A theologically astute and historically authentic transformation of a familiar story.
A novel imagines the lives of Dismas, the thief crucified alongside Jesus, and his son, Ezekiel.
Everyone in Nazareth seems to know that Ezekiel’s father, Dismas, is a thief who brims with contempt for all things Roman. The young boy hopes one day to marry the beautiful Rina, but he couldn’t possibly afford the appropriate bride price, and she frets that he has inherited his father’s dishonesty. Dismas entrusts Ezekiel with a valuable dagger he has stolen from a wealthy Roman and asks his son to secure it until he returns from a journey of indeterminate length. After years pass, Ezekiel sells the dagger for a small fortune in order to start a fishing business and asks Yeshua (Jesus), a carpenter and rabbi, to build him boats. Yeshua refuses and warns him with a cryptic prophecy: “You were entrusted with a stolen dagger by which you came into this money. If I take the money, knowing it was stolen, I am no better than the one who stole it. If I build you these boats and do not have the means to return the dagger or the money, it will result in someone very close to you being put to death.” In Addison’s inventive version of a well-known biblical story, Yeshua’s prediction comes true. Dismas is arrested by Roman authorities and sentenced to be crucified near Yeshua unless Ezekiel can retrieve the dagger he has sold. To make matters worse, the dagger ends up in the hands of Abigail, a Roman woman who has reasons to despise both Ezekiel and Rina’s family and who wants Rina’s father, Hadwin, dead.
Since so little is known about Dismas—virtually nothing beyond the forgiveness Jesus offered him just before his death—Addison had plenty of historical space with which to conjure a backstory, latitude he exploits with impressive literary ingenuity. But it is Ezekiel who emerges as the true protagonist of the story. The author chronicles Ezekiel’s transformation from cynical pragmatist to someone open to a deeper faith, maybe even in the radical teachings of Yeshua: “If God was real, then he was cruel and didn’t fully understand the weakness of men. Still, a beacon deep in his soul told him a different story. A story of redemption if he would just listen.” Furthermore, Addison reconstructs the volatile political environment of the time with impressive subtlety and historical rigor. Yet the plot can suffer from the weight of its digressions—complex, entangled subplots involving Rina’s family begin to feel gratuitous and distracting, even soap-operatic. In addition, Abigail is never a fully believable character—her own moral arc, from someone capable of dastardly deeds to a woman able to show astonishing mercy, isn’t conveyed in a dramatically credible way. Still, these narrative failings are ultimately minor ones—none of them undermine the moral power of the story or the creativity of its rendering. For readers in search of historical fiction with a captivating religious angle, this is a delightful book.
A theologically astute and historically authentic transformation of a familiar story.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63195-531-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Morgan James Fiction
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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