A haunting, eloquent, and engaging historical drama.
A debut novel about two colonists in America whose lives become entwined during the early years of the 18th century.
Twenty-two-year-old Lawrence Kraymer is tired in body and soul. He owns a successful Philadelphia brewery inherited from his cruel, exacting grandfather, who raised him after the untimely death of his unwed mother. Seeking a sense of inner peace that persistently eludes him, Lawrence hires John, a young Native American, to lead him on a hunting expedition through Pennsylvania’s frontier country. Later, when John heads off to New York, Lawrence chooses to stay behind in the wilderness—but without his guide, he soon finds himself lost. In a move that will change his destiny, he seeks refuge from a storm at a farm owned by Pierre Laux. There, he meets and is captivated by the lovely, 18-year-old Catherine, Pierre’s eldest daughter. As the novel unspools, readers learn that Pierre was born an aristocrat in southern France but arrived in Philadelphia as a destitute, 13-year-old orphan. When Lawrence later decides to build a chateau near Pierre’s farm, it triggers the elder man’s painful memories of life in the Pyrenees and the loss of his mother—the first indications that the novel will take a tragic turn. From the first pages, Loux, a poet and short story author, writes with a grace and a clear love of language that permeates the narrative, as when the story explores the linguistic schisms that divided northern and southern France during Pierre’s childhood. The author includes just enough period detail to bring the era to life without feeling excessive and incorporates intriguing tidbits about French religious conflict in Pierre’s backstory. Although the action in this slow-paced, character-driven tale, which focuses mainly on Pierre, Lawrence, and Pierre’s oldest son, Jean, frequently meanders, there are always signs of approaching conflict from a past that’s not “content to rest in peace.”
A haunting, eloquent, and engaging historical drama.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-954065-01-7
Page Count: 295
Publisher: Wire Gate Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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