A fantastical adventure/romance that most effectively celebrates the Lone Star State’s raw beauty.
An heir to a Texas ranch goes missing after stumbling upon a group of people living in caves on its grounds.
Twenty-two-year-old Emma Rosales is riding her horse Honey-Boy through the Thorn, her family’s Texas ranch, which is “a million acres and larger than the cities of Los Angeles and New York City combined.” She’s an only child and her family’s sole heir and, having just graduated from college, is ready to pick up the reins of ranch life. She’s saddened, however, that her classmate and crush Jeff Bower seems more interested in the ranch than her. During her outing, Honey-Boy falls and breaks his leg, forcing Emma to put him down. Now injured and struggling on foot, she crawls into a cave to sleep and soon discovers the People, who’ve long been “living life as if it were the sixteenth century.” Emma is held captive by the People for several months; the eldest leader, Chatpa, introduces her to grandson Kai, who wins the honor of being Emma’s husband. Emma and Kai are attracted to each other but remain chaste, instead bonding over their love of nature and healing methods. When illness and death invade the camp, the People blame Emma, who’s feverish herself. She begs Kai to help her return home to her despairing parents back at the Thorn. This novel is an adventure saga in which Emma comes to increasingly appreciate the People’s ways the longer she lives with them. The book also works as a winning wish-fulfillment romance, as sensitive, sexy Kai makes for an excellent alternative to loutish Jeff. The book’s alternations between the past and present, and the third-person perspectives of multiple characters, help to create some suspense before it arrives at its fairy tale–like conclusion. The novel’s most striking element, however, is its depiction of its Texas setting, encompassing awe-inspiring red sandstone cliffs and wild horses as well as the threats of rattlesnakes and raging thunderstorms.
A fantastical adventure/romance that most effectively celebrates the Lone Star State’s raw beauty.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955836-13-5
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Admission Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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