A captivating tale that should appeal to history buffs, period drama fans, and readers who want to learn about the War of...
A historical novel intertwines the adventures of an array of characters, recounting important events of the War of 1812 through multiple perspectives.
The story begins through the eyes of Lemuel Wyckliffe, a 16-year-old boy who joins a Kentucky militia with his father to avenge the deaths of his mother and sister, murdered at the hands of Native Americans. Almost immediately, Lemuel’s camp is ambushed and the reader is thrown into an action-packed scene of carnage, with no gory details spared. The following chapters cut to different perspectives, including that of Canadian Lt. George Sherbourne, on his way to join the British army in England; Muscogee teenager Hadjo, inspired to fight alongside his people to protect their land; 17-year-old Silas Shackleton, who is offered the chance to join the British navy after being forced from an American vessel; and 20-year-old Rachel Thurston, newly arrived in Washington City alongside her father to discuss politics with President James Madison. The War of 1812 itself serves as both the setting and the plot structure, the common thread that ties the diverse cast of characters together. As the epic story unfolds, each character’s will is tested in the cruel face of adversity and violence. Klaassen (Scenes and Sequels: How to Write Page-Turning Fiction, 2016, etc.) delivers a riveting, well-informed novel that strives to breathe life into dusty history books and highlight the stories of the human beings behind the text. The author’s attention to detail and truthful representation of life during the War of 1812 makes the story engaging and instructive: “The air reeked with the stench of festering wounds and the various potions administered by the doctors…Lemuel could see more than a dozen men packed into the room…some sat with their back against the walls, but most of the wounded lay on furs spread across the floor in irregular rows.” The reader is transported into a different era with Klaassen’s use of tangible descriptors. But the extensive cast of characters becomes confusing at times, and the abundance of historical references may grow tiresome for readers unaccustomed to educational accounts.
A captivating tale that should appeal to history buffs, period drama fans, and readers who want to learn about the War of 1812 through the human experience rather than a textbook.Pub Date: March 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68222-971-2
Page Count: 466
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2016
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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