by Shelley Read ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2023
An auspicious debut.
A stranger comes to town.
Colorado native Read sets her graceful debut novel in the small community of Iola, a town along the Gunnison River in the western part of the state. Iola, readers learn in the first pages, no longer exists: It was flooded when the Gunnison was dammed to create the Blue Mesa Reservoir. But in 1948, when Read’s tale begins, Iola is the home of 17-year-old Victoria Nash, who keeps house for her father, a peach farmer; an embittered uncle who uses a wheelchair because of war injuries; and her angry, vengeful brother. Her mother, aunt, and a beloved cousin were killed in an auto accident when Torie was 12, leaving each family member bereft and Torie resigned to the burden of caretaking. After her mother died, Torie realized, “the men expected me to slip silently into her role—to cook their meals, clean their pee off the toilet, wash and hang their soiled clothes, and tend to every last thing in the house and the coops and the garden.” She hardly leaves her family’s 47 acres except to go to town, where, one day, she notices a young man who attracts her attention as no one has before. He has tan skin, straight black hair, gentle eyes, and a dazzling smile. His name is Wilson Moon, and to Torie, he seems mysterious and exotic. He had been working in the coal mines, he tells Torie, and he had run away. Now, he’s looking for the local flophouse, where he hopes to find a room. Read delicately unfurls the growing attraction between Torie and Wil, set against the town’s vicious bigotry toward Native Americans. Their love is the “small fateful twist” that forever changes the trajectory of Torie’s life. With delicate precision, Read evokes both Colorado’s rugged wilderness and the landscapes of her characters’ troubled hearts.
An auspicious debut.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781954118232
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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