An engrossing and measured novel of wartime.
A bloody American Civil War battle drives a handful of characters into unexpected situations in Gram’s historical novel.
It’s December 1862, and Rev. Nathaniel of Fredericksburg, Virginia, predicts that the Apocalypse will occur after a battle that’s about to commence. The ensuing clash, which will henceforth be known as the Battle of Fredericksburg, leaves many dead, and people in the city find different purposes elsewhere in the days and months that follow. Enslaved John, for example, heads north to freedom while lamenting the fact that he’s never known his sister, Tillie, who remains enslaved; the siblings were separated long ago. After Nathaniel’s apparently incorrect prediction, the reverend tracks down a young woman at a brothel with the apparent intent of removing her from there; he’s guided by a mysterious, blond-haired young girl who shows him visions. The cast of characters also includes a talisman-carrying religious zealot who believes that Armageddon is at hand, and someone who’s out for lethal revenge. Fate ultimately brings together these storylines, which travel through such places as Richmond and New York City before a series of not-necessarily-happy reunions. Gram enriches the tale with real-life historical figures and details. High-ranking Civil War soldiers, for starters, play significant roles (one person is convinced that Confederate officer Stonewall Jackson “will be revealed as Christ come again”), and famed steamboat Mary Powell makes a notable appearance. A largely unhurried pace makes it easy to follow the nonlinear narrative, which bounces around December 1862 and subsequent months in 1863. There’s likewise a giant leap backward to the second century near the city of Pepouza in Asia Minor, where 14-year-old Montanus learns that some have foreseen the Messiah returning one day. Throughout, Gram delivers several affecting scenes that confront the horrific treatment of enslaved people, and the ferocious Battle of Fredericksburg and its terrible deaths. The novel boasts a gratifying resolution, although a second volume is planned.
An engrossing and measured novel of wartime.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781960090355
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Epigraph Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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