A well-researched tribute and a memorable addition to World War II literature.
A debut novel about a young soldier’s World War II experiences in the South Pacific and his romance with a hometown girl.
Smith mines a rich trove of family history to tell the fictionalized story of his parents, Red and Judy Smith, who hailed from farming families in East Texas and fell in love as teenagers. The novel opens on a hot day in Hopkins County in August of 1940, when local, 19-year-old baseball player Horace Garlton “Red” Smith, a responsible eldest son in his family, first notices Juliette “Judy” Hamilton, a 12-year-old girl from a neighboring farm, cheering him on. Despite the age difference, Judy says to herself that “she would, by hook or crook, someday, somehow, win the heart of this Red-Headed Prince and be carried away to Paradise, to live, as they say, happily ever after.” The story follows their later wartime courtship and postwar marriage, closing with epilogues that capture each spouse’s final moments, reaffirming their bond. Judy remains a somewhat idealized character throughout, and this narrative choice makes the postwar section of the novel feel less compelling than earlier chapters. But the book succeeds in its detailed evocation of Red’s transformation from a young farm boy to a seasoned soldier fighting in ferocious jungle battles in the South Pacific, tried by combat and buoyed by the strong bonds of friendship with a small band of fellow soldiers. In a prelude, Smith effectively foreshadows Red’s experiences during the November 1944 battle in Leyte in the Philippines: “The night was dark as pitch. Howling winds carried horizontal sheets of blinding, cutting rain.” And although Red’s survival is never in doubt, the tension is high as each battle threatens his closest friends—Nobel Horner, Pete Petty, and Kenny Herrod—and the other members of the mortar unit. Crisp, believable dialogue and backstories bring these secondary characters into sharper focus.
A well-researched tribute and a memorable addition to World War II literature. (bibiliography, introduction, author’s note)Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72833-564-3
Page Count: 560
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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