An intriguing, poetic rum-running tale that’s hampered by a surplus of characters and subplots.
A historical novel tells the story of bootleggers operating on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during Prohibition.
In 1920, Biloxi, Mississippi, is referred to as the “Seafood Capital of the World.” But behind this moniker exists a town that thrives on illegal rum-running activity. At the center of this perilous underworld is Theodore Desporte, a man who, in 1874, snatched control of his father’s packing plant and built an empire founded on seafood and contraband. The town is rife with corruption, and even Biloxi Police Chief George Bills is open to cutting deals with the bootleggers. Theodore has firm plans to pass control of the town to his son, Ernest. But Ernest is unwilling to act as his father’s puppet and is keen to run things his own way. The novel also tells the story of those who man the rum-running ships that arrive in Biloxi from various locations in the Caribbean. As competition escalates, the Gulf of Mexico sees the rise of piracy, with contraband liquor being taken at gunpoint. One of the victims of piracy is the first officer of the Sea Glen, John Martin, who later becomes a captain hell-bent on taking revenge on those who pillaged his ship. As powerful forces struggle for control of Biloxi and the sea, Assistant Attorney General Mabel Willebrandt arrives in town—she’s famous for her “ongoing battles to fight the demon liquor.” Can Biloxi remain a bootleggers’ paradise and, if so, who will control the town?
Byrd’s ambitious narrative is punctuated with passages of contemplatively poetic descriptions: “Silence is not the word for what happens between the conversations on a sailboat. The water sloshes as it breaks against the hull. The wind whistles softly as it fills the sails.” The author also exhibits a firm grasp of Biloxi’s history, with real-life figures, such as Mayor John Kennedy, making cameo appearances. Unfortunately, too many characters crowd the plot, making for unnecessary confusion. For instance, numerous players called John are included. Furthermore, the author rarely writes memorable introductions for his characters, causing readers to repeatedly check back to ascertain who’s who. When Byrd simply mentions “Desporte” in the story, it is sometimes unclear whether he is referring to the father or the son. The chapters are frustratingly short, meaning the narrative never rests in one location for long, making for a fragmented tale. Still, Byrd manages to generate a high degree of suspense, such as the buildup to Martin’s ship being ransacked. Unfortunately, the author evades describing the action by having Martin knocked out, only to awaken after the raid is over. Byrd often misses the opportunity to inject energy into a novel that features quiet plotting and insufficient drama. A story that reveals the internal workings of liquor-running during Prohibition—from the kingpins to the smugglers they command—is an enticing premise. But with the book’s numerous subplots and countless players, there is a sense that Byrd is trying to juggle too many balls at once, resulting in a difficult and often perplexing read.
An intriguing, poetic rum-running tale that’s hampered by a surplus of characters and subplots.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 285
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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