A worthy addition to the fiction of western exploration pioneered (so to speak) by Vardis Fisher and Frederic Manfred. And...
John Wesley Powell’s explorations of the Colorado Territory and Grand Canyon provide the narrative core of Vernon’s richly detailed fifth novel, a historical saga closely akin to his earlier La Salle (1986) and Peter Doyle (1991).
The story begins and ends with Powell’s letters home to his wife Emma, with whom he had previously ventured into the southwest desert, several years after serving in the Union Army, and losing an arm to injuries sustained during the battle of Shiloh. In 1869, he sets out again, leading a party of eight volunteers whose (efficiently distinguished) members include “Wes’s” sturdy brother Walter, scholarly cartographer Oramel Howland, and taciturn, quick-tempered Bill Dunn (who’ll become Powell’s chief antagonist, as hardships and internecine tensions multiply). “If the professor could only study geology, he’d be content to live without food or shelter,” Powell’s men complain. In fact, he’s driven by his scientist’s curiosity about the wild, near-pristine country they travel through: specifically, about “the riddle of rivers cutting through mountains” (which he eventually solves). Vernon juxtaposes the story of Powell’s embattled voyage against that of a tribe of Paiute Indians on a “dangerous hunt” and subsequent trek undertaken to evade their enemies the Navajo and strengthen their own numbers—a plan that puts them on a collision course with the white explorers. The Paiute passages do somewhat dissipate the force of the novel’s primary actions—despite the vivid figures of introspective warrior Toab and his expedient brother Onchok (who sells his children for badly needed rifles), and some beautifully realized scenes in which Paiute religious and cultural practices are effectively dramatized. No matter: the lengthy account of the Powell party’s arduous passage through “the great unknown” (i.e., Grand Canyon) refocuses the reader’s attention, stunningly.
A worthy addition to the fiction of western exploration pioneered (so to speak) by Vardis Fisher and Frederic Manfred. And Vernon’s best yet.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-10940-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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