A satisfying Nazi/Cold War potboiler by the author of The Original Sin (1992) that turns on the heat at the start and doesn't let up until the kettle shrieks 592 pages later. World War II has just ended. A beautiful peasant girl in Italy dies giving birth to an illegitimate daughter, Catarina, while a man named Joseph tries to convince the Russians in charge of a Displaced Persons camp in Latvia that he is an American and should be sent home. Meanwhile, David, a seductive but penniless Englishman home from the war, reels in Evelyn, a woman with the money and connections he's been waiting for. Then we're back to the future in 1992. A glamorous Vail resort director named Kate (the grown-up Catarina, as it turns out) is engrossed in researching an American POW who disappeared into the Soviet gulag after the war- -while a shadowy figure sets a sadistic killer on Kate's trail. The killer catches up to her, ransacking her house and leaving her in a coma. Kate's daughter Anna, an investigative reporter, arrives to coax her mother back to consciousness, and stays to find out who her mother was looking for and who tried to have her killed. It all leads back to Joseph and David, as the story continues to unfold in both the past (with engrossing descriptions of wartime and postwar hardship and romance) and the present (with lots of formulaic romance and heavy-handed villainy). Anna switches with dizzying speed from intrigue to interior decorating as she puzzles out her mother's mystery with the help of Philip Westward, a suave millionaire she doesn't quite trust but falls madly in love with. It's all a bit much at times, as Anna remarks to her still- unconscious mother: ``Life's a bitch. You in here, Evelyn dying all alone in England. And I'm in love with the most wonderful man I've ever known. And I'm so happy, so sad, so confused.'' But she rallies and, with Philip's help, manages to survive an over-the-top encounter with an aging Nazi and solve her mother's mystery—and Philip's—both of which have to do with false identities and missing fathers. Despite the usual genre cliches and an occasional jarring note of sexism, this is a well-paced and engaging read.
Pub Date: March 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-553-08988-9
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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