A suspenseful and moving work of historical fiction set in a divided Germany.
A novel traces how the construction of the Berlin Wall affects a group of residents.
In the early hours of Aug. 13, 1961, Kirstin Beck leaves her house in East Berlin with the intention of seeking refuge in the city’s Western sector. Doing so means leaving behind her husband, an older college professor with strong socialist convictions, but opens the door to new freedoms away from the oppressive Communist government. Yet as she approaches the border, she finds it milling with guards and workmen. In the following days, as barbed wire blockades are being constructed, it becomes clear that the perimeter is closing for good. Like many others, Kirstin has family in West Berlin that she may never see again, including her aging grandmother. Her only remaining option is to seek help from an acquaintance on the other side of the wall, an American writer named Tony Marino. With his foreign passport, Tony is one of the few able to cross the border at will. After a series of clandestine meetings, he finds himself committed to helping Kirstin and several of her neighbors. Among their number are Dieter Katz, a student undergoing rehabilitation for an attempted escape, and Jacob Werner, a former Nazi doctor under government scrutiny. As the operation grows, the danger mounts, and the government seems to always be a step ahead of their plans. With Stasi (the East German secret police) informants hidden among friends and family, it is impossible to know for sure who can be trusted. Miller includes many well-researched historical details, crafting a rich and descriptive setting. While the harrowing story focuses mainly on Kirstin and Tony, the point of view often shifts to members of the supporting cast. This allows for insight into the minds of many characters without ever revealing their true motives. The novel’s romantic elements are well executed, introducing an endearing subplot and further increasing the emotional stakes. The writing is full of tension and excitement, with compelling and realistically rendered characters. Although the ending is perhaps too neat, the buildup is riveting.
A suspenseful and moving work of historical fiction set in a divided Germany.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-67386-263-8
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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