A fascinating historical drama.
In Bockian’s historical novel, a young woman in 17th-century Italy sets out to learn what really happened after her beloved brother is murdered.
In the year 1672, Yehudit Baldosa Parenzo is a widow in her mid-30s living in the Ghetto of Venice (located in Italy’s Cannaregio district and currently considered the oldest Jewish ghetto in the world). Her world crumbles when she discovers that her beloved brother, an unassuming merchant named Mordechai, has been found dead with his throat slit and his body burned. Obsessed with finding out who murdered her brother and why it was done, Yehudit plunges into an increasingly labyrinthine investigation that takes her through Mordechai’s last days. Uncovering his involvement with an increasingly fractured “Garden” group that regularly debates holy texts (“It often seemed to him that in the layers upon layers of texts and commentaries, the practice of explicating words was as central to Ebraismo [Judaism] as the belief in one God”) and his apparent plan to run away to Amsterdam with his courtesan lover, Yehudit is left to wonder: How well did she really know her brother? And what barriers is she willing to break in order to find and speak the truth? Bockian crafts an intricate story set against the backdrop of the arrival of Shabbetai Tsvi (a man who claimed to be the Messiah) and the revolutionary writings of the “heretic” Benedict Spinoza. The author compellingly contrasts Yehudit’s personal journey to resilience and personal strength with her brother’s experiences (via flashbacks) as they both push back against tradition. The sheer amount of historical detail makes for a dense text that may overwhelm more casual readers, but the story (based on true events) includes enough twists and turns to move forward at an engaging pace. With a capable narrative voice that explains without lecturing, Bockian effectively explores timeless themes of religion, family, and societal expectations.
A fascinating historical drama.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798218667931
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Künraht Press
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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