A gripping war tale with a romance as a lagniappe.
This second installment of a historical fiction series focuses on the hard-fought Battle of Belvedere, in which the Free French African forces distinguish themselves—especially the ambulance drivers, all women.
It is late January 1944 during World War II. Italy has surrendered but the Germans have occupied that country. The Allies are marching up the peninsula, determined to take Rome. The Germans have dug in at the so-called Gustav Line, halfway between Naples and Rome. The Americans, British, and French are determined to break that all but impregnable line. The battle rages for two weeks until there is a temporary stalemate after hundreds of French soldiers are killed or wounded. The weather is horrible: cold and rainy, with the roads becoming sluices of mud. And everywhere there are mines. The battle involves valor writ large. A subplot explores the passionate affair between Sous-Lt. Madeleine Sauveterre, the officer in charge of the ambulances, and Lt. Jean-Paul Morane, a company commander. Some of these characters, like those French lovers, are fictional, but other figures and most of the events, such as the attack on the Gustav Line, are all too true. Myers is a keen student of history (this is Book 2 of the author’s Fighting France Series). The battle, which takes up most of the work, is described in wrenching, gory detail. Most of all, Myers makes readers feel the sheer fatigue. One battalion has been without food, water, or sleep for nearly 24 hours. But when told to attack yet again, the soldiers obey without question. Another strong theme concerns women proving themselves, showing that they can be as tough as the men, even standing up to a chauvinistic officer, who backs down. The women, many of them quite young, are a brave bunch. They are also sassy and not shy with the available soldiers. Life is a heightened proposition when death is always just a few inches away. Readers know that the battle will be resumed in the spring when perhaps there will not be so much mud. These are indefatigable people. Myers is clearly awed by them, and readers will be too.
A gripping war tale with a romance as a lagniappe. (maps, bibliography)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-68-188887-1
Page Count: 367
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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