A reflective tale of growing up creative in a stifling environment and finding true love.
An elderly woman looks back on her childhood on a farm during the Great Depression and her later career as a dancer in Caugherty’s debut novel.
In 2006, Irene Larsen is almost 90 and living in comfort at the Golden Manor retirement community. Despite some health problems, she has a pleasant existence that includes spending time with her group of friends at the home and regular visits with her daughter, Deirdre. She’s also secretly recording her memoir on an old tape recorder, which makes up the bulk of this book. Irene grew up on a farm in a Mormon family in Paradise, Utah, and in 1932, “Wall Street and its problems…seemed as distant as a foreign land you might read about in the paper, reflect upon idly then quickly forget.” They worked tirelessly, and Irene helped with picking fruit and canning while her father and brothers tended to the wheat fields. Unfortunately, her younger brother Jeremiah was stricken with scarlet fever and died, which sent her mother into a deep depression. The price of wheat fell, and the financial situation on the farm became dire, but Irene found solace singing in school musical productions. Encouraged by a brother at Brigham Young University, Irene applied to study music there and was accepted. However, a summer gig at a Utah resort led to a relationship with a snappy young dancer, which threatened Irene’s relationship with her conservative family. Over the course of this bright novel, Caugherty manages to seamlessly transition between two wildly different decades while maintaining a fresh, youthful voice—which is essential in a book about an ambitious dreamer who struggles through hard times. Insights about farm life, the Depression, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are plentiful throughout the narrative, which is populated with many references to 1930s songs as it showcases Irene’s obvious talent. It’s a hopeful yet realistic story, and the letters that Irene receives from her future husband are a particular joy to read.
A reflective tale of growing up creative in a stifling environment and finding true love.Pub Date: April 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68433-478-0
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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