An enjoyable read with a strong protagonist and a trove of historical nuggets.
A historical novel follows the early life of an Irish girl who immigrates with her family to New York City.
In 1889, 7-year-old Rose O’Brien travels to Dublin and steps aboard the Furnessia steamship, bound for a future that promises new opportunities. Her father, Charles, has already made the trip, and now she, her mother, and her three younger brothers are about to join him in New York. Charles meets them at the Castle Garden immigration center—Ellis Island will not open until 1892—and brings them to a Manhattan tenement apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. The family rejoices in the reunion, and Rose begins to make friends with the ethnically and nationally diverse immigrant kids in the area. (Her “building was filled with children of all ages….They tumbled down the stairs and sat on the stoop.”) Rose meets young Anthony Vigliano, who lives in her building and will become pivotal in her life. Then, just a few months after the O’Briens’ arrival, the “Russian Flu” brings tragedy to the family when Rose’s mother succumbs to the raging virus. Fortunately, Jenny Himmelfarb, a woman working with the outreach program run by the Neighborhood Guild, comes into their lives and arranges for Rose and her eldest brother, Maurice, to register for public school. Himmelfarb’s continued involvement with the family opens the door to the children’s integration into American life. McCann’s gentle novel is narrated by Rose in a charming and optimistic voice supporting women’s equality that carries a tinge of Hallmark gloss in the descriptions of the opportunities offered and successes achieved by the immigrant kids in her circle. The narrative moves pleasantly and episodically through a decade and a half of Rose’s growth into womanhood. Although light in significant dramatic tension, the tale richly overflows with everyday details of turn-of-the-20th-century life in New York, including the social and political movements of the period. And despite Rose’s commitment to becoming a nurse—which, according to the standards of the day, means remaining single and chaste—her budding romance with Anthony keeps the story intriguing.
An enjoyable read with a strong protagonist and a trove of historical nuggets.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2022
ISBN: 9780578273464
Page Count: 482
Publisher: Hazel Wand Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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