An informative but often plodding tale that’s more likely to appeal to history buffs than casual readers.
Kreis’ (The Labyrinth, 2014) historical novel explores the dangers and rewards of Colonial North America, as seen through the eyes of a Puritan woman.
This book follows Lizzie Price as she moves from a settlement in Deerfield, Massachusetts, to Native American camps to the bustling city of Montreal over the course of her eventful life. She moves from Northampton to Deerfield with her family at the age of 13 but becomes unhappy with the trappings of a Puritan lifestyle. She resists her community’s disdain for fun, as well as its emphasis on marriage; instead, she’d rather read her secretly obtained books or take a swim at her secret place in the Deerfield River. She’s in danger of being labeled a spinster at 19 when she begins a romance with Andrew Stevens, also known as “Skagit,” a fur trader who, as a child, was taken from his settler family by Native Americans. However, the couple’s happiness is short-lived. Soon after Andrew changes his lifestyle to become respectable enough to marry Lizzie, Native Americans raid Deerfield. They rip Lizzie away from her new husband and kill or capture most of her family and her fellow Deerfield residents. Lizzie’s Native American master eventually entrusts her to the care of Catholic nuns in Montreal; there, she must try to put her broken community back together and decide what the trajectory of her life will be. Kreis’ historical research comes through clearly in this novel, which shows various aspects of daily Colonial life in great detail and offers maps to provide context for the characters’ travels. He also paints clear pictures of various Colonial locations, and readers, who may only be familiar with famous Colonies such as Plymouth and Jamestown, will appreciate its broader glimpse into pre-revolutionary North America. However, there are occasional passages that uncomfortably focus on teenage characters’ sexual development—specifically Lizzie’s. Readers may also find themselves quickly overwhelmed by the novel’s ponderous length and large cast of characters.
An informative but often plodding tale that’s more likely to appeal to history buffs than casual readers.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1505678925
Page Count: 418
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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