A brisk epic wrapped in a character-driven mystery that historical fiction fans will savor.
A Civil War puzzle perplexes a pair of museum archivists in this novel.
As in Steinmetz’s debut, Codename: Sob Story (2013), the author reaches back into America’s history in this work to spin a story bringing the past into vivid focus. Breanne Walker, a Pennsylvania archival preservationist with the Gettysburg National Military Park’s museum, is summoned one night to investigate a 150-year-old white oak “witness tree” suddenly struck by lightning in a freak summer storm. The tree once stood on the famous Civil War battleground but has now been toppled, and, within the exposed roots, Breanne and her boss, Greg Ransome, discover the human remains of a Confederate soldier and a tattered diary. Assigned by Greg to this confidential archival project, she breathlessly focuses on the historic journal, written in 1863 and with just the author’s identifying initials. The diary’s verbatim contents run alongside Breanne’s swift carbon dating and DNA analysis, and this combination sparks notes of mystery and tension. Breanne has a short amount of time to research the body and the book before media outlets demand answers. In addition, if controlling Gettysburg lead archivist Peggy Cupples discovers Breanne doing the Battle of Gettysburg work meant for her tier of command at the museum, she will lose her job. The intriguing diary serves as a comprehensive, heavily detailed origin story, relating the life of farmer and medical midwife Abigail Pritchard, who was caught in an arranged marriage. She lived on the property where the battle took place; the “oppressive and frightening” warfare erupted all around her. With dogged research and the aid of enigmatic dreams, Breanne quickly puts all the clues together and digs deep into historical Civil War data. Events become a lot more complex before Breanne realizes the politics involved in her investigation and the moral choice she must make as a result of her findings. Extensively researched, Steinmetz’s novel opens a window to the past and creates an intelligent and authentic character in Breanne. Embedded in her preservationist vocation is an immersive history lesson, spotlighting women’s roles in the Civil War. The author is a talented writer who is most proficient at fast-paced prose and a plot that fuses history with suspense.
A brisk epic wrapped in a character-driven mystery that historical fiction fans will savor.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63837-274-5
Page Count: 508
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
