A major first novel that will delight history buffs and Civil War aficionados.
This debut historical novel traces the fortunes of Confederate Cpl. Gabriel Masters, from his wounding in one of the final battles of the Civil War, through his physical and psychological trials and epiphanies during Reconstruction and beyond.
In a skillfully written prologue, an aging Masters sits “upon a rather simple rocking chair.” It’s Christmas Eve, 1917, and he thinks back to an earlier Christmas Eve, in 1864, when he stood guard in North Carolina and pondered the fires of the Union camp across the field. Hawkins, a lifelong Civil War buff and reenactor, is at his best here, capturing the look and feel of the period where matches are called lucifers, chicory stands in for coffee and the smell of wood smoke and wet wool permeates military encampments. He beautifully crafts his characters, and their dialogue is lively and genuine. Readers will feel their tension as they await combat, and when battle finally comes, it’s realistic and gritty. Through attrition, Masters soon rises to the rank of lieutenant during the fray. He’s hit in the leg by canister shot, and while he waits with other wounded comrades to be treated, he meets Nurse Clare Samuels, a woman whom Masters idealizes. After he’s sent to a makeshift hospital, he learns that his family and fiancee have been brutally murdered by Union soldiers and that the Confederate cause he’s fought for is all but lost. He bonds with Captain Mirreaux, a New Orleans horse breeder and vintner, who plays a significant role in Masters’ future. Masters later wanders the ruins of the Confederacy and finds success helping Mirreaux revive his business and starting a California vineyard. As the novel progresses, his view of the world and the war matures. The novel does have occasionally awkward dialogue attributions, such as, “asked his ebony friend” and “further asked Gabe.” However, this riveting novel, told from the Confederate point of view, offers a timely counterpoint to the current revival of interest in Abraham Lincoln, and delivers well-written historical exposition, intriguing plot twists and even well-developed minor characters.
A major first novel that will delight history buffs and Civil War aficionados.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-1439208472
Page Count: 630
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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