A compelling tale that explores the historical development of the Midwest.
An epic novel dramatizes the origins of an Illinois community.
In this second volume of his American Trilogy (following A Panther Crosses Over, 2022), Foster traces the settling and growth of Beardstown, Illinois, from Tom Beard’s purchase of riverfront property in 1818 through the end of the 1860s. Illinois is still a territory when Beard finds the perfect location to set up a ferry that carries settlers heading west across the river while encouraging some of them to stay and provide the infrastructure for his dream town. Beard builds relationships and makes alliances, and Beardstown prospers. He marries, but after many years of taking a back seat to Beard’s ambitions, his wife, Sara, leaves him for a riverboat gambler. The town’s other key founders—Chaubenee, a member of the Potawatomi Nation; Murray McConnel, a lawyer and politician; and Francis Arenz, a German immigrant and businessman—make up Beard’s chosen family, and they support one another through the challenges of weather, politics, technological innovations, and financial crises that make up the middle decades of the 19th century. By the 1860s, Beard and the other founders have died. But the town continues to thrive in the hands of a new generation, with salon—and bordello—owner Vivienne de Villiere, a transplanted Southerner, serving as the main protagonist in the book’s final chapters. Foster has a deep knowledge of the history of both the region and the era, and his well-developed characters transform a timeline of events into a captivating tale. Cameos by Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and Wyatt Earp (plus Jefferson Davis, who, Foster acknowledges in an author’s note, is undocumented but plausible) situate the narrative amid the more famous events in American history without giving short shrift to the smaller stories that are the novel’s focus. The book is both informative and engaging, with solid pacing and engaging dialogue that keep the plot moving steadily over its half-century timeline.
A compelling tale that explores the historical development of the Midwest.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Agave Americana Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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