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
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
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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