A rollicking wilderness epic that highlights the camaraderie and conflicts of Nouvelle France.
Bird’s historical novel chronicles the New World exploits of Louis XIV–era soldiers who establish a trading port called Detroit.
In 1680, 12-year-old Jean St. Aubin, from the French town of St. Aubin de Blaye, is eager to join the army upon hearing the stories of young visiting recruiter Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac. Cadillac signs off on St. Aubin’s enlistment papers but says the boy must wait a few years. Two years later, St. Aubin meets up with Cadillac again, this time in the company of a General Frontenac. By 1683, Jean is finally a soldier and is ordered to go to Nouvelle France, which will come to be called Canada. St. Aubin and his new soldier buddies endure a treacherous sea voyage, then, upon arrival, engage in many bloody skirmishes with internally warring Indigenous tribes, some supported by English forces. Many parties, including local clergy, seek to profit from trading routes. St. Aubin, Cadillac, and Gen. Frontenac converge again when Louis XIV taps the general to gain greater dominance in the region. Cadillac is granted a central role in setting up a strategic port in Detroit, with St. Aubin tasked with the dangerous mission of bringing Cadillac’s wife and others to this new outpost. Adventure abounds in this fast-paced, fascinating book by Detroit native Bird, which dramatizes the derring-do of historical figures St. Aubin, Cadillac, Frontenac, and others. St. Aubin in particular gets through many suspenseful ordeals, including stepping up as a ship navigator following mass casualties, fending off many wily tribal warrior attacks, and overseeing a fleet of canoes through rapids and over waterfalls. The author, who plans a follow-up book, also showcases the bonds formed by these intrepid soldiers, with wisecracks muttered during tense moments (“Kick him where his brains are if he starts to fall asleep”) and, by novel’s end, a vision of Detroit as a nexus of multicultural harmony.
Pub Date: July 8, 2023
ISBN: 9798850891718
Page Count: 594
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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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