An often colorful and emotional read, particularly for those who enjoyed the author’s previous work.
Schell (Woody, 2016, etc.) tells another tale set in Stonyville, West Virginia, in the second book of his Folksong Suite series.
Ennis Diehl, 13 and gifted, has already skipped three grades, and folks in his hometown of Stonyville expect him to become a doctor. He looks forward to leaving his rural birthplace, if only to escape his tempestuous mother, the acclaimed singer Molly Evangeline, and his mentally disabled 16-year-old brother, Mickey. He inherited his quick wit from his complicated mom, and he’s fiercely protective of his sibling, but his relationships with both can be suffocating: Molly’s exacting standards cause constant domestic strife, and Mickey’s adoration and dependence make him feel like “Mickey the manacle.” These dynamics come to a head when a dispute over a catch during a baseball game leads Ennis to bet that Mickey can beat Stonyville’s athletic champion, Quinn Whelan, in a foot race. Mickey wins, but he collapses from heat stroke afterward, setting off a new battle between Ennis and his mother, and later, a humiliated Quinn gets unwittingly drawn into con artists’ plans to kidnap the Diehl children for ransom. Along the way, Ennis takes solace in spending time with his relatively calm father, Mark Diehl, and his girlfriend, Inga Sandersen; Molly prepares to relaunch her singing career after years out of the spotlight; and Mickey experiences adult responsibilities in a garden-center job and adult desire when he develops a crush. The fictional setting of Stonyville in Schell’s second series installment remains a vivid creation, filled with memorable characters and complex socio-economic dynamics. The conflict between Molly and Ennis is particularly well-drawn, rendering a mother-son battle as a wrenching, believable clash of troubled souls. But although Schell’s lyrical, if occasionally impenetrable, prose style served him well in his previous novel, it’s less suitable for the omniscient, third-person point of view here, as the characters’ voices often sound too similar. For example, when the theatrical Molly says something grandiose, it fits her character, but it feels out of place when 13-year-old Ennis says things such as, “It’s the season of sensibility, summer, so many of us gathering to toast the music of life.” The book’s ending is also too abrupt. Overall, though, this remains a moving account of a family navigating change as time marches on.
An often colorful and emotional read, particularly for those who enjoyed the author’s previous work.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5412-1249-7
Page Count: 290
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
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
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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