A richly entertaining tale that delivers a captivating history lesson.
A historical novel focuses on King Kamehameha’s successful consolidation of the Hawaiian Islands.
John Young, bosun on the Eleanora, and Isaac Davis, a gunner’s mate, have been captured by the forces of Kamehameha, the most powerful chief on the Big Island (Hawaii, aka Moku Nui). Those forces have also seized a small sloop called the Fair American. Kamehameha recognizes and values talent: Young is to captain the Fair American and Davis is to train the chief’s warriors in the use of Western armaments. These men resist as long as they can—even plot to escape—but eventually, with no other options, they join Kamehameha’s cause, and he even elevates them to ali’i (noble) status. Kamehameha is determined to extend his rule to all of Moku Nui, then conquer the string of islands to the northwest that will become part of present-day Hawaii. This entails ferocious fighting, and Young and Davis do their part. At the book’s end, Kamehameha has conquered all but far-flung Kaua’i and Ni’ihau. O’Leary sticks very close to the actual history, including the important native characters and Kamehameha’s haole (foreign) advisers, Young and Davis. The author is an accomplished writer with a wonderful, (mostly) true tale to tell. Well drawn is the friendship between Young and Davis, strangers in a strange land who first want only to flee but finally, when Capt. Vancouver offers them passage home to England, realize that, with families now, they have become Hawaiians. Still, they never quite get over the brutality that is in ironic contrast to this Edenic archipelago. In Kamehameha’s world, one’s life is loosely held and to die in combat is reward enough. The battles are incredibly grotesque, gory affairs where “expertly wielded war clubs crush skulls, daggers disembowel, spears impale.” So readers get high drama, epic battles, and an engaging account of Hawaiian history. O’Leary provides a useful glossary of the Hawaiian words sprinkled liberally through the text, though they will still present a challenge to the audience. And because the Hawaiian characters’ names will be quite confusing to many readers, a list of them as front matter would have been helpful.
A richly entertaining tale that delivers a captivating history lesson.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980924-49-4
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
