Stepakoff uses this sliver of history well, but the romance between Maria and James seems irrelevant (and frankly less...
Stepakoff’s latest throws together America’s burgeoning space program, Nazi scientists and a talented violinist in a Nicholas Sparks–style romance.
Huntsville, Ala., circa 1957, was an interesting place. In the heart of the segregated South, it was beginning to hear the rumbles of the civil rights movement. It was also home to a unique aerospace program, one manned almost exclusively by former German SS officers. At the close of World War II, there was a race to capture the famed Nazi rocket scientists—both the U.S. and the Soviets wanted them. Under their leader, Wernher Von Braun, the group went to the U.S. with all their secrets, and the U.S. government sanitized their past. Twelve years later, in Huntsville, the space race is on—the Soviets have launched Sputnik and now the Germans are to help launch the United States’ own rocket satellite into space. Maria Reinhardt is contributing in her own way: An accomplished violinist, she and some friends have founded a local symphony. With her 12-year-old son Peter away at school and her husband, Hans, working in the lab, she has ample opportunity to revisit her past, which included American pilot James Cooper. Their brief end-of-war affair was unforgettable, but when the Allied forces came, Maria left with Hans (her older second cousin) rather than wait for James and risk capture by the Soviets. At the symphony’s first recital, she spots James Cooper, in Huntsville as a test pilot. What prevents Maria from running away with James is her belief that Hans is a good man. But is he? Her friend Sabine makes a chilling discovery: Her own husband has hidden a chest of gold—in the form of wedding bands and gold fillings—in their bomb shelter. What about Hans? Did he know his munitions lab was attached to a notorious labor camp? If she finds out the wretched truth, will she run away with James?
Stepakoff uses this sliver of history well, but the romance between Maria and James seems irrelevant (and frankly less interesting than Maria’s moral dilemmas), which is a bad sign for a romantic novel.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00109-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hannah, after eight paperbacks, abandons her successful time-travelers for a hardcover life of kitchen-sink romance. Everyone must have got the Olympic Peninsula memo for this spring because, as of this reading, authors Hannah, Nora Roberts, and JoAnn Ross have all placed their newest romances in or near the Quinault rain forest. Here, 40ish Annie Colwater, returns to Washington State after her husband, high-powered Los Angeles lawyer Blake, tells her he’s found another (younger) woman and wants a divorce. Although a Stanford graduate, Annie has known only a life of perfect wifedom: matching Blake’s ties to his suits and cooking meals from Gourmet magazine. What is she to do with her shattered life? Well, she returns to dad’s house in the small town of Mystic, cuts off all her hair (for a different look), and goes to work as a nanny for lawman Nick Delacroix, whose wife has committed suicide, whose young daughter Izzy refuses to speak, and who himself has descended into despair and alcoholism. Annie spruces up Nick’s home on Mystic Lake and sends “Izzy-bear” back into speech mode. And, after Nick begins attending AA meetings, she and he become lovers. Still, when Annie learns that she’s pregnant not with Nick’s but with Blake’s child, she heads back to her empty life in the Malibu Colony. The baby arrives prematurely, and mean-spirited Blake doesn’t even stick around to support his wife. At this point, it’s perfectly clear to Annie—and the reader—that she’s justified in taking her newborn daughter and driving back north. Hannah’s characters indulge in so many stages of the weeps, from glassy eyes to flat-out sobs, that tear ducts are almost bound to stay dry. (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild/Doubleday book club selections)
Pub Date: March 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60249-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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