An often absorbing story and an impressive work of scholarship.
A historical novel based on Christopher Columbus’ travels in the Caribbean.
Rowen’s work mainly toggles between the Spanish Court and La Isla Española (aka Hispaniola, shared now by Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Although the author takes certain liberties with historical fact, Caonabó is a real-life figure, as is his wife, Anacaona, who’s still revered in Haitian folklore. Caonabó is a formidable enemy to European invaders, led by Columbus (“The Admiral”); of all the Indigenous caciques (chiefs), he’s the most determined to kick the “pale men” off the island once and for all, while other caciques try to accommodate them to varying degrees. Most simply cannot fathom the Spaniards’ fierce relentlessness and arrogance, and guile is shown to trump innocence throughout this account. A particularly poignant figure is young Bakako, whom Columbus captured and forced to be his interpreter and, in effect, his spy; the islander is shown to be torn between two worlds, but he finally chooses to be “Diego Colón,” Columbus’ adopted son, and take his chances with his captor’s people. Rowen’s book is a formidable work of research, with a wealth of backmatter including a glossary and a list of historical sources. However, the prose can be puzzling at times, with strange verb choices (“Cristóbal writhed that it was evidence of disaster”; “Onaney excused uneasily”). There are also some wonderful passages, although the scenes of battle, plague, and starvation can be hard to get through; readers may also find it difficult to reflect on how an obsessive search for gold can turn a person toward evil. Indeed, to read this book is to be forced to confront the very worst of arrogant, hubristic conquest—and the sobering fact that the conquerors achieved their grim goals.
An often absorbing story and an impressive work of scholarship.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9991961-3-7
Page Count: 504
Publisher: All Persons Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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