A moving and well-written saga of an earlier time in America.
Trubiano’s historical novel tells the story of the Italian immigrants who fought for survival and acceptance in Boston’s North End in the first half of the 20th century.
Domenic Bassini is 16 years old when he sets sail for America from his hardscrabble little village to make a better life for himself and perhaps improve the family fortunes. A shy, quiet kid, he nonetheless meets people on the voyage who will remain in his life (for good or ill), including Cologero Dragotto and his beautiful and shrewd young bride, Francesca, who seduces Domenic even before they land in Boston, and the spunky 10-year-old stowaway, Ermino Lentini. Once in Boston, Domenic, a stoic, steady worker, gets a job and keeps his head down. Domenic becomes Ermino’s protector by default, but the kid is a handful and drifts away, finally going full-bore into a successful life of crime. Early on, Ermino and Domenic have a run-in with young Colin O’Riley, the son of Brendan O’Riley—a very powerful police officer in the BPD; a generation-long enmity between the Bassinis and the O’Rileys will soon develop. Colin becomes a dirty and dangerous cop and the nemesis of Domenic’s son, Dommy, who’s a war hero, a scrupulously honest cop, and a beacon for the future. (As his wife, Martha, later says ruefully, “Dommy didn’t want to just be a cop. He wanted to be a saint.”) The narrative runs from 1914 to the 1950s and through three generations of triumphs and tragedies; the city of Boston is as much a character as the human characters. The author effectively illustrates the ways in which struggles for power in the city often resembled a fight between scorpions trapped in a bottle. The story covers the Brahmins, who lost Boston but controlled the State House; the Irish, who took over the BPD; the Italian Mafia and lesser gangs; and the often hilariously corrupt politicians. In the course of the tale, readers encounter the famous police strike of 1919, the Great Molasses Flood of that same year, the Spanish flu, and several cameo references (including Joseph Kennedy, Sacco and Vanzetti, and James Michael Curley).
A moving and well-written saga of an earlier time in America.Pub Date: June 1, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-963844-04-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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