A historically astute and compelling must-read.
It Tracey’s historical novel, set in early-18th-century Massachusetts, a young Puritan widow named Silence Marsh is sentenced to a year of silence.
Silence was recently married to a good, loving man, Constable David Marsh, whose rank gave her the title of “Mistress,” rather than the more common “Goodwife,” and she has a kind and prosperous extended family. However, within a six-month span, her mother, her husband, and her infant daughter all die. At a Sabbath meeting, while listening to a typical Puritan fire-and-brimstone sermon, she loses her composure—screaming and cursing a seemingly capricious God who chose to punish her with such tragedy. For this sacrilege, she receives several punishments, with the final one being that she must not speak for a calendar year; to further atone, she voluntarily refuses even to write messages. From here on, the story focuses on Silence’s personal struggle with her conscience; however, she does still have friends, including a talented Boston apothecary, Mrs. Greenleaf, who looks after Silence’s failing health. So does the apothecary’s son, Daniel Greenleaf, who recently graduated from Harvard with a medical degree and does wonders for “Mistress Tacit,” as he teasingly calls Silence. Young Zuriel Hobart, who’s badly abused by her stepmother and desperate for a friend, becomes Silence’s protégé in the household arts. It all comes to a head when Zuriel accuses her truly wicked stepmother of witchcraft—a situation that drags Silence in and tests her mettle. Readers will be likely be shaken and enraged by the final scenes. Tracey, the author of The Bereaved (2023), is a remarkable writer, and this book is another triumph. The character of Silence is a wonderful creation who endures a life suffering, doubt, and blazing anger, and readers will be invested in her fate. The archaic language and fine detail relate what it was like to live in a typical household of the time, all the household practices of everyday life, and how, for example, to prepare for long winters: “Withal, the apples have been cut and dried, the apple-butter crocked, the cider pressed. Crane-berries and wild grape are gathered and dried.”
A historically astute and compelling must-read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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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