A vibrant hybrid of historical and contemporary fiction.
In Callaghan’s novel, a middle-aged woman uncovers a secret in the backyard of a newly acquired heritage home that reveals a sweeping Civil War-era drama.
In the early 2020s, San Francisco Bay Area transplant Iris Pearl and her husband, Benny, have recently purchased a home in rural Pennsylvania whose history dates to the early 1800s. The house has been left to disintegrate over the years, so it requires a total renovation to its structure and the surrounding land. One day, workers uncover a mysterious sack while refurbishing a once-charming backyard pond. Inside is the perfectly preserved corpse of a baby who’s been dead for more than a century. The discovery gets publicity, resulting in outside visitors to the site. Soon, Iris and Benny are forced to confront the realities of a tragic history as they uncover the truth about “Little John Doe.” Running parallel to their story is a romance set during the Civil War, and in the same house. Irish maid Aoife has married William Sprigett and settled into the gracious farmhouse not far from William’s grand family estate, where she once worked. The new couple’s wedded bliss is cut short when war breaks out, and William decides to enlist in the Union Army. With only her husband’s hired farmhand, Thomas Walker, to help, Aoife must draw on her own strength to maintain the farm in her husband’s absence. Aoife, who’s white, and Thomas, who’s Black, become close, which becomes the subject of gossip by members of the surrounding community. Their story launches an epic tale that effectively connects with the Iris and Benny’s 21st-century storyline. Callaghan’s attention to historical accuracy is impressive throughout, and this extends to the parts of the narrative that take place in the modern era, in which the author offers sharp insights into life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, this novel deftly shepherds multiple storylines as they slowly bend toward one another in unexpected and ultimately satisfying ways. What results is an engaging epic about loss, loneliness, and desire that perfectly encapsulates relatable human struggles.
A vibrant hybrid of historical and contemporary fiction.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Empower Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2024
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 tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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