Classic elements of Southern comedy—evil twins, people dropping dead, a faith healer, a river-rafting trip—surround a...
This chain-smoking, margarita-swilling, varmint-shooting 68-year-old with secrets in her past is nothing like the other moms in town—and her 10-year-old daughter is terrified of losing her.
Willow Havens was conceived “in something close to a bona fide miracle, when [Polly Havens] and her soon-to-be-late husband of thirty-seven years consummated their love for the last time.” Three days after the funeral, Polly, in her late 50s at that point, learned she was pregnant. Advised by her doctor to terminate the pregnancy, she advised him to drop dead. Five months later, Willow was born, and Polly raises her the same way she raised her first two, long since grown and gone: “Folksy southern wisdom and distinctly custom-made punishments.” But Willow is worried. “What tormented me most, even more than [her]secrets, were her cigarettes.” Polly works as a checker at Walgreens, but her real calling is her flower and vegetable garden, “which encompassed most of our front and back yards” and is the source of epic feuds with squirrels and other "varmints" ranging from beetles, stinkbugs, and squirrels to the neighbors’ pets and the neighbors themselves. Hepinstall’s (Blue Asylum, 2012, etc.) lively story follows the pair into Willow’s teen years, when her best friend, Dalton, becomes a boyfriend and she starts to spend time with girls who have very different lives: mothers with Fendi bags and Pilates classes and crews of Mexican workers cleaning their mansions. Willow’s brother Shel comes home from Mexico, where he’s been nursing his wounds since his wife dumped him. When Willow suggests he try internet dating, Polly wonders what he’ll put in his profile. “Drunk, hates women, no job, lives with mother?” When Polly comes down with a case of the Bear, which is the family’s word for cancer, Willow’s worst fears take shape.
Classic elements of Southern comedy—evil twins, people dropping dead, a faith healer, a river-rafting trip—surround a lovable pair of central characters.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56209-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
