An atmospheric debut about the savagery of nature, learning to trust, and the wilds that exist within all of us.
Think you've put in your time with emotionally unavailable men? Try making a marriage in the Alaskan wilderness with Lawrence Beringer.
Homesteading in Alaska in the 1950s isn't for the faint of heart. To secure a deed to the 150 acres outside Anchorage where he's staked his claim, Lawrence must build a cabin and successfully cultivate the land—no small task given the territory's bitter winters, the dense forest to be cleared, and the bears and wolves always happy to remind him he's on their turf. Lawrence is a determined loner who dreams of a better life than his parents had back in Minnesota, and he hits the jackpot when Marie Kubala, attracted by the cut of his jaw and the prospect of those 150 acres, agrees to become his wife. They're ready for a challenge, but neither realizes the work of knowing each other and forging a marriage will prove even more daunting than taming their bit of the great outdoors. Moustakis excels at conjuring place: You can feel the wind, taste the homemade cherry wine that fuels the couple's labors, and sense the chill loneliness that is their isolated lives, even with frequent visits from Marie's sister, Sheila, and her husband, Sly, who live in town. Lawrence's struggles with intimacy are finely rendered as well, though the reason for them has a whiff of cliché: Hiding trauma and survivor's guilt from his service in the Korean War, he resists Marie's urging to open up. (He's the kind of guy for whom "Wood won’t chop itself" counts as conversation.) The birth of their daughter complicates Marie's relationship with Sheila, who longs for a child but has had no luck, and brings Marie and Lawrence closer while also testing them. A grizzly might get you on your way to the lake, but months with a colicky baby will make that walk seem well worth it. Nuanced and suffused with poetry, Moustakis' novel paints an indelible portrait of a couple finding their way in the wilderness.
An atmospheric debut about the savagery of nature, learning to trust, and the wilds that exist within all of us.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781250845559
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
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
© 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.
