A somber but absorbing Civil War tale about overcoming guilt.
In this debut novel, a Confederate soldier’s ghost laments his horrific war experiences and a secret that’s tormented him for years.
Tom Smiley has spent more than a century in his childhood Virginia home, long after his family members’ deaths and his own. He’s devastated when Phoebe and her husband inherit and invade the long-empty house. The couple’s presence stirs up Tom’s memories, starting with his 18-year-old self in the 1860s. As American states secede, a passionate speaker ropes him and others into enlisting in a “volunteer militia.” The young men hardly consider the militia’s anti-government stance or “the reasons behind the conflict.” Tom and his fellow soldiers soon feel trapped, as deserters are executed. They endure the grueling Civil War, from watching friends die in battle to appalling treatment at a Union prison camp. Despite Tom’s loving spouse and the children they have later, a horrible secret mercilessly burdens him. Unexpectedly, Phoebe, who has “second sight,” offers to help the ghost whose presence she senses. If Tom confesses to her and to himself, he may come to terms with what he did so long ago. Cutter paints a vivid portrait of the 19th century—a time of slavery and civil unrest. Her grim story reveals the suffering on all fronts. Union soldiers prove menacing at the prison camp as well as in their assaults in Virginia that Tom’s parents and sisters witness. The author’s striking prose invigorates such scenes as a close-quarters battle with bayonets while cannons roar and bombs continually explode. Tom, who narrates, is naïve but sympathetic; he worries about his friends’ well-being, whether under enemy fire or as prisoners. The engrossing story understandably centers on these young soldiers, with a nominal focus on the female characters, including Tom’s wife and even Phoebe. Tom’s sister Mary is a notable exception, with her letters and writings providing intriguing insights into the family in Virginia.
A somber but absorbing Civil War tale about overcoming guilt.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-387-2
Page Count: 344
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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