A sweet and sentimental tale of finding your inner strength when and where you least expect it, with a rousing nautical...
A woman braves the ocean—and her past—in a daring yacht race around Vancouver Island in Wyatt’s novel.
Rebecca Dunbar has always played it safe. But when Brac, a student in the evening history class she teaches, suggests she join the land crew for the Van Isle 360 yacht race around Vancouver Island, Rebecca dives right in. All she has to do is follow the boats on land, carrying extra sails and spare boat parts; no big deal. But just a few days before the race, a member of the boating crew has to drop out due to a medical emergency, and Rebecca is chosen as the sub despite never having sailed in her life. After a crash course in safety and boating basics, Rebecca finds herself part of the Gallavant crew, under the watchful eye of the legendary captain, Tar McClain. Thus begins one of the greatest adventures of Rebecca’s life. After a few hiccups, including the Gallavant’s heavy penalty incurred in the fourth leg of the race, Rebecca begins to discover her own strength as she fights the negativity ingrained in her from being raised in foster care: “The yacht race was not about Rebecca or the voices from her childhood. It was about what she had to give back to life and to others.” The author includes uncredited black-and-white illustrations to contextualize some of the more technical boating terms (such as jib) and demonstrate proper knot tying. The novel vacillates between quiet, personal moments, such as sailors lamenting their lack of dance skills, and big, adrenaline-fueled scenes, as when Rebecca falls overboard into frigid waters. While Wyatt shoehorns in some historical facts and landmarks that don’t quite mesh with the rest of the story (although it is interesting to learn about humpback whales and the Da’naxda’xw Nation), the narrative’s blend of personal transformation and physical challenges makes for an inspiring read.
A sweet and sentimental tale of finding your inner strength when and where you least expect it, with a rousing nautical twist.Pub Date: April 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780998446646
Page Count: 348
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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