout and quickly shows an uncommon talent for it. He finds himself regularly confronted with the kind of violence that weighs heavily on the soul: “Addison asked himself, when you kill a man, or three, how in blue blazes do you talk about it? Or think about it? Or deal with it? Other than running away from it.” Later, though, he begins to develop a taste for killing, an astonishing transformation powerfully depicted by Zerr. The author astutely portrays the volatility of the time in the United States and the ways in which slavery was a political and moral tinderbox. Addison’s maturation (or moral descent) is intriguing, especially when contrasted with the uncompromising pacifism of his father. There is also a leavening element of soap-operatic, romantic entanglement—while Addison continues to long for Lizbeth, she marries Orson Seiling, an unserious man that the scout considers a “giant three-year-old.” This is an unusually entertaining novel given its impressive historical gravity.
An engaging and morally thoughtful tale of a tumultuous time in American history.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955177-53-5
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Primix Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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