A studied look at an oft-overlooked time period and the complex people who lived it.
Hearn’s historical novel chronicles conflict in California under Mexican rule.
It is 1846 in Alta, California. Guillermo Foxen, age 13, is out rounding up loose cattle when he comes across a troubling sight: American troops intruding on the Foxen family’s land, known as Rancho Tinaquaic. Guillermo quickly informs his father, Benjamin, who is originally from England and now goes by the name Don Julian. Don Julian thinks the best option is to help the Americans, and he and Guillermo set out to assist the military as they take back “the pueblos of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles from the Mexican rebels.” The decision is risky; if the Foxens are spotted helping Yankee scouts, they could be charged by Mexican officials with treason. (Not everyone in the area feels the U.S. troops are liberating the locals “from a neglectful Mexico.”) The journey itself is full of perils in this wild country; however, it is after Guillermo and Don Julian’s time on the trail that the real trouble begins. About halfway through the story, a treaty puts a hold on the official conflict—one hopeful character states, “Now life can return to normal,” but the real action is yet to come. While that action takes the narrative in new directions, the author is prone to scripting dull conversations: Characters often articulate what is already clear to the reader (and other characters), such as, “The Americano takeover has been a bitter pill for many of the paisanos, especially the old-timers.” The text comes alive when Hearn details the many dangers of life in 19th century California (Don Julian tells the tale of someone who died of blood poisoning after breaking their leg). The book also sheds light on a piece of California history that is not well known—Rancho Tinaquaic was a real place, and many of the main characters actually existed. The author effectively evokes their dangerous struggles.
A studied look at an oft-overlooked time period and the complex people who lived it.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9798886793642
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Luminare Press
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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