An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life.
Dunlap offers a historical novel loosely based on the life of French miniaturist painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, who forged a career even though the odds were against her.
This sweeping saga tells a story of a real-life 18th-century woman as she pursues her art against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Académie Royale and the first to set up a studio at the Louvre. Dunlap presents this trailblazer’s story, filling in historical gaps with fictionalized elements. The novel opens as Labille-Guiard makes the decision to leave her abusive husband and pursue painting—a career that always interested her but, because of sexist restrictions, eluded her. A shrewd businesswoman, she first paints anonymous erotic works that sell well and allow her to open her studio, and her career as a mainstream artist starts to take off. At the same time, a rival female artist, Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, has caught the attention of the queen, Marie Antoinette, while general upheaval brews across the country. Dunlap’s expansive novel will have readers constantly guessing as to what’s true and what isn’t. Fortunately, the author does a fine job of clearing this up in an epilogue; for instance, she notes that there’s no proof that the artist created erotic works, but points out that they were a common way for artists of the era to survive. (Indeed, the minimal surviving information about Labille-Guiard allows for a great deal of creative license.) Still, the author manages to generate great tension, showing her subject to be stuck in the middle of the revolution, both literally and spiritually: “Adélaïde was caught between the structure of patronage that supported her career and her desire to embrace radical change.” In the end, the novel can be enjoyed as an intriguing gloss on history, but also as a sweet love story between her and her second husband, painter François-André Vincent, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the intrigue of the era’s art world.
An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-097-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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