In the immediate wake of the Civil War, a family heads to Montana in search of gold.
Annabelle loses her husband in the Civil War, and all her brothers die fighting for the Confederate side as well. Federal tax collectors ravage her considerable inheritance, and she decides to leave Charleston, South Carolina, for Montana with her family to start a new life. Her clan is led to Montana by a former Union colonel and Josey Angel, a Union soldier infamous for his proficiency in killing his adversaries. The colonel decides to lead the wagon train along the Bozeman Trail, a passage that counts as a shortcut but remains notoriously dangerous. They risk encountering deadly snakes, hostile Native Americans, and vicious bandits—Josey’s primary task is to keep the group safe. At first, Annabelle is intimidated by his dark reputation and aloofness but is overwhelmed by curiosity; there seems to be more to this man than a knack for violence. He can be not only gentlemanly, but thoughtful as well, and he is clearly burdened by the memories of savage conflict, of things seen and done. Debut novelist and career journalist Catron poignantly captures Josey’s wounded soul that resists a full plunge into cynicism: “Josey never much questioned the morality of the killing because he never expected to outlive the war. The way he saw things, a number needed to die before both sides lost their taste for it.” Annabelle is haunted by her own loss, and gradually she and Josey develop a bond that flirts with romance. And Josey’s skills as a soldier are sure to be tested soon—a band of mysterious horsemen furtively tracks the group, promising an imminent confrontation. The story takes place in 1866, barely a year after the end of the Civil War, and the resentment that remains is palpable. Annabelle is bitterly unforgiving of the sacrifice of her husband and brothers and of the destruction caused by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s ferocious march through the South. Affectingly written, the bond between Annabelle and Josey is a first gesture toward forgiveness and a hopeful sign of the possible reconciliation of the two battle-weary halves of the nation. This is an unsentimental but moving tale, composed with emotional intelligence and historical insight. A timeless tale of love and adventure on the American frontier.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4328-3280-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Five Star
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
