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THE EXCELLENT LOMBARDS

Richly characterized, beautifully written, and heartbreakingly poignant—another winner from this talented and popular author.

A Wisconsin girl reluctantly comes of age in Hamilton’s tender and rueful latest (Laura Rider's Masterpiece, 2009, etc.).

A suspenseful opening chapter, with the Lombards racing to get their freshly baled hay into the barn before the clouds overhead let loose the rain that would ruin it, deftly sets the scene for the fraught family drama that follows. Narrator Mary Frances—alternately known as Francie, Frankie, Marlene, or MF depending on who’s addressing her and what stage of her tumultuous development she's at—has total confidence in her father’s ability to grapple antiquated farm equipment and “outwit a storm.” Her adored older brother, William, has less faith and more awareness of the harsh realities facing their Wisconsin apple orchard at the turn of the 21st century. Their father Jim’s health has been battered by years of manual labor; his cousin and co-owner, Sherwood, is dreamy and impractical. Sherwood’s wife, Dolly, incessantly reminds their children of the better life that awaits them with a college degree. Jim’s wife, Nellie, a sharp-tongued librarian who's seen her modest inheritance swallowed up by the orchard, does her best to point William and Francie in the same direction, only to outrage the daughter who desperately insists that she's going to stay put and make sure the orchard goes on just as it has for four generations. The story unfolds as a series of snapshots, discontinuous and tumbled together in an order that follows the emotional logic of memories. A geography bee that Francie deliberately loses, a snooping expedition that results in her getting locked in the room of an eccentric older relative, and the wrenching loss of a beloved hired hand who is more like a second mother are among the incidents that chronicle Francie’s bumpy progress toward maturity, which she resists almost as fiercely as the knowledge that the way of life embodied in her beloved orchard is slowly vanishing.

Richly characterized, beautifully written, and heartbreakingly poignant—another winner from this talented and popular author.

Pub Date: April 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4555-6422-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016

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THE NIGHTINGALE

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

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Pub Date: April 24, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018

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