Packed with vivid details, this tale delivers a real treat for Middle Ages history buffs.
The title character of this historical novel about the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 14th century is determined to earn respect—not to mention renown—and to become legitimate after a fashion.
In this fourth installment of a series, readers meet Archie Douglas, the Black Douglas’ bastard son, at the age of 9. David, the young king of Scotland, is scarcely older, and the court is in France in exile. Archie believes that some people think he is “unimportant” because he is a bastard and vows to “prove them wrong. They would see what a bastard could do.” He is put under the care of Sir William Douglas, Lord Liddesdale, a cousin of Archie’s deceased father. Eventually, Archie will become Sir William’s squire and later much more. The story’s action comprises a series of clashes, mostly victorious for Archie’s side, until the fateful Battle of Neville’s Cross. King David and Sir William are captured, and Archie and his friend Will Ramsay make a daring escape. Things could hardly look worse, but Tomlin assures readers that there will be another volume. The author has a slew of books to her credit, and this one does not disappoint. Archie, who narrates, is a strong character, alternately fearless and terrified (as one would be in his situation), and proud Sir William, his mentor, is not even afraid to stand up to the king if he feels he has been ill-used. Descriptions are vibrant and violence is a given. These people play for keeps. Historical details are accurate, including the accounts of a tournament that the English host during a temporary truce and the joyful welcoming of King David on his return to Scotland. The rich backmatter features the sources researched (very impressive) and a discussion that separates the historical facts from the liberties that Tomlin has taken. This is much appreciated, but even so, the plethora of characters and often similar names invite confusion. There is also a valuable glossary. Unfortunately, some terms—hobelar, au outrance, and schiltron, for example—are missing from the list. That said, the author has done a remarkable job with a mare’s nest of historical material.
Packed with vivid details, this tale delivers a real treat for Middle Ages history buffs.Pub Date: May 4, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-8172-1447-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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