An exciting but uneven war tale about a heroic female pilot.
In this historical novel, an orphaned American woman is given the rarest opportunity—to become a combat pilot during World War II.
Twyla Campbell grows up in Boonville, California, the daughter of a fighter pilot who saw action in World War I. Her childhood is a happy one filled with love, but all that is shattered when she loses her entire family in a plane accident and is suddenly an orphan. Now, her life becomes a grim one filled with toil and sexual abuse under the tyrannical custodianship of Castor and Edna Gultch, relatives who take her in. Twyla is saved from that hell by Llewellyn “Lew” Haliday, a local boy, and his best friend, Wiley Felton, who kills Castor. Twyla marries Lew in 1941, and he teaches her how to fly, a skill that quickly becomes a passion. Lew is stationed as a pilot in Honolulu, and while there with him, Twyla is inadvertently drawn into a fight with the Japanese bombers attacking Pearl Harbor—Lew will later brag that she was the first pilot to confront the enemy in World War II. At the time, she is flying with Butch McCuskey, who strongly responds to her bravery: “We’re in it now. Leave it to a dame to go flyin’ on this day! Grabbin’ the wheel! Trying to kill us! Four hundred hours in a puddle jumper is not combat flying! No idea what yer doing! Thank yer lucky stars I’m a fighter hero! You owe your ass to me, little missy!” Later, Twyla will join the Women’s Air Force Service, a program that used female pilots for noncombat missions such as ferrying supplies. Twyla seems destined for combat, though—she is shot down, captured by the Germans, and rescued by Russian soldiers. Then she is afforded an extraordinary opportunity—to fly, and even see combat, for the Red Army.
Very little has been written about the female pilots who flew during the war, a story as fascinating as it is unfortunately neglected. Bellen provides a captivating portrayal of the risks these women took and the sacrifices they made, a service not always duly recognized. In addition, the depiction of the aerial combat is electrifying—the author draws these scenes with cinematic vivacity. But the plot as a whole is a slow amble—many readers will wish the nearly 400-page book had been cut to half its length. Bellen weighs down the story with too many digressions and detours, and the result is a messy pastiche of subplots. Moreover, the author aims too laboriously for the poetically profound, and that strain expresses itself in overwrought writing and unabashed sentimentality: “What is the point of flying and death? Why must the two collaborate? Flying is a poem of personal, physical exaltation. Not a means to end one’s life. It is a celebration. That is all.” Unfortunately, this emotional unwieldiness pervades much of the novel. An exciting but uneven war tale about a heroic female pilot.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Write My Wrongs LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2023
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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