A thoughtful dramatization of the moral complexities of the War Between the States.
A Civil War–era novel about a slaveholding farmer and two of his slaves.
Robert Stafford is a successful planter who lives on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia. Like his neighbors, he owns slaves, but in other ways, he’s unusually dismissive of cultural conventions. He marries one of his servants, Zabette, and because interracial marriage is illegal in Georgia, Robert relocates her and their children to Connecticut, where laws afford them greater protection. Although the Civil War is largely a remote affair for him, with minimal impact upon the island, the danger is getting closer. Union forces invade the nearby port of Fernandina—an unexpected move that sows seeds of future chaos. Later, a Union naval blockade compels Robert to stealthily ship his goods via a blockade runner, a risky venture. Furthermore, Confederate forces abandon East Florida, leaving the island essentially defenseless against violent looters known as “regulators.” The upheaval of the war is witnessed not only by Robert, but also Amos and Amelia, twin slaves who treat Robert as if he were their father. The most transformative changes, however, come at the conclusion of the war, as most of Robert’s slaves leave, and others threaten vengeance. Debut author Stevens sensitively captures the uneasy tension of Robert’s skewed moral outlook. When the slaves are emancipated, he’s shown to be genuinely surprised when many run away and others turn on him, and he expresses this in terms of astonished pique: “I treat my slaves well….No one on this plantation is mistreated. And now, with the bell of freedom ringing loud and clear, they leave...to go where?” In this way, the book effectively shows the clear limits of a slave owner’s progressiveness and exposes the moral untenability of such a position. The perspectives of Amos and Amelia—who eventually taste freedom—are also insightfully rendered. Despite the novel’s brevity, it also astutely provides a wealth of historical information regarding such events as the Louisiana Purchase and the Haitian Revolution.
A thoughtful dramatization of the moral complexities of the War Between the States.Pub Date: April 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5246-8970-4
Page Count: 170
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
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
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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