A superb historical novel that’s not just for Civil War buffs.
In this first volume of a planned trilogy, a Southern businesswoman puts her ships to use as privateer blockade runners in the early days of the American Civil War.
In early 1861, Joanna Davis runs Davis & Grey, a successful trading company in Richmond, Virginia. Her main partner is her younger cousin, Trent Grey, but they’ve lately taken on an additional, limited partner, Robert Hamilton—a black Bahamian who was educated in England and has experience as a merchant-ship captain. Though she’s no abolitionist, Davis is a no-nonsense capitalist who “disliked economic inefficiency more than she disliked black people.” Trent, meanwhile, is anti-slavery but pro–states’ rights. In April, when rebels shell Fort Sumter, it’s clear that war is imminent, but the South has no navy. The Confederate government says that it will issue letters of marque for privateers to attack Yankee shipping. Trent convinces Davis to convert one of their two paddle-wheelers into a privateer—not for glory but for profit. Trent has spent time at sea, but he still has much to learn. His first effort is lucky, and he bags a prize; his second is less fortunate, as he loses his ship and his crew—and nearly his life. After he recovers from his injuries, he tries again, this time under Hamilton’s tutelage. His success on this voyage sets the stage for an expansion of their efforts, and for the next volume in the series. Debut author Wonnell has produced a wonderfully compelling story about a seldom-seen aspect of the Civil War: its naval battles. His research is impeccable and his characters, distinct and well-drawn. The scenes are marvels of historical detail (“These, he deduced, were smaller-gauge weapons, perhaps portable field artillery pieces of the kind they called Napoleons”) and period-true dialogue. But this is not a run-of-the-mill Civil War yarn; as the South creates a navy out of nothing, the effort is saturated with intrigue. Hidden motives and political machinations surface and submerge as various characters jostle for position. This is historical fiction at its best—a first-rate tale that wonderfully captures an era and its people.
A superb historical novel that’s not just for Civil War buffs.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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