A historical novel that’s more history than story.
A government official fights for impoverished workers in Jiwen’s latest historical novel, inspired by the life of Song dynasty Prime Minister Fan Zhongyan.
Minor bureaucrat Fan Zhongyan arrives at the salt harvest fields of Yancheng to start his new job as manager of the Xixi Salt Warehouse. Suddenly, tragedy strikes. A tsunami rages in from the Yellow Sea and demolishes almost everything in its path, including many lives and months of hard work. Fan Zhongyan survives and quickly learns that tsunamis are only one of the problems that plague the salt workers. The Chinese government’s salt monopoly prohibits the workers from quitting their jobs and forces them to adhere to strict production quotas—even if their lands have been ruined by a tsunami. Fan Zhongyan discovers that the region used to be protected by a sea wall. Building a new sea wall becomes his crusade, but he knows that he will not achieve it without a “detailed and perfect” plan. As he works on his blueprints, he wins over the salt workers by persuading the provincial government to eliminate the salt quota. He then improves the workers’ lives in multiple ways while reducing corruption and pushing the central government to approve the building of the sea wall. In the process, however, Fan Zhongyan neglects his personal life and his health, much to the chagrin of his mother and trusted servants. Although he eventually marries, he nearly sabotages his marriage by meeting with an important official instead of traveling to pick up his fiancee before the wedding. Fan Zhongyan’s hard work is rewarded when he is promoted to be a magistrate and given the authority to construct the sea wall, but he lacks funding for the project. Will Fan Zhongyan find the money to build the sea wall and protect the salt workers? The author’s research is impeccable, and her knowledge of ancient China and salt-making is apparent on every page. That being said, thinly drawn characters and anachronisms like you guys;in a story that takes place a thousand years ago make it difficult to sustain interest in Fan Zhongyan’s struggles.
A historical novel that’s more history than story.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-911890-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© 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.
