A gritty, nuanced dramatization of the roots of American land ownership and political power.
A Virginia planter navigates a deadly landscape of colonial wealth and power in Keller’s debut historical novel.
In mid-18th century Virginia, Isaac Spotswood is raised on his family’s plantation, where his ambitious father forces him to work alongside the slaves to build character. They may not retain their baronet ancestor’s title, but the Spotswoods have something more valuable: land. “Wealth comes from land, not titles,” Isaac’s father insists. “We’re landowners…something you must always remember. The tenants work for us. The village belongs to us. Our presence is why they are here, to serve our needs. If we went away, all this would vanish.” Isaac gets a taste of the planter’s life when his father sends him to manage their property along Gap Run—or Ovoka, as the Indigenous people call it. When he’s not overseeing the tobacco crop, Isaac is busy courting Molly Morgan, the sharp-tongued daughter of one of the prominent local families, who stands to inherit a great deal of wealth. Isaac finds himself caught between wanting to please his father by increasing the family’s fortunes and itching to get out from beneath the man’s yoke. When Isaac learns that his father has resorted to murder-for-hire to potentially increase his holdings, he resolves that he would rather be his own man than live beneath the Spotswood tyranny. He marries Molly, and the two of them build a life for themselves in a modest cabin without relying on slave labor. Cut off from his father’s wealth, the couple learns how difficult it is to scratch a life from the rough wilderness, one in which every landowner must make moral compromises in order to survive.
The author succeeds in portraying colonial Virginia as every bit as ruthless and power-obsessed as the warring kingdoms in the Game of Thrones series, bringing some welcome complexity to historical figures like a young George Washington and Thomas Fairfax. He likewise offers a view of the hard life experienced by the White citizens of more meager backgrounds, who are often forced to do the dirty work of their betters (the perspectives of slaves and Indigenous people are not given much page time). None of the characters are quite as richly imagined as they could be, though Isaac comes closest—the chapters he narrates are appealingly gruff, marked by the laconic man’s tendency to drop the subjects from his sentences: “Reached the village. Had no plan whatsoever other than to see Molly. A courting call, unexpected, unannounced. Hopped down from my horse, laid the reins over the post, walked to their door. Knocked. Waited. Heard stirring inside.” The other chapters, told from the point of view of other characters, are less engaging by comparison, stealing focus from Keller’s exploration of his protagonist’s interiority and his culpability within the larger system. Even so, there are more than enough backroom deals and double-crosses here to keep the reader entertained.
A gritty, nuanced dramatization of the roots of American land ownership and political power.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798218146870
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Slate Hill Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2023
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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