A lively and well-researched tale for fans of mysteries and American social history.
The Vermont granite industry provides the backdrop for this debut historical novel set in the early 20th century in a fictional small town.
In Granite Junction, two rival granite companies are fighting for prominence: one run by the disgruntled Ernest Wheeler and the other by society leader George Rutherford. The story begins with a legal battle between the two men over Rutherford encroaching on Wheeler’s turf, all of which is reported by the Granite Junction Gazette.Young journalist Dan Strickland, the son of a stonemason, covers the story and the chain of events that follow. These include a suspected murder and business malpractice, pulling him further into the dark underbelly of the town despite his efforts to rise above his station. Pope’s novel grapples with several interconnected themes, all inspired by the author’s ownership of a local paper and its archive in small-town Vermont. This makes for a nuanced portrayal of a community that relies on a particular industry and what happens when the business faces a period of uncertainty. Most intriguing is the exploration of Strickland’s grappling with his identity and his attempts to ingratiate himself with the upper classes in Granite Junction (“If a farm boy like Ernest Wheeler could become the owner of a big company, then the son of a stonecutter could also achieve success”). This process begins with Strickland’s induction into the town’s Pedalers club, populated by his richer male peers. But it is ultimately symbolized by Strickland’s flickering romantic interest in school friend Molly O’Brien, the well-educated Camille Upton, and destitute widow Rosa Rosetti. Through these female characters and others, Pope also provides a convincing look at a cross section of women during the period, even if many of them are beholden to the men around them. Each character provides a particular perspective, making for an ensemble feel to the novel that is sometimes more compelling than the mystery at the heart of the story.
A lively and well-researched tale for fans of mysteries and American social history.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-57869-118-0
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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