A thoughtful but meandering family tale.
An archaeologist wrestles with a cascade of emotionally challenging problems and makes a potentially significant historical discovery in this debut novel.
While on an archaeological dig in Israel, Adam Drascher, a professor of religious studies, examines a piece of ceramic collected by an eager graduate student named Maggie. It turns out to be a spectacular find: an eighth-century piece adorned with an ancient Hebrew inscription that refers to a group that called itself the “Healers” and lived in the Holy Land before the Israelites. But Adam receives a troubling call that his grandfather Hank is terribly ill and that he should rush home to Queens. Danny Blumberg—a contemporary of Adam’s who was all but adopted by Hank when he became estranged from his own family—delivers the news, much to Adam’s chagrin, since he always resented the man’s closeness to his grandfather. Hank was like a father to both boys—after Adam’s parents died, he became the child’s custodian. Hank dies and leaves a cassette recording for Adam that reveals his suspicion that Danny is his brother, the result of his father’s adulterous affair. This is information Adam isn’t anxious to disclose. When Danny is arrested for brutally beating up his wife’s lover, Adam twists the truth of what happened to protect him, a loyal move that potentially places him in legal jeopardy, a complex moral conundrum intelligently depicted by Morris. Meanwhile, Adam struggles to make tenure, a predicament only worsened when his mentor, Claudia Renaud, takes sole credit for the artifact they jointly identified. The author artfully blends intriguing civilization history and personal drama—Adam intentionally excavates the former and is compelled by circumstances to confront the latter. His utter exasperation is movingly palpable: “I don’t break bones and put people in the hospital. I don’t conspire. I don’t ambush. I don’t get interrogated by the police, or kidnapped, or whatever the hell this is. But somehow, I’m waist deep in this shit.” While brimming with psychological nuances, the story is unfortunately weighed down by too many detours—a police officer investigating Danny sets Adam up with her niece on a blind date, an unlikely and unnecessary turn of events.
A thoughtful but meandering family tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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