A complex and often compelling tale of domestic and spiritual struggle in the Caribbean.
Giordano’s historical series installment charts the unhappy Sharpe marriage as it plays out under the palm trees of the Bahamas.
This second book of the author’s Strange Eden series opens in 1792, on the shores of colonial Nassau. Eliza Sharpe is struggling in an unhappy marriage to well-to-do soldier and nobleman Charles Sharpe, and her union is about to get even more complicated. Although Eliza tries to hide it—from herself as much as anyone else—it becomes obvious, after Charles leaves town on business for the crown, that she’s pregnant. What would be a blessing for most couples feels more like a curse for Eliza, because the child isn’t Charles’ but is, in fact, the product of her love affair with Jean Charles de Longchamp, a spy whom Charles knew well and who was executed not long ago. Mercifully, Charles is away during most of Eliza’s pregnancy. In his absence, Eliza begins to feel as if her baby is the last meaningful connection to her slain lover. However, she’s promised Cleo, an enslaved woman in her home, that she’ll secretly give the baby to her; that way, Eliza can make sure the marital fallout is as minimal as possible. The women hope the child will be born before Charles returns to Nassau, but instead Charles arrives home at the worst possible moment for everyone: mere minutes after Eliza gives birth.
Over the course of Giordano’s novel, readers learn that more is roiling beneath the surface of the Sharpes’ lives than may initially appear. Cleo is a practitioner of Obeah healing and spellcasting, and she’s been helping and protecting Charles since he was a small boy. Eliza has been having strange, vivid dreams that clue her into key events in her husband’s life before he ever met her—and this ability, too, is related to Cleo, whose ultimate aims remain mysterious. The novel, set among the glistening vistas of the Caribbean, offers readers an unpredictable story that achieves an admirable balance of beauty and horror. The backdrop is well rendered throughout: “The calm, glassy surface of the water vanished, and the sea grew more chilly as waves disturbed it. The ocean appeared rough, as if gripped by an invisible wintery hand.” The enslaved people’s interactions with Eliza and Charles, however, seem courteous and friendly to the point that readers will find the depictions uncomfortable: “[Eliza] had never heard Cleo raise her voice before. It was not a slave’s place to act in such a way. But Cleo was so much more than a lowly servant, and they both understood this fact.” In addition, some of the character descriptions feel cliched: “Eliza was fiery and beautiful, maddeningly beautiful. So much so that she herself didn’t quite realize it.” Still, readers learn far more about Eliza, Charles, and Cleo from the choices they make than from their outward appearances, which many will find satisfying in the long run.
A complex and often compelling tale of domestic and spiritual struggle in the Caribbean.Pub Date: June 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798986983424
Page Count: 508
Publisher: Käferhaus Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
