Though sometimes buckling under its own weight, this sprawling tale will charm fans of historical romance.
When Mauro Larrea is bankrupted by a business deal shattered by the American Civil War, he embarks on a great adventure to build his fortunes anew.
From Mexico City to Havana to Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, Dueñas’ (The Heart Has Its Reasons, 2012, etc.) sweeping tale of fortunes made and lost abounds with dramatic characters and operatic plot twists. Damsels in distress, devious femme fatales, conniving gamblers—all beset Mauro on his quest to make enough money in four months to pay off the uxorious moneylender Tadeo Carrús. Mauro is a self-made man, shaped by working the silver mines of Mexico. Tenacious and shrewd, he swiftly learned how to gamble on shady financing that enabled him to found his own companies. Losing everything doesn’t frighten Mauro. Yet at 47, he has more than himself to worry about: his daughter, Mariana, can fend for herself, concealing the bankruptcy from her mother-in-law, the Countess of Colima, until Mauro’s fortunes turn again, but his son, Nicolás, has not yet married Teresita, the daughter of Don Gorostiza, and the scandal may ruin his prospects. Mauro’s plans to seek a lucrative business deal in Cuba are complicated immediately by the Countess’ meddling and by Don Gorostiza’s insistence that Mauro deliver a small fortune to his sister, Carola. Carola wants Mauro to secretly invest it for her in an unsavory deal, but Mauro balks. Meanwhile, her husband, Zayas, challenges him to a duel at the billiard table. At stake are access to Carola and the possession of an estate and vineyard in the south of Spain, an estate Zayas inherited from his cousin Luisito, who died abruptly. Soon Mauro owns the estate, which introduces him to not only the bewitching and enigmatic Soledad Montalvo, but also the mysteries of the Montalvo-Gorostiza family saga.
Though sometimes buckling under its own weight, this sprawling tale will charm fans of historical romance.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2453-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.
Tremendous in scope—tremendous in depth of penetration—and as different a Steinbeck as the Steinbeck of Burning Bright was from the Steinbeck of The Grapes of Wrath.
Here is no saga of the underprivileged—no drama of social significance. Tenderness, which some felt was inherent in everything Steinbeck wrote, is muted almost to the vanishing point in this story of conflict within character, impact of character on character, of circumstances on personalities, of the difficult acceptance of individual choice as against the dominance of inherited traits. The philosophy is intimately interwoven with the pace of story, as he follows-from New England to California over some fifty odd years-the two families which hold stage center. There are the Trasks, brothers in two generations, strangely linked, strangely at war the one with the other; there are the Hamiltons (John Steinbeck's own forebears), a unique Irish born couple, the man an odd lovable sort of genius who never capitalizes on his ideas for himself, the tiny wife, tart, cold-and revealing now and again unexpected gentleness of spirit, the burgeoning family, as varied a tribe as could be found. And- on the periphery but integral to the deepening philosophy which motivates the story, there is the wise Chinese servant scholar and gentleman, who submerges his own goals to identify himself wholly with the needs of the desolate Adam Trask, crushed by his soulless wife's desertion, and the twin boys, Cal, violent, moody, basically strong enough to be himself—and Aron, gentle, unwilling to face disagreeable facts, beloved by all who met him. In counterpoint, the story follows too the murky career of Adam's wife, Cathy—who came to him from a mysteriously clouded past, and returned to a role for which she was suited—as a costly whore, and later as Madame in Salinas most corrupt "house," where the perversions of sex ridden males were catered to—and cruelty capitalized upon.Shock techniques applied with rapier and not bludgeon will rule the book out for the tender-skinned.
But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1952
ISBN: 0142004235
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1952
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
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