An uplifting tale of facing personal and professional adversity.
When a doctor loses her family in a horrible accident, she struggles to find purpose in her work and meaning in her life in this novel.
Angela Brennan is a highly regarded cardiac surgeon at her hospital in Barrington, Rhode Island. Her colleagues respect her, and the hospital administrators are grooming her to become CEO. Angela is driven and dedicated to her career, but her commitment to the job comes at a cost: Her husband, Tony, and their two children, son Liam and daughter Emily, miss her. “You’re missing so many of the little things that make a family special,” Tony says. Still, the family is happy, and the four of them enjoy an idyllic Memorial Day weekend on Cape Cod. As they’re driving back to Barrington, a truck smashes into the car in “an explosion of light.” Liam is killed almost instantly; Tony also dies in the accident. Emily is rushed to surgery to repair a shattered leg and a broken arm, but an accidental drug overdose kills her. Angela, reeling and feeling alone, leans on her friend Liz Rumsey, a nurse at the hospital. Soon, Angela returns to work, but without the same passion. She considers taking her own life. One day, a cryptic note shows up on her desk: “I’m not sure that the cause of your daughter’s death is what it seems,” it says. As Angela tries to figure out who left the note and for what purpose, her investigation reveals that her beloved hospital might not be the workplace she thought it was. Splaine’s writing is clean, precise, and explicitly detailed. The author’s knowledge of health care workers and the hospital environment is extensive, informing nearly every page. While Splaine’s prose recalls a surgeon’s attention to detail, the accident is depicted too vividly, with gratuitous descriptions of the horrific car crash. Throughout the novel, the villains are clear: the agents of bureaucracy who value saving face over saving lives. Despite such obstacles, Angela searches for what really matters in this stirring story: kindness, care, and hope.
An uplifting tale of facing personal and professional adversity.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-950584-73-4
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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