A fast-paced, well-researched work that will particularly appeal to military history enthusiasts.
Lewis’ historical novel fictionalizes a bloody and often forgotten real-life battle of the American Civil War.
On Nov. 30, 1864, the Battle of Franklin was fought by Union forces against the Confederate Army of Tennessee, and Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood led his men into a massacre. Lewis takes this lesser-known event from near the end of the Civil War and imagines it, almost minute by minute, from a variety of perspectives. In 13 chapters, which follow the days leading up to the battle and its aftermath, the author employs extensive historical research to bring real-life figures to life. Beginning with Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne—who was blocked months ago from taking leave to marry his sweetheart, follows orders with which he doesn’t agree, and sleeps on the grass with his men—the novel switches between various soldiers, including Confederates such as Brig. Gen. Hiram B. Granbury and Cpl. Sam Watkins, and loved ones at home. For example, Mary Alice Carter McPhail is a wife and mother whose husband is fighting on the Confederate side; she’s staying with her family in a home that eventually becomes requisitioned by the Union Army. As a clash becomes inevitable and tensions rise, Lewis examines it from multiple angles, with the important inclusion of two enslaved people, which emphasizes that the Confederacy was “a slave to the idea of slavery as a way of life.” Most poignant is the story of Henry B. Free, whose surname Lewis invented, as records did not grant the real man a surname. The book would likely have benefited from presenting Union soldiers’ perspectives on events, as well. However, Lewis’ intense historical research shines through in his inclusion of military movements, maps, and photographs,which give the work the feel of a history book. His prose is also often vivid, highlighting war’s futility and bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield (“The stench of gunpowder mingled with the odor of the viscera the powder had created”).
A fast-paced, well-researched work that will particularly appeal to military history enthusiasts.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781964830087
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Bariso Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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