A well-crafted page-turner for history buffs, Francophiles, and casual fiction fans alike.
In Flanders’ gripping historical novel, a Boston businessman searches for his missing brother in 1793 Paris as France teeters on the verge of implosion.
Twenty-nine-year-old merchant trader Calvin Tarkington arrives in the French capital during the turbulent summer after King Louis XVI’s execution. The country’s revolutionaries are breaking into rival factions, with distrust and paranoia settling into their ranks. Calvin is in the city to resolve some business matters with his older brother, Alexander, following their father’s death. But Alexander, who normally runs the Tarkingtons’ Paris trade, is nowhere to be found. Calvin quickly learns that his brother has come under suspicion of local authorities, who believe that Alexander was spying at the behest of England. Confident that his brother is innocent, Calvin enlists the help of the city’s American expatriate community to help locate him. In the process, he becomes enamored with Sarah Gomez Hays, the daring, dark-haired daughter of a Jewish-American businessman. However, due to their different faiths, Calvin’s prospects of a match with her seem as bleak as his chances of finding his brother. This novel is populated by a roster of well-researched and finely sketched historical figures, including boozy Thomas Paine, whose 1776 pamphlet Common Sense helped inspire the American Revolution and who had a hand in France’s uprising; Peter Ostiquette, an Oneida Native American brought to France by the Marquis de Lafayette; and the author and women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft. Calvin feels a touch flat in comparison to the vibrant characters that surround him; he’s a dusty scholar who’s forced to act the hero rather than a compelling hero in his own right. Flanders makes up for it, however, with his skillful narrative, striking a delicate balance between authentic, antique flavor and easy-to-read prose. As a result, he sets a fine 18th-century scene that won’t trip up 21st-century readers.
A well-crafted page-turner for history buffs, Francophiles, and casual fiction fans alike.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988784062
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Munroe Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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