An interesting story of immigrant struggle handicapped by excessive summary.
In this historical novel, Sharp (The Duke Don’t Dance, 2012) presents a frontier family as it recounts its history to one another on the eve of the Civil War.
Set mostly in the cellar of a homesteading house in the Platte Purchase in Missouri, the novel uses adolescent William Ebhart as a focal point for both sides of his family — the Ebharts and the Fentresses — to describe their intertwining history as they’ve moved westward after immigrating. The novel touches on land disputes, the Mexican-American War and other patches of American history. The cellar, built by William’s grandfather, Jacob, has become a place of congregation and mystery where the family swaps stories and legends, including tales of bodies buried behind its walls. Many of the novel’s main events are told in summary, typically in a monologue by one of its many characters, or later, in an epistolary format. This not only robs the scenes of urgency, it strains credulity when characters deliver lengthy, unconvincing speeches filled with historical details. For example, Frank, a war buddy of William’s father, relays a story of the Mexican-American War: “Well, in May of ’46, word reached Leavenworth that Polk finally got the Congress to declare war….Col. Doniphan was organizing a unit of Missouri volunteers that we called the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers. Sterling Price left Congress, had himself made a colonel, and began to organize another unit, the Second Missouri.” Such superfluity typifies Sharp’s eagerness to insert historical detail into the narrative with little dramatic justification. It’s unfortunate, too, because on the rare occasions when Sharp writes in fully developed scenes, the writing shines. For instance, William finds himself unintentionally hidden while his father engages in a private conversation about a past love; it’s a tense moment that underscores the need for such drama in other chapters. Sharp’s decision to make this a multigenerational story worsens its problems; William isn’t so much a protagonist as he is a receptor of information, and without a clear narrative focus, the reader is left digesting a lot of information with little emotional involvement with the characters.
An interesting story of immigrant struggle handicapped by excessive summary.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478350323
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2013
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
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
