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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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