A fantastic debut that showcases an important figure and the landscape she worked to preserve.
A novel based on the early life of writer, suffragette, and environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
In 1896 in Providence, Rhode Island, 5-year-old Marjory Stoneman lives in a home filled with her mother Lillian’s singing; her father, Frank, sometimes reads to her from volumes such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But when Frank can’t keep steady work, Lillian leaves, with Marjory in tow. They move to Marjory’s grandparents’ home in Taunton, Massachusetts. Soon after, Lillian suffers a breakdown and ends up in Butler’s Sanitarium; she returns home not quite the same, and Marjory takes refuge in literature and the hope that her father will someday visit her. Years later, her grandmother helps her attend Wellesley College; there, Marjory discovers her passions for nature and writing. After graduation, she marries Kenneth Douglas, a much-older grifter whose inability to procure honest work renders them destitute. Thankfully, Marjory’s uncle, Dr. Edward Stoneman, finds her and reveals that her father’s in Florida, running the Miami Herald. Marjory soon becomes the society editor of that paper. When Lilla, Frank’s new wife, suggests that the capable young writer ask for more serious work, she does so, which leads to her writing about women’s suffrage and a decadeslong interest in the Florida Everglades. McMullen crafts a masterful portrait of a women’s suffrage and conservation icon, showing how Marjory’s life is characterized by the line, “Sustaining the soul of another means starving my own.” Her generous heart and intelligence seemingly conspire to place others in her care who are far less capable than she is, including Lillian and Kenneth. This tragic streak ends after she meets fellow newspaper writer Andy Walker of the Miami Metropolis, whose “ideas had been gifts, not expenses.” The magic of the not-yet-urbanized swampland and Marjory’s flowering into womanhood merge in McMullen’s prose: “The phosphorescent sea rolled on and on, over our toes...until we were standing together in liquid stardust.” Later, World War I rattles the life she and Andy plan together; by the end, however, the author effectively shows how Marjory’s belief in her own powers helps her build a life of her own choosing.
A fantastic debut that showcases an important figure and the landscape she worked to preserve.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-742106-9
Page Count: 328
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
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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