A riveting tale about America’s most romanticized family.
A Polish-Jewish immigrant has a romantic affair with John F. Kennedy in this vivid historical novel.
Barbara Kopczysnka leaves Poland in the late 1940s and arrives fresh-faced and ambitious in Oklahoma. She changes her name to Alicia Darr and moves in with other displaced young women. When Irenka, one of her roommates, relocates to the East Coast, Alicia follows her to Hyannisport and secures a position as a maid to the boisterous Kennedy family. Each Kennedy seems quirkier than the next—from the stern and exacting Rose to her philandering and controlling husband, Joe. Yet none of the Kennedys is as magnetic or enchanting as the handsome, larger-than-life Jack. Alicia is immediately smitten, and to her great delight, her affections are returned. After a whirlwind courtship, the young Congressman proposes to Alicia. Unfortunately, Alicia’s old friend Irenka sells her out, alerting Joe that his son has proposed to a Jew. Concerned about the consequences of Alicia’s religious background on Jack’s political career, Joe forbids the marriage. Although Jack seems prepared to defy his father, Alicia understands that without Joe's blessing, the couple will never enjoy a truly successful marriage, so she ends the affair. The book then tracks Jack’s astronomical political ascent as well as the new life Alicia builds for herself in Hollywood. As the years pass, Jack simply cannot forget Alicia, and he continues to pursue her well into his married days. As the Kennedy family becomes increasingly powerful, Alicia’s position as Jack’s true love seems to put her in great danger. Based on true events from the life of American socialite Alicia Corning Clark, the story offers an alternate Kennedy family history that will leave readers wondering whether America knew the real JFK at all.
A riveting tale about America’s most romanticized family.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-10324-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A forced effort to leverage interest around the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this novel is a miss.
Perennial Broadway understudy Hazel Ripley and center-stage bombshell Maxine Mead formed a close bond as performers touring with the USO during World War ll. Now that they’ve been home for five years, can their friendship survive the McCarthy-era witch hunt for Communists in show business?
Davis (The Masterpiece, 2018, etc.) has built her brand crafting historical fiction set at New York landmarks like the Barbizon Hotel, the Dakota apartment building, and Grand Central Terminal. Now readers are taken behind the doors of the storied Chelsea Hotel, a creative oasis for artists and freethinkers, as Hazel and Maxine try to navigate the Broadway theater scene. While Hazel has never enjoyed success onstage, she discovers a talent for playwriting and directing. Her career is off to a promising start, especially since bestie Maxine has agreed to use her star power as a box office draw for Hazel’s show. Their drama unfolds offstage when both women are named on a list of Communist sympathizers and must testify about suspected anti-American activities. With a high-stakes storyline that should be tension-filled, the novel unfortunately features prose that is expository and flat. Maxine’s diary confessionals fail to give any insight into her inner life and seem only to serve as information downloads. Even revelations that should shock evoke a tepid response, probably because the buildup has been so noncompelling. Thankfully, Hazel’s relationships—with everyone from her mother to a private investigator working in tandem with the FBI—are more engaging and complex. Notably absent from the cast list, though, is the Chelsea Hotel itself. In Davis’ previous novels, the setting plays an integral role in the storyline. Here, though, the sparse descriptions of the site seem to be almost an afterthought. Hazel and Maxine could have been living at a Holiday Inn and it would have had no effect on the telling.
A forced effort to leverage interest around the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this novel is a miss.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4458-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Barenbaum has an eye for visual detail, but her story bogs down in sentiment, overplotting, and lecturing.
A young Jewish physicist in 1914 Russia wants to photograph a solar eclipse to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity while his sister, a doctor, struggles to ensure their survival.
Readers not steeped in physics may not be aware that a British astronomer proved Einstein’s theory after a 1919 solar eclipse. In Barenbaum’s first novel, a historical thriller about physics and the travail of Russian Jews, fictional physicist Vanya lives with his sister, Miri, and their grandmother Baba in Kovno, where anti-Semitic violence erupts regularly. Vanya has been promised a position at Harvard and a life in America for his family if he can prove Einstein’s theory with equations and photos of the coming eclipse. On the eve of war, Miri’s fiance, Yuri, secretly agrees to enlist for military duty in exchange for Miri’s promotion to surgeon at the hospital where he’s trained her. To escape an influential university colleague itching to appropriate his research, Vanya also enlists, heading off with Yuri to Riga, where he hopes to join an American physicist bringing the necessary camera to photograph the eclipse. Meanwhile, as the noose tightens around the Jewish community in Kovno, Mira and Baba escape with the help of Sasha, a Jewish soldier Miri has met under harrowing circumstances. Baba heads to St. Petersburg while Miri and Sasha set off to find Yuri and Vanya. Unbeknownst to Miri, the two have left Riga searching for the elusive American. The siblings separately face multiplying crises that begin to run together—several train incidents, several knife incidents, etc. Vanya unexpectedly bonds with Yuri while Miri, no surprise, is inescapably drawn to passionate, valiant Sasha. Too bad for her because Yuri’s careful self-control is misleading. In fact, while Miri and Vanya are annoyingly gifted as well as earnestly moral and Miri’s darling Sasha is typically dashing and heroic, Yuri evolves into Barenbaum’s one fully developed character, heartbreakingly full of human contradictions.
Barenbaum has an eye for visual detail, but her story bogs down in sentiment, overplotting, and lecturing.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4627-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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