A combination of fact and fiction that’s somewhat slow but often engaging.
A historical novel that explores the causes and repercussions of one of the most well-known tragedies of the 20th century.
Kate Royston is aboard the RMS Carpathiaruefully celebrating her 21st birthday, as she’s broke and fleeing a horrible, secret tragedy in a life she’s left behind her. Out for a nighttime stroll, she has a conversation with radio officer Harold Cottam about distress signals received from the RMS Titanicof the White Star Line. After changing course and proceeding to the scene of the sinking, the crew and passengers of the Carpathiahelp to rescue and care for more than 700 people who made it into lifeboats. Kate finds herself caring for the wealthy, well-connected widow Eva Trentham, who’s determined to force a U.S. Senate inquiry into the tragedy, with the hope of taking down J.P. Morgan, the ship’s de facto owner. Among the survivors is Danny McSorley, a radio operator who sets about helping Cottam manage the high volume of messages about survivors, but he too has secrets—not the least of which is how he managed to get a seat on a lifeboat, as he’s not a woman or child. Through Kate’s interactions and via the Senate inquiry, readers witness accounts from many other survivors, including immigrants in third-class accommodations; a few surviving officers, including second officer Charles Lightoller; White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay; civilian passenger Jack Thayer, who now inherits his father’s fortune; and lookout Frederick Fleet. Many of the events leading up to, during, and immediately after the sinking of the Titanicwill be familiar to readers, as they’ve been well documented and portrayed onscreen. This book focuses on revealing key facts of the disaster through eyewitness accounts and official questioning that appear to be a mix of real-life sources and fictionalized dialogue. Hodgetts takes a highly familiar event and makes it fresh by weaving her own characters into the tapestry. The narrative is not as tight and briskly paced as readers might wish, however, due to the sheer volume of information included here.
A combination of fact and fiction that’s somewhat slow but often engaging.Pub Date: April 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-90320-0
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Emerge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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