A second novel with enough faux-cute appeal to keep the fans happy.
A tall tale about a semi-tame grizzly from Cameron (A Dog’s Purpose, 2010).
Life for Charlie Hall could scarcely be more miserable. An only child, he has lost his mother to leukemia. Since her death, his father George has shut down emotionally, just when Charlie needs him the most. And now the 13-year-old, still a runt, is facing the manhood tests of eighth grade at his school in the Idaho panhandle; Dan, once his best friend, wants to fight him, a dumb rite of passage. (The time is 1974.) Relief comes from an unexpected quarter. Out fishing, Charlie is surprised by a grizzly with a “serene” expression. He offers him his catch; the bear accepts it; a friendship is born. Charlie writes his name in the dirt; the bear follows suit; it’s Emory. The kid takes the bear up to their barn where Emory, unobserved, writes on the wall that he’s a Civil War soldier with a message. Reincarnated, is the implication. Cameron is big on reincarnation; in his debut novel, a dog was reborn three times. But here he just lets the idea hover, not knowing what to do with it; the message, at the end, is banal. There is action, though, as father and son, now on the same wavelength, unite to prevent law enforcement’s attempts to euthanize Emory who, holed up in the barn, has attracted rubberneckers and a TV crew. Charlie is a celebrity, with more than the bear on his mind as he experiences first love, intense but chaste, for seventh grader Beth. His embarrassments at the school dance stand in jarring contrast to Emory’s increasingly perilous situation at the barn. Not to worry; Cameron believes in happy endings. There will be hugs (yes, bearhugs) in a finale designed to leave you misty-eyed but glowing.
A second novel with enough faux-cute appeal to keep the fans happy.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-76532781-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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