A gripping blend of dramatic fiction and historical portraiture.
In the second installment of a historical fiction series, a man finds himself perilously embroiled in the Texas Revolution.
In 1836, Texas settlers are in open revolt against the Mexican government, attempting to establish independence. Zebadiah Creed joins the cause, enlisting in the New Orleans Greys, still reeling from the murders of his parents by the Lakota and of his brother, Jonathan, by “bushwhackin’ thieves.” Zebadiah and his pal Grainger make their way to San Antonio, but their fort at the Alamo is in grave danger, soon to be overtaken by a sea of Mexican soldiers. Both men are tasked with a dangerous mission: delivering a letter to Gen. Sam Houston urgently requesting support. But the Alamo seems increasingly doomed, and Zebadiah and Granger are sent to solicit help from the impossibly arrogant Col. James Fannin, who refuses to comply with the request or to wisely retreat when an overwhelming army of Mexican soldados arrives. Jackson’s sequel to An Eye for an Eye (2017) combines a riveting, briskly paced tale of adventure with a historically nuanced peek at the conflict—the Texans see themselves as freedom fighters while the Mexican government considers the group invaders. The plot can become overly convoluted as well as implausible—at one juncture, Zebadiah seems to believe he can negotiate a peaceful cease-fire with a Mexican general by making him a gift of his Bowie knife, a proposition even he seems embarrassed by later. Still, Zebadiah is a captivatingly nuanced character, murderously angry but morally principled. And as Deaf Smith, another soldier, observes, it’s not at all obvious why he’s there at all: “Are ya here ’cause God wants you to be here? Son, in a fight like this, ya gotta serve somebody or some higher purpose, else your just killin’ for no good reason at all.”
A gripping blend of dramatic fiction and historical portraiture.Pub Date: April 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4328-6850-5
Page Count: 297
Publisher: Five Star Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
An emotionally acute study of manliness.
Scenes from the life of a well-off but emotionally damaged man.
Szalay’s sixth novel is a study of István, who as a 15-year-old in Hungary is lured into a sexual relationship with a married neighbor; when he has a confrontation with the woman’s husband, the man falls down the stairs and dies. Add in stints in a juvenile facility and as a soldier in Iraq, and István enters his 20s almost completely stunted emotionally. (Saying much besides “Okay” sometimes seems utterly beyond him.) Fueled by id, libido, and street drugs, he seems destined to be a casualty until, while working as a bouncer at a London strip club, he helps rescue the owner of a security firm who’s been assaulted; soon, he’s hired as the driver for a tycoon and his wife, with whom he begins an affair. István is a fascinating character in a kind of negative sense—he’s intriguing for all the ways he fails to confront his trauma, all the missed opportunities to find deeper connections. To that end, Szalay’s prose is emotionally bare, deliberately clipped and declarative, evoking István’s unwillingness (or incapacity) to look inside himself; he occasionally consults with a therapist, but a relentless passivity keeps him from opening up much. His capacity to fail upwards eventually catches up with him, and the novel becomes a more standard story about betrayal and inheritances, but it also turns on small but meaningful moments of heroism that suggest a deeper character than somebody who, as someone suggests, “exemplif[ies] a primitive form of masculinity.” István’s relentlessly stony approach to existence grates at times—there are a few too many “okay”s in the dialogue—but Szalay’s distanced approach has its payoffs. Being closed off, like István, doesn’t close off the world, and at times has tragic consequences.
An emotionally acute study of manliness.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781982122799
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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