A compelling relationship tale that explores two lives over a half-century.
A lifelong love story—with obstacles—moves from 1970s Texas to present-day New York City.
In this debut novel, two Texas farm kids with big dreams fall in love as teens, split up, reconnect as adults, break up again, and finally come together at a crucial moment. Aspiring artist Leni O’Hare meets Cal McGrath when she impulsively runs away from home after her mother tries to sell her beloved horse, Foggy. Cal has a contentious relationship with his father, a self-made businessman who wants his son to take over the ranching and oil drilling instead of going to college to study physics. The teen knows Leni as the younger sister of his football teammate Foy O’Hare. But Cal quickly connects with Leni, and they swiftly fall for each other. When Foy dies from heat exhaustion at football practice, Cal and Leni are both devastated. Their relationship suffers ups and downs as they deal with their grief, and they are soon making plans to leave Texas together to pursue their passions for physics and art. When Leni gets pregnant, she keeps it a secret from Cal and flees her home with the help of his older brother, Hank, before giving the baby up for adoption. A decade later, Leni and Cal are both in New York, working in art and finance, when their paths cross again. Their romance quickly reignites. A disagreement drives them apart again, and they spend the next 30 years pursuing their own paths until a sudden reconciliation occurs. The story is a compelling one, with Leni and Cal’s relationship at its core. The two come across as fully realized characters, not just star-crossed lovers. Brown brings both the Texas and New York settings to life, and complex secondary characters, especially Foy and Hank, add to the novel’s richness. There are minor stylistic problems (particularly the odd phonetic rendering of several French accents) but they do not detract much from the character-driven narrative. The book explores questions of independence, responsibility, family, and authenticity while telling a page-turning story that will keep readers invested.
A compelling relationship tale that explores two lives over a half-century.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781647422981
Page Count: 408
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
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