A historically authentic and dramatically engrossing work.
In Haynes’ 1850s-set historical novel, three men—two abolitionists and a pro-slavery Southerner—become embroiled in a murderous conspiracy.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 makes a massive swath of territory to the west of Iowa and Missouri open to slavery, as determined by popular vote. As a result, Northerners and Southerners alike rush to settle there in a bid to tip the electoral scale, a situation that quickly becomes violent: “Kansas was a tinderbox. All awaited the spark that would ignite a blaze.” Monty Tolliver, a former Whig congressman in Ohio and an ardent abolitionist, decides to move his family to Kansas to do his part and discovers an all-out war being waged there by pro-slavery agitators. He joins the local militia and becomes a key player in the effort to organize a constitutional convention that will establish Kansas as a free state. He’s aided by Robert Geddis, who comes to Kansas from Rhode Island to work for the Herald of Freedom newspaper. Violence is committed by both sides of the conflict, a grim scenario rigorously depicted by the author. A series of grisly murders is undertaken by devoted abolitionists, followed by equally grotesque killings by pro-slavers in retaliation—some of which are pinned on Billy Rutledge, a young man from Mississippi. But Geddis knows Billy, and despite Billy’s support of slavery, he considers him incapable of murder. This complex narrative at times becomes convoluted—there are simply too many plot twists and subplots, and they become a tedious distraction. However, the author’s portrayal of this chapter in the history of the nation is impressively astute, and he brings the clash of ideologies that sparked it to electrifying life. The novel is unflinchingly honest and evenhanded—while slavery was a vile institution, Haynes acknowledges that people who opposed it were fully capable of gross moral failings of their own. Ultimately, this is a worthwhile work of historical drama, simultaneously edifying and entertaining.
A historically authentic and dramatically engrossing work.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781737766926
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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