A historically informative but also entertaining novel.
In Ashby’s historical novel, a Black British officer—a formerly enslaved person—is sent undercover in preparation for the monumental Battle of New Orleans.
In 1814, Maj. Alexander Charteris, British Adjutant of His Majesty’s 1st West India Regiment of Foot, leads a West Indian regiment of soldiers against the Americans in Washington, D.C. and watches with some satisfaction as the White House is engulfed in flames. Immediately after, Charteris is tasked with a clandestine mission of immense importance, he will travel to New Orleans, posing as a “gens de couleur libre” (“free people of color”) refugee to gather military intelligence and foment rebellion among the considerable Black population there. The British plan is to take New Orleans, permitting them to effectively block the westward expansion of the nation and hamper its growth into a rival empire. Charteris is perfect for the job—a Black man born in Grenada, he speaks fluent French, as does his aide on the mission, Sgt. Major Sori, who was also formerly enslaved. The task is a perilous one and has a personal dimension: Julien Fédon, the leader of a violent uprising in Grenada from 1795 to 1796—and the man who once enslaved Charteris—is living in New Orleans under an assumed name. Charteris’ contact in New Orleans is Jocasta Cameron, described as a “hard-edged businesswoman” and a “lascivious courtesan.” Further complicating matters, he begins to fall in love with her and discovers that she’s enslaved by Fédon.
Ashby’s command of the historical material is authoritative—he brings to life the politics and culture of the times and vividly portrays the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, one of the worst defeats the British military suffered in the 19th century. Charteris is a unique protagonist who knows what it’s like to be enslaved and the son of an aristocrat—his father was an English baronet, and Charteris was given an education befitting his pedigree. Experiencing extraordinary racism has left him both cynical and filled with an “omnipresent despair,” a complex psychological profile deftly drawn by the author: He is an “outcast, forever caught between two worlds because of the stigma of his mixed race.” Ashby’s writing can be overwrought and sentimental—he sometimes hits notes a touch formulaic and more than a touch melodramatic, as when Jocasta fears permitting herself to be emotionally vulnerable to any man, and she expresses her trepidation about her feelings for Charteris: “I can’t, cannot, fall for this man…When he leaves, as he will, it will just be one more ache to add to the shards of my heart that I have glued together like a shattered porcelain plate. No man can help me; I can only fend for myself if I am to rescue the one person deserving of my love.” Likewise, the author describes their lovemaking as “as much a melding of beleaguered hearts and minds as a rapturous connection of their bodies.” Fortunately, these stylistic missteps don’t keep the novel from being thoroughly enjoyable.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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