This historical novel offers an unusual situation, but the trappings of the story are not as fresh.
A young Black woman in 19th-century London takes a job as a dying white man’s nurse and becomes an amateur detective.
In 1833, Hester Reeves arrives for the first day of a new job at a foreboding mansion called Tall Trees. Hester is 23, a free Black woman who uses the title “doctoress” to indicate her skills as an herbalist. Up to now, she has used those skills mainly to treat the city’s sex workers at King’s Cross, with the support of her kind husband, Jos. Hester’s mother has died, leaving her to care for Willa, her pretty and headstrong younger sister. Willa’s factory job has brought her to the attention of her rakish boss, and Hester wants to move her family out of the city, farther from such temptations. So she jumps at the chance to undertake the care of the wealthy Gervaise Cherville for a month, as he settles his affairs before moving to his country estate to live out his last days. Hester’s skills are suitable—Gervaise is dying of syphilis—and the pay generous enough to finance a move. She soon discovers Gervaise wants something more from her. Years ago, he brought several enslaved women from his family’s plantation in Honduras to London. They escaped, but he is haunted by them and wants Hester’s help to find out their fates. She proves to be a good detective, but her discovery of what happened to the women could ruin lives. Complicating the situation are Gervaise’s sternly protective housekeeper, Margaret, and his son, Rowland, the very man Hester hopes to distance Willa from, who is eager to get his hands on his father’s estate. The plot has some interesting turns, and Gervaise’s situation as an enslaver coming to terms with his behavior has potential. But the book suffers from stereotypes and limited character development; Hester is so unfailingly upright she can come off as priggish, while Rowland is such a stereotypical villain he almost twirls a mustache. But with brisk pacing and plentiful historical detail, it’s still an entertaining read.
This historical novel offers an unusual situation, but the trappings of the story are not as fresh.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780358627920
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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