An engaging historical novel that addresses big questions—but should have been much shorter.
Kluger’s historical novel charts an American boy’s exciting experiences in World War II Denmark.
In June 1939, Terence Sayre lives with his mother, Katerina Mundt, a vivacious Danish-born dancer and entrepreneur, in Asbury Park, New Jersey; he’s looking forward to his upcoming 14th birthday. Their relationship is close—Terry’s alcoholic father dropped out of their lives years before. When Kate is mortally injured in a car crash, Terry must move to the picturesque seaside town of Riishavn, Denmark, to live with relatives he has only visited briefly before. His grandparents, Gideon and Helga Mundt, are popular and respected figures in the community and lead a large, loving, and energetic clan: Terry’s uncles Kurt and Torben, aunts Ingrid and Rikki, and cousins Jared and Louisa, who are about his age. The Mundts welcome Terry wholeheartedly and all pitch in to provide a rapid-fire immersion course in Danish language and culture—each presenting their own challenges for Terry, until now a typical American boy. Then, in September, Hitler invades Poland, setting off WWII. Debate rages among the Danes, who have no military, over whether to conciliate or confront German aggression. Opinions are sharply divided, even within close-knit families like the Mundts. When the Nazis invade and occupy Denmark, setting up a garrison in Riishavn, each family member, from the teens to the grandparents, navigates the tricky path of appearing to comply while secretly resisting in their own way. The author addresses the thorny choices facing Denmark as a nation and each of its citizens thoughtfully, questioning safety versus risk, compromise versus confrontation, and practicality versus principle. The issues emerge through the characters, providing a nuanced view of the motives and potential consequences of their actions as they grapple with the realities of living under an occupying force.
The story is told from the point of view of Terry, looking back on his growth from child to young adult in the midst of world-changing events—the most tumultuous and exciting time of his life—with the adult perspective he lacked while it was unfolding (“I was a stranger in a small kingdom by the sea, where I thought I had found a temporary haven from my brief life’s travails. With the invasion, that dream was over”). Vivid characters, including independent, unapologetic Aunt Rikki; Terry’s intellectual girlfriend, Nora; his wealthy, gentle friend, Bent; the enigmatic German commandant, Major Sigmund Holst; and others capture the reader’s interest with sharp dialogue and brave exploits. Rikki and Holst enter into an intriguing, ambiguous, off-and-on relationship that raises the question of exactly who is using whom. Kruger’s writing is crisp and descriptive—the plot moves quickly from one crisis to the next. For the first three-quarters of the narrative, covering 1939 through 1942, Terry’s story is both engaging and enlightening. Unfortunately, as the story moves into the next couple of years, it devolves into a summary of the rest of the war, including the amazing rescue of Denmark’s Jews, with an excess of logistical detail and too little human interest, churning through the end of the conflict, its aftermath, and Terry’s later life in the last 100 pages.
An engaging historical novel that addresses big questions—but should have been much shorter.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781734531367
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Scarlet Tanager Books
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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