An authentic story of love and war vividly detailed.
Saxberg’s historical novel explores love and redemption against the backdrop of the European Theater in WWII.
The leads are the Canadian Ardagh “Harp” Cadieu and the Dutch woman Jacoba “Koos” van den Berg. Ardagh is from Northern Ontario, on Lake Superior, and he has suffered two tragic events in his young life—events where people died—and he carries that burden. In fact, that’s the main reason he enlists in the Canadian army. He hopes to escape his little town and to somehow assuage his guilt and cleanse his soul. When we meet 15-year-old Koos, it’s early in the war. Her small Dutch town will soon be occupied by the Nazis, and she’s chafing under her parents’ protective concern for her. When the Germans come, she joins the resistance in a dangerous balancing act, even leading on a young Nazi lieutenant and falling half in love with him after having had a crush on a neighbor boy who joins the Dutch SS. Meanwhile, Ardagh is training—endlessly, it seems—in England. He does get smuggled aboard his brother Hank’s Lancaster bomber and gets a taste of war. Landing in Normandy in ’44, he and his company fight their way across northern Europe and eventually liberate the small town where Koos lives. And, of course, these two young people, so often disappointed and frustrated, fall deeply in love. Will they find happiness? Will Koos become a war bride, starting a new life with her husband in Canada? And will Ardagh finally exorcise his guilt and gain the confidence he desperately needs?
This is a historical novel but not quite like the usual ones where fictional characters live their lives in the shadow of real history—and the major figures of the times appear in cameo roles. In fact, there are no “major” figures here at all. Instead, Saxberg has based the story on the tales of WWII and the Lake Superior Regiment that he grew up hearing about, specifically through the stories of his three great uncles, Ardagh, Gerald, and Wilf. So, thanks to a complete annotated list of characters at the back of the book, we learn that Harp, Hank, and Koos (and others), were, in fact, real people who figured in Saxberg family stories. Some characters were purely fictional, and others were inspired by real people or were even composites. And Saxberg confesses to also manipulating and rearranging the personal stories. It’s a look into how such a book is put together and a very clever mishmash; and incidentally, it’s a wonderful tribute to real enlistees: farmers, fishers, tradespeople, laborers, who signed up when needed, some of whom gave their lives. As one character says, “Every death was etched in the background of each success.” Saxberg’s theme is that we should carry with us the memories of our loved ones and that those memories somehow keep them alive. Not a novel idea, but one worth being reminded of from time to time. There are also helpful maps of battle sites.
An authentic story of love and war vividly detailed.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781068915406
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Reimagined Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.
An earnest grad student and a faculty member with a bit of a jerkish reputation concoct a fake dating scheme in this nerdy, STEM-filled contemporary romance.
Olive Smith and professor Adam Carlsen first met in the bathroom of Adam's lab. Olive wore expired contact lenses, reducing her eyes to temporary tears, while Adam just needed to dispose of a solution. It's a memory that only one of them has held onto. Now, nearly three years later, Olive is fully committed to her research in pancreatic cancer at Stanford University's biology department. As a faculty member, Adam's reputation precedes him, since he's made many students cry or drop their programs entirely with his bluntness. When Olive needs her best friend, Anh, to think she's dating someone so Anh will feel more comfortable getting involved with Olive's barely-an-ex, Jeremy, she impulsively kisses Adam, who happens to be standing there when Anh walks by. But rumors start to spread, and the one-time kiss morphs into a fake relationship, especially as Adam sees there's a benefit for him. The university is withholding funds for Adam's research out of fear that he'll leave for a better position elsewhere. If he puts down more roots by getting involved with someone, his research funds could be released at the next budgeting meeting in about a month's time. After setting a few ground rules, Adam and Olive agree that come the end of September, they'll part ways, having gotten what they need from their arrangement. Hazelwood has a keen understanding of romance tropes and puts them to good use—in addition to fake dating, Olive and Adam are an opposites-attract pairing with their sunny and grumpy personalities—but there are a couple of weaknesses in this debut novel. Hazelwood manages to sidestep a lot of the complicated power dynamics of a student-faculty romance by putting Olive and Adam in different departments, but the impetus for their fake relationship has much higher stakes for Adam. Olive does reap the benefits of dating a faculty member, but in the end, she's still the one seemingly punished or taunted by her colleagues; readers may have been hoping for a more subversive twist. For a first novel, there's plenty of shine here, with clear signs that Hazelwood feels completely comfortable with happily-ever-afters.
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33682-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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