This rollicking romp seamlessly blends characters, history, and adventure into an enjoyable read.
One of America’s greatest tinkerers learns that not all inventions are good ideas.
If an author is going to write a speculative novel, why not start with a folk hero like Thomas Alva Edison, who contributed so much to modern life? Church’s tale begins in 1887, when Edison is inspired to create an unusual invention after attending—with Mark Twain—a séance by the psychic Madame Blavatsky. The story then jumps ahead to 1918 during World War I. Edison has asked his assistant, John Dawkins, to direct a movie in New Jersey featuring Ziegfeld star Emily Auburn and music by her young accompanist, George Gershwin. The production is attacked by Germans on a military mission. Edison tells John that the Germans are “spies” who want “to sabotage my greatest invention.” The Germans later destroy Edison’s resurrector, a device that communicates with the dead. Seeking to escape the Germans, Edison and his party flee to his secret lab in a Seminole village in Florida, where he keeps a second copy of the resurrector. They are captured by a U-boat while attempting to outrun the Germans on Edison’s electric launch. They are taken to Germany, where they discover that a spy inside Edison’s company has built a deficient version of the resurrector, which the inventor is now expected to fix. The group must find a way to escape and warn some newly arrived American troops of a planned German ambush. Like Emily, Church delightfully sings in this rip-roaring novel. He artfully weaves together real-life characters like Edison and Gershwin with fictional ones, including John and Emily, to create a gripping adventure. The author utilizes Edison’s longtime passion for creating a machine that talks with the dead, placing it at the heart of this story. Lending an authenticity to the backdrop of the caper are Edison’s inventions, both successes and failures. With the exception of the wily inventor, the main characters undergo transformations during the turmoil. Church has even introduced a romance between John and Emily, which becomes the primary motivation for both players. The German officers are predictably venal but distinctive. Following a tragic twist, the book’s conclusion still points toward a hopeful future.
This rollicking romp seamlessly blends characters, history, and adventure into an enjoyable read.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-32484-5
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Ferrisville Publications
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
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
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.
The true story of Axis diplomats detained in the U.S. at the start of World War II is transformed into a dazzling historical novel set at a sumptuous West Virginia hotel.
Bestselling YA fantasy author Stiefvater’s adult debut introduces a writer whose prodigious imagination and distinctive prose style have combined to create a novel that will remind readers of why they fell in love with reading in the first place. At its center is the captivating June Hudson, an erstwhile Appalachian orphan who was taken in by the wealthy Gilfoyle family, owners of the Avallon Hotel & Spa, a high-society retreat built over underground mineral springs. At his death, the patriarch bequeathed ownership to his playboy son, Edgar, but made June the general manager, as she had spent her life learning the business—and also shared with Gilfoyle Sr. a rare gift relating to the “sweetwater” springs, a fantastical element of this otherwise realistic novel. Aside from the magical waters and a few other fanciful details, Stiefvater’s fictional world is based on extensive research into high-end hotels of the period, creating a version of luxury so appealing that readers will wish they could check into the Avallon and stay on indefinitely. In fact, the novel revolves around the true meaning of luxury. To June, it has nothing to do with wealth; it is more connected to joy, and to the book’s title: “June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury.” Also brilliantly managed is the rest of the ensemble cast: sexy FBI agents; June’s inimitable staff; the delegations of Japanese, Germans, and Italians detained at the hotel, some quite nasty, but among them a strange, special, totally silent child. And on top of all this, a delicious love story!
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655504
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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