A dramatic, rewarding story about a woman reconnecting with family, nature, and herself.
In Cole-Misch’s debut novel, an old land dispute reemerges after a young girl discovers Native artifacts.
Welsh immigrant Taid Llyndee purchased an island off the Canada coast from the Ojibwe people in the 1940s, establishing a family retreat there until 1990. In 2004, Beth Llyndee, Taid’s granddaughter, returns to this place, which she remembers well. Taid is still alive, but he’s drafted two wills—one granting the land to Beth, and the other to the Akeenes, an Ojibwe family, and Beth is to decide who gets it. The next chapter unfolds in 1987, when Beth is 11; she has a teenage brother, Dylan, and sister, Maegan. Her mother is wary of Maegan’s boyfriend; Beth’s father is the family peacemaker; and her grandparents are set in their Welsh traditions. The girl feels at home on the island, where she cares for a one-legged seagull and enjoys viewing her “favorite constellations.” The following summer, she discovers unusual wooden bowls on the island. Dylan suggests showing them to a nearby Ojibwe family, but Taid recalls the aftermath of a similar discovery: “Just because they [another family, the McGintys] found a few silly relics, the family had to give up five acres of their land to keep the community peace.” The Llyndees decide to research the items privately, but in 1990, chaos erupts as Maegan is injured, Dylan goes missing, and the family is evicted from the island. In 2004, Beth is unprepared for what lies ahead. The slow pace of this novel, which effectively offers readers a cautionary tale against secrecy, makes its twists even more rewarding. Cole-Misch manages to capture tender moments as skillfully as she does petty arguments between the siblings. Young Beth is shown to have all the characteristics that one expects of a family’s youngest child—sometimes excluded and often whining, but also the family favorite. The novel is informed by both Ojibwe and Welsh traditions and shows sensitivity regarding cultural differences. It also honors the natural world with dazzling imagery: “So many stars, as if the galaxies were holding a grand, illicit celebration after they thought the humans had gone to bed.”
A dramatic, rewarding story about a woman reconnecting with family, nature, and herself.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-741-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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