A riveting frontier read for history buffs, romantics, or anyone who loves a good story.
A classic tale of love, betrayal, and revenge set in the mid-1700s.
In Nary’s debut historical novel, when bold and ambitious Robert Rogers sets out to find the Northwest Passage, he can’t imagine anything—or anyone—stopping him. Seduced by adventure and a loner by nature, he plans to devote his attention to hunting and exploring until a chance encounter leads him to young Hannah Dunbright and her father, who are desperate for shelter. Robert allows the two to stay in his family’s cabin (his mother and brothers also live there), and the inevitable romance happens. As Hannah and Robert share their first kiss, Hannah marvels that she “find[s] it odd having always been one with logic and order. This is no logic here, and things are very much out of order!” Hannah insists that Robert pledge his loyalty to her, and he does so, little knowing that this pledge will be tested, and soon. Within hours, Hannah and her father are taken by Andre Durantaye, a white explorer living among the Native Americans. As the two remain captive, Robert believes he will never see Hannah again and soon meets Elizabeth Browne. Before long, a dangerous love triangle emerges. While Robert struggles with his divided emotions, he feels another pull—that of fighting for the British crown. The hunter puts his energies toward rallying an army company together that is prepared to defend Britain’s interests in the French and Indian War. Readable and exciting, this tale of love and adventure animates the 18th century. Robert changes as a character, developing into a stronger man as his internal and external battles shift. Set against the historic backdrop of a young nation, this epic novel is packed with true-to-life drama and complex characters.
A riveting frontier read for history buffs, romantics, or anyone who loves a good story.Pub Date: July 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4134-7080-2
Page Count: 564
Publisher: ArchwayPublishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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