Vesce’s larger-than-life portrait of Hopkins reminds that there really is some truth to the whole “Greatest Generation”...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's largely unheralded adviser, Harry Hopkins, is the subject of Vesce’s historical novel.
Harry Hopkins was an Iowan with an unpretentious background who raised himself to impressive political heights on FDR’s coattails. After graduating in 1912 from Iowa’s Grinnell College he moves to New York, runs a couple of social programs where his talents as an administrator come to the attention of the new Roosevelt administration, which needs to get things done, pronto. And in Vesce’s novel, we learn exactly how efficient Hopkins was: first at the Works Progress Administration, doling out dollars in fulfilling an agenda that earns him lavish praise and deep enmity (many forget how deeply unpopular FDR’s initiatives were in some quarters). Moving into World War II, Roosevelt puts Hopkins in charge of the Lend Lease program and, more important, relies on Harry’s help in almost every decision. (Hopkins and his family actually lived in the White House for several crucial years, with Harry and FDR often hashing out policy in their pajamas.) There’s a memorable scene here where Churchill is insulted when this “nobody” shows up in FDR’s stead but quickly realizes that Hopkins is immensely capable. Hopkins, as we learn, is also one of the few politicians that Stalin trusts (for what that’s worth). In the author’s hands, Hopkins comes off a fixer in the best sense (“Leave it with me,” he says whenever the next crisis arises). But Vesce’s novel also deftly describes how Hopkins’ body betrays him at the prime of life in the form of stomach cancer: The doctors at Mayo remove three quarters of his stomach, saving his life but leaving him technically starving for the last 10 years of his life. The end comes in January of 1946, as Hopkins is totally worn out at 55 after a life well lived in service of his country.
This first question one might ask is: Why a novel about Hopkins? There are plenty of factual accounts, biographies, written about this historically underrated figure. Vesce is not a great writer but he is obviously inspired by Hopkins’ life story and in turn manages to pique reader interest through his passionate dedication to historical detail. We get the nitty-gritty details of high-level talks involving big egos, bitter disappointments, and giddy hopes. There are some dramatic scenes where political bigwigs clash and Harry has to intervene like a den mother—or perhaps like a Dutch uncle. On the other hand, Vesce admits to taking liberties—after all this is historical fiction—but this novel is rife with unexpected historical cameos and obscure events that make one wonder how much of this is based on fact. A straight history would clarify such uncertainty, but at what cost? What stories cry out for fictional treatment and what others should safely hug the shores of history? Shakespeare, after all, routinely turned historical fact into deathless drama. Vesce is obviously no Shakespeare, but he knows how to spin a good historical yarn.
Vesce’s larger-than-life portrait of Hopkins reminds that there really is some truth to the whole “Greatest Generation” mythos.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798999645319
Page Count: 620
Publisher: Verlibri Media LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
