Prohibition, bloodshed, rum-running, and gang wars by a master of historical detail and thunderous storytelling (In the Rogue Blood, 1997, etc.). The razor-edged sawgrass of the Everglades makes a wonderful setting for Blake as his hero, young John Ashley, soon to become a legendary bootlegger and killer, duly takes care of business. Young Ashley poles into the swamp to deliver homemade hooch to DeSoto Tiger, an Indian buddy, when drunken, bowler-hatted DeSoto draws his knife and gets shot thrice by the lad. Eventually, John’s arrested by his nemesis, Sheriff Bobby Baker (the two became rivals long before, when John seduced Bobby’s girl)—but he manages to escape. John disappears for two years, becoming a bouncer in a New Orleans whorehouse, then resurfaces, walking into Sheriff Baker’s office with his father and a lawyer. Bobby taunts John that he’ll hang, but John again wiggles loose. Prohibition arrives; the moonshine business blooms. John’s arrested again during a bank robbery; Bobby Baker thumbs out one of his eyes; brown-eyed John, sporting one blue glass eye, escapes from a road gang, goes back to bank-robbing—and comes up against the Chicago mob that tries to muscle in on his Florida territory. He also finds himself caught between his ever-loving young blind whore, Loretta May, and swamp-girl Laura Upthegrove. John is captured yet again, and yet again escapes lockup, this time with his Ashley Gang. Now Bobby Baker’s feeling truly vengeful . . . . Sex and drawlin’ dialogue that don’t give a damn about real English, along with big whiffs of piney-fresh description, gusts of gunfire, and howling action like a night in a cathouse during a hurricane. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-380-97493-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
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
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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