An impressive story that tackles familiar themes with skill.
In Handeland’s historical novel, a young man and his younger sister try to make sense of the political and social whipsaw that is the Vietnam War.
In 1967, teenager Billy Johnson from Willow Creek, Wisconsin, enlists in the military to head off to the Vietnam War—spurred by government propaganda, but even more by his grandfather’s urging that he make a man of himself. His 17-year-old sister, Jay, is left at home with the “Four Musketeers”: she and Mags, Ronnie Fredrick, and Helen Murphy, her friends since preschool. On the train to basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana, Billy, who’s White, meets Terrell Jones, a young Black draftee from Chicago. They go on to fight alongside each other in Vietnam and become fast friends. When a soldier on patrol takes a Polaroid of Billy standing on the first person he’s killed, Billy sends it to his grandfather, who’s excited about it—but the teen is having regrets about joining up. Back home, Jay is beginning to courageously question the prevailing pro-war opinion in Willow Creek. She’s helped by Paul, a new student and anti-war activist at her high school. Over the course of the story, the beliefs of both Billy and Jay evolve. Many readers, and especially those who lived through that time, may be unimpressed by the prospect of yet another Vietnam War drama. However, they’ll be slowly drawn in by Handeland’s handling of details and nuances; it also makes clear that jingoistic, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic characters like Billy’s grandfather are not caricatures, but truly did, and do, exist. There’s some evocative writing, such as this line about everyday life on patrol: “They listened to the same birds, got bit by the same bugs; they smelled the same stink of sweat and mud and rot.” Readers will eventually realize that that this is a story not of political issues, but of personal loyalties: Billy’s to his platoon and Jay’s to the other Musketeers. Overall, it’s an arresting and moving lesson in integrity.
An impressive story that tackles familiar themes with skill.Pub Date: March 29, 2023
ISBN: 9798986966489
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© 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.
