A captivating saga that finds deep emotional resonances in quiet scenes of family life.
A woman caring for her dying mother probes her dead father’s infidelity and a string of bicycle thefts in Boulden’s luminous novel.
Rose Webster, a Philadelphia photojournalist, returns to her girlhood home of Lake Amelia, New York, when her mother Carly takes a bad fall after fainting. When Carly is diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, she opts to forgo treatment in favor of in-home hospice care. Much of the book fleshes out well-observed caregiving procedures as Rose (herself nursing a broken arm suffered when she was covering a strike) devotedly tends to sleeping arrangements, meds, and meals for the fading Carly. The compulsively curious Rose also makes time to delve into a rash of stolen bicycle reports that are being investigated by Maxi Stover, a by-the-book deputy sheriff whom Rose befriends and pumps for information about the thefts. At the same time, Rose explores a more intimate mystery when she unearths evidence of her deceased father Randall’s adulterous relationship with a woman with the initials KNT; when she asks Carly and her Aunt Tess about the affair, they angrily shut down her questions. Rose continues her own sleuthing and discovers answers that upend her understanding of her family’s history. Boulden’s story presents small-scale but beguiling mysteries backgrounded by a vibrant portrait of a small town that’s both warmly close-knit and slightly claustrophobic. It’s also a meditation on family love, loss, and remembrance, conveyed in plangent prose grounded in rich, concrete detail: “Her mom’s chin rested on her chest, lulled to sleep by the gentle motion of the car, the passing view out the window of summer-green trees and open fields, and perhaps the acceptance of what lay ahead.” Readers will root for Rose as she seeks out truths that are as likely to wound as to heal.
A captivating saga that finds deep emotional resonances in quiet scenes of family life.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798986038438
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Pine Place Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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