This debut novel, set in rural Florida, deftly combines family drama and tense thriller.
A dutiful family visit propels a young woman into the dark mysteries of her past.
Loni Murrow loves her job as an ornithological illustrator for the Smithsonian, where she has dreamed of working since girlhood. Raised in the tiny Florida Panhandle town of Tenetkee, she high-tailed out of there as soon as she was old enough. She and her mother, Ruth, never got along, especially after Loni’s father, Boyd, died when she was 12. His death was ruled an accidental drowning, but the Florida Fish & Game agent and inveterate angler knew the waters better than anyone, and rumors swirl. Loni reluctantly takes a leave from work and heads south after her mother breaks her wrist in a fall. When she gets to Tenetkee, she discovers her earnest younger brother, Phil, and his bossy wife, Tammy, have already stuck Mom in assisted living and found tenants for her house. Oh, and Ruth is well along into dementia, her house is a wreck, her memory’s intermittent, and her attitude toward her daughter is as mean as ever. Loni hopes to get her settled and return to Washington quickly, but a mysterious note she finds in Ruth’s suitcase sends her looking for the truth about Boyd. She looks for answers from his former boss, the kindly Capt. Chappelle, and other friends and neighbors. But someone who doesn’t appreciate her investigation vandalizes her car. As Tenetkee grows to seem more ominous than laid back, Loni finds solace in canoeing its waterways—and in a growing friendship with Adlai Brinkert, the handsome fellow who owns the canoe rental shop. The book’s lyrical evocations of natural Florida, beautiful but perilous, ring true, as does its depiction of the entanglements of small-town life. Family dynamics are a strong point, and the author builds suspense skillfully as Loni unearths connections between past and present that could be lethal.
This debut novel, set in rural Florida, deftly combines family drama and tense thriller.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982171-60-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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