A quiet, amiable read that extols the determination and fortitude of 19th-century Western settlers.
In Perkins’ historical novel, a young boy raised in an Illinois orphanage vows to one day see the Pacific Ocean.
George Seevers was born in Streator, Illinois, in 1859, and he was just 2 years old when he was sent to an orphanage. He was his parents’ unexpected third son, after his two older brothers lost their lives in the Civil War, and his father died from dysentery; his mother fell into a severe depression and could no longer care for him. For the next 13 years, George endures an arduous childhood marked by various kinds of labor, finding relief only through his love of reading. Stories about the Pacific Ocean inspire him, and he hopes to one day reach its shores. As he approaches his 15th birthday, he runs away, hops a freight car, and begins his journey west, landing in Rapid City in the Dakota Territory; he spends 10 months as a ranch cook there and then heads to Cheyenne in the Wyoming Territory, which turns out to be a turning point in his life when Fred Lewis hires him as his assistant in his hotel restaurant. Fred and his wife, Mary, have three daughters: 17-year-old Marie, 15-year-old Susan, and 10-year-old Jane. George enjoys cooking and baking, and he falls in love with Marie, who’s equally smitten with him. Their marriage provides George with a close extended family that will eventually travel with him to Portland, Oregon, and finally to Rawlings, in what will become Washington state. In unadorned, straightforward prose, Perkins presents a pleasant, engaging narrative of the American West. Despite a few crises here and a couple of tragic losses, the narrative features few surprises and little tension. Still, George is a fully developed character who will capture readers’ hearts, and they’ll enjoy the book’s intricate inside view of the development of the small town of Rawlings, which grows from an end-of-the-line railroad community into a burgeoning city. Overall, this is an uplifting family saga with plenty of optimism and warmth.
A quiet, amiable read that extols the determination and fortitude of 19th-century Western settlers.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9798890913401
Page Count: 346
Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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