An often engaging and inventive character study.
In Hadlock’s genre-bending debut novel, a betrayed woman travels across America looking for acceptance, wealth, and freedom.
This historical tale, inspired by a true story, is set during the last decades of the 1800s. Annie Moore, an Irish-born immigrant, becomes pregnant out of wedlock. She’s sent to a convent in Buffalo, New York, and the nuns take her daughter away right after she’s born; however, Annie soon escapes to try to find a way to be reunited with her child. Finding no other means of income, she resorts to sex work to survive, taking the professional name “Bessie.” Although her wealthy clients provide her with jewels and other luxuries, her life on the margins leaves her yearning for mainstream social acceptance. When she begins a relationship with Abe Rothschild, the charming son of a well-known jeweler, this dream seems attainable—but then she suffers a terrible betrayal. The novel explores the day-to-day life of a marginalized woman struggling to find meaning and power in her existence. There’s an impressive deliberateness in the way that Hadlock presents her themes, with an opening dialogue on dreams from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and a quote on forgiveness. Feminism is central to the novel, although its references to gender-based double standards eventually feel repetitive. That said, Hadlock takes care not to use her character as a mere mouthpiece for her story’s themes. Rather, she thoughtfully explores the protagonist’s relationships to her Catholic faith and Irish roots as well as her love of reading. The novel also skillfully uses foreshadowing to create a suspenseful atmosphere without giving the game away. The ending feels a bit rushed and abrupt, but the epilogue provides a satisfactory denouement.
An often engaging and inventive character study.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68463-117-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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