The author clearly believes his subject has been shortchanged by history, but Meagher’s failure at almost everything that...
Historical fiction by western veteran Wheeler (The Deliverance, 2003, etc.), based on the life of an Irish rebel who served as a Union general in the Civil War.
Exiled to Australia for inciting rebellion against British rule, Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–67) escapes to the teeming slums of 1852 New York. There, he quickly finds supporters, making his mark as a public speaker for the Irish cause. But while Meagher’s oratory brings him fame among his fellow exiles, it doesn’t bring him a living. Nor are his friends among the Tammany Democrats able to offer him any useful position, although he passes the bar and sets up law offices. His lack of income weighs more on him after he marries the daughter of a successful New York businessman. After nearly ten years of drifting, Meagher finds a purpose in the Civil War. He raises and commands an Irish brigade for the Union, thinking that seasoned veterans could then return to free Ireland from the British. But war changes him. He becomes a firm abolitionist, despite his countrymen’s fear that freed blacks will take the jobs now open only to the Irish. His troops see fierce action at Antietam and Fredericksburg, two of the bloodiest battles of the war, before Meagher is eased out of command, accused—perhaps unfairly—of drunkenness in the face of battle. Out of favor with the postwar government, he wangles an appointment as secretary to the governor of Montana. Arriving at his post, he finds himself effectively in charge, though the local powers, largely radical Republicans, oppose him at every turn. His death remains a mystery; Wheeler's suggestion that political enemies killed Meagher is certainly convincing.
The author clearly believes his subject has been shortchanged by history, but Meagher’s failure at almost everything that matters to him makes it difficult to see why the historical verdict should be overturned.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-87847-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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