An often engrossing, well-researched tale of one of American history’s most infamous generals during the most famous battle...
Pierce presents a fictionalized account of the Union cavalry at Gettysburg that focuses on the young Brigadier Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
Retired U.S. Navy Captain Pierce returns with his second novel in a planned trilogy about the Battle of Gettysburg, which begins at a pivotal moment in Custer’s burgeoning career. He’s 23, and it’s only been a few years since his court-martial at West Point, yet he’s managed—through heroism, say some, or through foolhardy recklessness, say others—to make a name for himself in President Abraham Lincoln’s Union Army. When readers drop into the timeline in mid-June 1863, the brash Custer is about to seize a moment that will make him famous, forcing his way into a cavalry charge led by Gen. Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. In a phrase that will come to define Custer’s place in the lexicon, he shouts, “Promotions or a coffin!” and flies headlong into battle. The gamble pays off; Custer survives, and he’s given the promotion he craves in order to prove his worth to a wealthy judge back home in Michigan, who’s also the father of Custer’s great love, Elizabeth Bacon. Such rolls of the dice become standard for Custer, whose fortunes on the battlefield begin to take on a mythic aura referred to as “Custer’s Luck.” Although Custer (and his flowing blond curls) remains the star of the show, readers also get to spend entire chapters with, among others, Brigadier Generals David Gregg, Kilpatrick, and Elon Farnsworth—all important figures, no doubt, but none of them will captures readers’ imaginations like Custer does.
The plot proceeds in lockstep with the real-life historical events, as one would expect, but the author manages to keep things suspenseful for Civil War buffs and novices alike. The prose sings most beautifully when in motion, and the scenes surrounding Custer’s charges into battle are truly exhilarating: “An enemy bugler trumpeted, and Rebel wolf cries howled….A gray, crested wave spiked with glittering sabers started jogging down the crest.” The author also portrays moments of compassion between gentlemanly combatants—often neighbors, friends, or old schoolmates—in which readers will most keenly feel the realities of Civil War conflicts. Pierce sticks to the history of the central battle, which is indisputably monumental. At more than 600 pages, the novel does feel overlong (even for historical fiction, which tends toward considerable length), and readers will find that wading through some of the tome’s more academic minutiae will require commitment. Readers looking for a breezy, biopic-style narrative of Custer’s life may get bogged down in such material, but the book has plenty of compelling information for those who might wish to dive deeper. Fans of the author’s previous work will be happy to return and spend more time with familiar characters, and newcomers are sure to be drawn in by the central character’s strange magnetism.
An often engrossing, well-researched tale of one of American history’s most infamous generals during the most famous battle of the Civil War.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781631070532
Page Count: 652
Publisher: Heart Ally Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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