A heartfelt, harrowing, and engrossing tale set during the Reconstruction era.
A historical novel focuses on a doctor’s apprentice in Illinois after the Civil War.
As in many of the penny dreadfuls Tom Slocum loves, his adventure starts with the arrival of a mysterious stranger in town. This man turns the teenager’s community of Sandy Ford upside down. Amid the turmoil, 15-year-old Tom discovers that the enemies of freedom may be in his own backyard—and that it often takes sharper skills to save a life than to end one. From the moment Dr. Robert Steele arrives on the Daisy Belleferry in 1871, Tom’s life is forever changed. Though admired for his healing skills, Steele fans the flames of controversy with his advocacy for peace and modern sensibilities in the Ku Klux Klan–controlled town. Recognizing Tom’s potential as a doctor, Steele makes him his apprentice, sharing his medical wisdom and introducing him to a broader world. But with this new knowledge comes danger, and Tom finds himself targeted by the Klan. When Tom’s father dies, a corrupt bureaucrat confines the teen to an orphanage that’s fueled by forced labor. Compelled to escape, Tom finds shelter with a Black family, reuniting with Steele and further stoking conflict with the local Klansmen. When the Klan’s leader is shot, Tom learns to set aside the ideals of a gunslinger and assume the mantle of a healer. Rife with examples of racism and religious hypocrisy, Raffensperger’s depiction of life in the post–Civil War Midwest may upend cherished notions of the freedom proffered by the American government of the time. Contextualizing these struggles against the backdrop of the brutality of war and its aftermath, the story calls into question the justification of systematized violence—extolling instead the power of education and true charity. But the author offers more than a thoughtful political story. Filled with excitement, intriguing medical interventions, and the triumph of forbidden love, the gripping historical adventure will delight readers.
A heartfelt, harrowing, and engrossing tale set during the Reconstruction era.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68235-519-0
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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