Marley and Me combined with Tuesdays with Morrie.
From humor columnist Cameron (8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter, 2008, etc.), a first novel that follows the spiritual journey of a dog through four incarnations.
“Toby” is first born in a litter of four to a mother who lives in the wild away from humans. But soon the family is captured. Although his mother wants only to escape, Toby—who understands human language as soon as he hears it—is immediately drawn to the human kindness of the woman who has made it her mission to care for strays. Unfortunately her facility is already overcrowded when a vicious new dog arrives. Injured in a fight among the dogs, Toby ends up in a pound where he is put down, but not before he’s begun to wonder what his purpose in life might be. He is reborn as “Bailey,” a golden retriever who becomes the beloved pet of “the boy” named Ethan. Ethan lives with his parents in town but spends summers on his grandparents’ farm, where both Ethan and Bailey form a special bond with a little girl named Hannah. When Ethan is a teenager, a jealous, frankly evil schoolmate burns down Ethan’s house. Bailey helps the police catch the perpetrator, but Ethan is badly injured, physically and emotionally. He and Bailey spend his senior year recuperating at his grandparents’ farm as his parents’ marriage disintegrates. By now Bailey has realized that his purpose is to comfort Ethan. Ethan goes off to college and eventually Bailey dies of old age to be reborn as Ellie, a female dog who becomes the star of a K-9 unit until she loses her sense of smell. Although her owners love her, she never forgets her special bond with Ethan. So when Toby/Bailey/Ellie is reborn, male again, he searches until he finds Ethan, now a lonely old man living on the family farm. Soon Ethan adopts “Buddy,” who reunites Ethan with his lost love Hannah.
Marley and Me combined with Tuesdays with Morrie.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2626-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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