A touching tale of young love during wartime.
A group of young people grow up in the shadow of World War I in this historical novel.
This seventh book in Cheatham’s Covington Chronicles focuses primarily on four characters: a young woman named Trudy; her first love, Jeremy; her brother, Will; and his friend Lance.In a series of interconnected vignettes, the author explores this quartet’s coming-of-age during a tumultuous time. Trudy and Jeremy are childhood sweethearts “as close as ribbon cane syrup and pancakes,” but distance strains their romance when they both leave their small Mississippi town to attend college. Will’s roommate, Lance, captures Trudy’s heart, and with the Great War looming, a quick, secret wedding ceremony is arranged. Lance and Will head to the front in France, and Jeremy follows as a war correspondent (he can’t enlist, due to a heart murmur). The boys contend with the horrors of the conflict, which they relate in letters home in as much detail as the censors allow. Meanwhile, Trudy contends with her own challenges at home, including an unexpected pregnancy and the ravages of an influenza pandemic. Cheatham’s novel moves along briskly as she chronicles the tough choices that her protagonists face as well as their moments of joy. Real historical events such as the Battle of Belleau Wood are incorporated into the story; Gen. John J. Pershing even makes an appearance, taking Jeremy under his wing and sharing pithy wisdom on life and love: “If you love her, tell her how you feel,” he advises the ambitious reporter. Although the dilemmas faced by Trudy and company are specific to their time in history, the emotions involved are universal, from Trudy’s fear and shame when she discovers her pregnancy to Jeremy’s worry that he’s blown his chance with the woman he loves. Less realistic is the anachronistic behavior of some characters, such as Trudy’s parents’ unfazed reaction to the news of her secret marriage and pregnancy, which hardly seems typical for 1918.
A touching tale of young love during wartime.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Southeast Media Productions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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