An intriguing new angle on a lesser-known American war.
A group of young men from Tennessee learns the true horrors of war in this historical novel.
Based on accounts of the author’s ancestors, this tale stars five Moore cousins, along with their friend Andrew Hawkins, and their horses. The men volunteer for the 1846 American invasion of Mexico. That conflict began as revenge for massacres by the Mexicans at the Alamo and Goliad. The story is narrated by 18-year-old Cameron “Cam” Moore, aided by his trusty steed, Hunter. The march to war starts as an adventure for the Moores: “We all groaned aloud with William, little bold William sayin’, ‘Well, we’s better than most them fella’s. It be sure them Mexicans don’t stand a chance with us Moore cousin’s doin the fightin.’ ” Traveling by flatboat to New Orleans is largely uneventful, at least compared to what follows. Then, long before they confront the enemy, weather and poisonous creatures take their tolls, with disease claiming American lives. The next enemy is boredom, as the soldiers try to amuse themselves while their leaders determine the best plan of attack. Then comes the bloodbath at Monterrey, where cousin Jake is killed. Next little William is sent home, stricken with malaria. Then, even after the remaining four are mustered out and head home, a tornado strikes the train they are riding. In Cam, Landerman-Moore (Samuel of the Nations, 2016) has created a levelheaded, moral compass for the war who follows his father’s dictum to treat everyone, even his enemies, in a Christian way after the battle is over. The invasion shows him all sides of humanity: the bad in his fellow Americans, the good in the Mexican peasants. The author’s authentic narrative benefits from access to the letters of Col. William Bowen Campbell, the cousins’ commander in Mexico. In addition, the illustrations by Beadles (Samuel of the Nations, 2016) help bring the Moores’ travails to life. Landerman-Moore’s descriptive prose skillfully takes readers inside the soldiers’ day-to-day encounters, whether humdrum or terrifying. An added bonus is a recap of the cousins’ fates after their return to Tennessee. All told, the author’s well-researched volume is an enjoyable examination of one family’s part in an unpopular conflict.
An intriguing new angle on a lesser-known American war.Pub Date: July 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2721-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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