A vibrant, fast-paced, dialogue-heavy adventure that explores American history.
A historical novel focuses on major moments in America’s past.
Macijeski first takes readers to Pennsylvania in 1754. Johann Schultz is an indentured servant from Germany. After seven years of hard work, he is set to earn his freedom in 1755. When Johann ventures to Philadelphia to make purchases, he hears Benjamin Franklin advocating for America’s independence. Once Johann gains his personal liberation, he plans to free an enslaved person named Cuffy that he has worked alongside. But first Johann must survive action in the French and Indian War. It is just one of the many conflicts to come as the novel spans the 18th century to the present day. Everything from the Civil War to World War II and the Iraq War is featured, as different characters come and go. These characters, some of whom are the descendants of Johann, Cuffy, and other main players, experience the vast, difficult moments of American life. In addition to the various wars, the book examines an assortment of subjects. The westward expansion of the railroad and the rising popularity of jazz in the 1920s are just a few of the noncombatant domestic events. This swiftly paced, richly detailed survey is a grand undertaking. A lot is covered in under 400 pages. At different moments, the explanatory text helps move things along. This is the case with a period of World War I fighting that “came to be known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in late September and early October 1918.” The overall excitement stems from seeing what will happen to the main characters and their relatives. But those players do not always have intriguing things to say. For instance, one individual remarks “That was some sweet jazz” after witnessing King Oliver and the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band in action. The statement does not tell readers a lot about the music. Yet, even with some obvious assertions along the way, this whirlwind tour can certainly teach the audience many valuable historical lessons.
A vibrant, fast-paced, dialogue-heavy adventure that explores American history.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2020
ISBN: 9798580199122
Page Count: 358
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 22, 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
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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