A superlative cast fuels this enthralling and sensationally written historical tale.
In Simar’s historical novel, three people from different walks of life struggle in the harsh Minnesota winter.
In the late 19th century, recently widowed Solveig Rognaldson is left alone on her farm after her adopted son leaves with his wife. To pay the mortgage, Solveig needs work, and she gets hired as a well-paid cook at a logging camp. Over in North Dakota, lumberjack Nels Jensen has trouble finding employment; it certainly doesn’t help that someone had previously framed him for thievery, effectively rendering him blackballed from many camps. He decides to try his luck in Minnesota. Meanwhile, Sister Magdalena, a nun in a Duluth convent, dreams up a plan for the nuns to procure money, selling tickets to lumberjacks to exchange for health care when they’re sick or injured for a dollar apiece. She starts at Starkweather Timber in Minnesota, the same place Solveig and Nels find jobs. As Solveig fights to maintain an orderly kitchen and Nels battles alcoholism, Sister Magdalena proves herself in countless ways as a smart, compassionate, and capable person. The author outfits this exceptional story with a superb cast. Solveig, a former indentured servant from Norway, quickly bonds with Nels, a Danish immigrant who’s her son’s age. Sister Magdalena shines brightest—her stature (she’s taller than the other nuns and most men) seemingly earns her the titular nickname, but she also develops a reputation as a reliable, fearless person. While the three lead characters sometimes clash, it’s truly rewarding when they work together, as when they deal with a seriously injured lumberjack or a saloon girl in a precarious spot. Simar’s concise dialogue perfectly suits the era and energizes the scene (“‘Nels, you red-haired son of a biscuit,’ Hiram said. ‘You’re too good for your old pals these days?’”). There’s humor, too, like a cook asking Solveig if she’s “Catlik” as he smokes cigars while standing over food he’s preparing.
A superlative cast fuels this enthralling and sensationally written historical tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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