An intriguing novel about a woman developing her stance on women’s rights over the course of America’s history.
In Fox’s (Lincoln’s Hand, 2013, etc.) historical drama, a woman cursed with immortality dedicates her eternal life to ensuring that a female candidate makes it into the White House.
Television producer Eve Skellar prefers not to draw attention to herself. She fears that she’d be the subject of unwanted scrutiny if people knew that she’s 300 years old, courtesy of a witch’s curse in the early 18th century. But after Eve steps in front of a bullet to save a presidential candidate, Gov. Judy Rhodes, all eyes are on her—particularly those of dogged Los Angeles Post reporter Tom Evanger. He’s fascinated by the enigmatic Eve, particularly when he finds that her history prior to her TV work doesn’t seem to exist. When his boss assigns his story on the governor to someone else, he becomes obsessed with uncovering the TV producer’s secret. As he closes in on the truth, Eve, who’s spent centuries watching men belittle women, becomes determined to help Judy win the impending election. Fox’s novel, despite its supernatural element, focuses mainly on Eve’s struggles throughout history. Immortality, in fact, turns out to be just another obstacle for her to overcome in her life; previously, she faced Redcoats coming ashore near her Cape Cod village in 1777 and a plane crash in the 1950s. The overall story remarkably blends real-life historical events with those of Eve’s own life. The Rev. Cotton Mather, for instance, makes an appearance in 1717 to accuse her of bewitching the Zarrago, a sunken ship whose late captain, the reputed pirate Marcus Nash, was the love of Eve’s long life. The steadily paced novel alternates between the present day and various points in the preceding centuries, but it racks up the suspense as it nears its end: Tom’s suspicions grow as Eve continually dodges questions and interview requests, and a Harvard history professor gets dangerously close to locating the Zarrago’s aquatic remains. Readers learn very little about Gov. Rhodes, so it may be hard for them to sympathize when a lobbyist tries to blackmail her for an affair she had a decade ago. However, she ably represents Eve’s ultimate goal. The immortal woman’s steadfastness and stoicism are admirable traits, and she retains them all the way to the wholly satisfying ending.
An intriguing novel about a woman developing her stance on women’s rights over the course of America’s history.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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