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DEAR MRS. LINDBERGH

Name: DEAR MRS. LINDBERGH
Author: Kathleen Hughes
ISBN: 0-393-05785-2

by Kathleen Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2003

On balance, an often touching tale of lovable grandparents that reads too much like a biography.

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An Iowa farm girl who becomes the wife of an early aviator finds lifetime inspiration in the parallel track of Anne Morrow Lindbergh—in Hughes’s biographically nostalgic first novel.

Hughes recounts in flashback the story of a marriage begun in the ’30s and concluded sadly with the disappearance of the couple in their 80s on a round-the-world flying trip. Only daughter Ruth Sheehan of Cedar Bluff, Iowa, wants desperately to go to college and do something with her life, but she’s stuck out on the farm with her stern, aging parents when the young Air Mail pilot Henry Gutterson falls from the sky and into their cornfield. Ruth’s parents won’t pay for college and, indeed, expect nothing more from their daughter than that she marry a farmer and inherit their land. In letters to barnstormer Ruth Law, then to Mrs. Lindbergh, wife of world-famous Charles Lindbergh, Ruth vents her frustration—yet she falls in love with Henry and marries him gladly, since it’s through him and his stories of flying that Ruth sees the world. Hughes’s straightforward, rather bland narrative is told alternately from Ruth’s and then Henry’s point of view (as when a paralyzing depression seizes Ruth upon the death of her second child), and, much later, from their grown children’s: John and Margaret, who must piece together the puzzle of their missing parents. Poignantly, Ruth’s letters to Mrs. Lindbergh—who also navigated for her husband, then suffered the tragic loss of a child—fill in the emotional core of Ruth’s life as she finds peace in her incompletion. “She was always feeling, feeling, feeling,” Mrs. Lindbergh writes in the one reply—too late!—that she does send. Hughes’s tale aims to tear-jerk, but before tears the reader has to wrestle with a lot of dull accumulated detritus and not terrifically compelling prose.

On balance, an often touching tale of lovable grandparents that reads too much like a biography.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-393-05785-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

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Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.