A gripping story of foes stepping away from the brink of annihilation.
Armageddon looms in this barely fictionalized retelling of the Cuban missile crisis.
In 1962, an American U-2 spy plane returns with photos of missiles the Soviets are installing in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. The Cold War is already tense, and now U.S. enemies will be able to strike anywhere in the country right from its own backyard. Of course, the Kennedy administration cannot—will not—let this threat stand. Some American generals want to invade Cuba or at least strike the missile sites, which is guaranteed to kill Russians. Others want to blockade all Russian ships headed there and sink the ones that won’t stop—show the world who’s boss. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev must deal with hotheads of his own who are eager to fight and destroy the U.S. Meanwhile, Castro talks like he’s all in for a fight, and he’s angry that he has no control over the missiles. The author portrays the viewpoints of Robert Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev as key players who understand the nuclear abyss they and their families may face. English professor Joseph Russo represents the millions of Americans who are simply scared by the nightly news and are worried that they should have built that family fallout shelter after all. Everyone knows how the story ends, so this well-researched book holds no great surprises. By and large, the main players are rational human beings—when a missile brings down a U-2 and kills American pilot Major Rudolph Anderson, men like R.F.K. urgently work to prevent escalation into all-out war. But Russo’s neighbor says nukes are fine: “All we needed was one good-sized hydrogen bomb, and Cuba would have been a sandbar.” Russo’s children tell him of the “duck and cover” exercises their school principal makes them do. Pupils hiding under desks and neighbors stocking up their fallout shelters strike Russo as foolishness, but along with the dire nightly news, he wonders if President Kennedy can ward off a nuclear holocaust. Spoiler alert: He does, with the help of rational leaders on both sides. As with other Shaara works like To Wake the Giant (2020) and The Old Lion (2023), this is solid history with enough invented dialogue to justify calling it a novel.
A gripping story of foes stepping away from the brink of annihilation.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781250279965
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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