Despite an uneven story, Morell delivers an unsettling, thought-provoking perspective on political realities.
A reporter chases after broken dreams in Morell’s alternative history of secession from the United States.
Covering the “secessionism beat” for theAtlanticmagazine, Roman Wolfe has traveled around the world and seen the anger and frustration driving people to try to create new nations and divorce themselves from the political status quo. After 17 fraught months of fighting and tension, one movement has succeeded, resulting in Independence, a new country within the Great Plains of the United States that covers parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Roman successfully enters the blockaded country, where general instability has left people with dwindling resources, notably fuel. Tensions only continue to mount when a man is found dead—Independence’s first homicide—sparking heated debates about security and illegal immigration. A decimated police force has opened the way for violent local militias and misinformation campaigns about Mexican cartels funneling their smuggling operations into the new nation. (“We didn’t secede from the most powerful country ever to get our rear ends kicked and chased away,” a local tells Roman, justifying his contempt for migrants arriving from Mexico and Central America.) Roman drifts through towns observing and writing about what he sees, but his real motivations for coming to Independence are revealed when he reconnects with Kat Taylor, a veterinarian that he had met by chance in Texas years earlier. Kat has consumed his thoughts ever since their passionate encounter, and he has been desperate to see her again, even desperate enough to come to Independence to try to build a life there. While Kat seems uneasy around Roman, the two decide to fix up an old farm together, struggling to find their way as a new couple in a country that is also laboring to find its footing. Elections bring more political instability as mayor Albert Gonzalez rises to power, further destabilizing the allocation of resources and igniting the fiery rhetoric around freedom and community.
Morell successfully builds an expansive and immersive world out of a “what if” scenario. From Roman’s first summaries of various uprisings and populist movements to his struggle to get a money transfer into an embargoed country, Morell’s alternate history feels dense with realistic detail. Independence becomes a strange microcosm of the real world, with debates about immigration and government overreach. It’s a fascinating thought experiment exploring notions of self-determination and freedom; readers will encounter the same infuriating problems and political theater they see on the news. (“It seemed everyone harbored their own propriety blend of reality,” Roman reflects as revolutionary rebels turn against the government they supposedly chose.) Roman’s bittersweet romance with Kat should be a source of more interpersonal and emotional drama, but her sudden appearance feels inorganic and forced. (“In part two of this book, she’s inextricably intertwined with my experiences,” Roman announces abruptly to readers.) The protagonist’s disconnected, sparse, first-person narration works well when he is drifting aimlessly through desolate landscapes, but it does not feel appropriate to the troubled romance central to the book’s latter half. Readers curious about political science and visions of the future will nonetheless find it compellingly troubling how strangely familiar Morell’s fantasy world feels.
Despite an uneven story, Morell delivers an unsettling, thought-provoking perspective on political realities.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798218988111
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Unconscious Will Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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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