An engaging narrator draws the reader through this compelling story of love, betrayal, and identity.
A young girl’s coming-of-age in a small Southern town takes unusual twists in this historical novel.
After young Memory Feather’s father runs off with a “French hussy” and leaves her and her mother, Virginia, nearly destitute in New Mexico, they reluctantly move to Virginia’s hometown of Belle Cote, Mississippi. Virginia detests the town’s bigotry and insular attitudes, and she dreads being dependent on her loving but judgmental parents, but it’s 1953 and single mothers have few good options. Memory, who narrates the novel retrospectively, was born with a withered hand with only three fingers, and she fears being shunned for it. But Belle Cote has one big attraction: Virginia’s lifelong best friend, Mac. Today, Memory tells us, “we would simply call Mac McFadden gay, one of the countless gay men who flourish in small southern communities.” In 1953, Mac is tolerated—as long as he doesn’t go too far. His boundless charm and the popular art and antique shop he runs help offset the clucks over the raucous parties he hosts in his big, lovely house. Virginia and Memory happily move in with him and, for a while, things are good. Memory is taken by a portrait in Mac’s house, a painting of an arrestingly handsome man he calls his “beautiful dreamer.” Then the man seems to step out of the frame and show up at the front door. Attacks on gay people as well as violence against civil rights activists haunt the story, but the biggest threat to the trio of Memory, Virginia, and Mac is the beautiful Tony Amato. Mac is thrilled by his return. Memory knows Mac has what the town derisively calls “house boys,” but she is fuzzy on what that means. She’s even more puzzled when her mother and Tony begin to flirt. Memory tells us she’s always had the ability to understand the speech of animals, and Mac’s huge black cat, Minerva, keeps telling her, “Things are going to get much worse.” Minerva is right. Belle Cote and its Gulf of Mexico locale are richly evoked, as is New Orleans, and the author handles suspense deftly. Memory’s witty voice moves convincingly between a child’s innocence and a teenager’s dawning awareness—sometimes exhilarating, sometimes terrifying—of adulthood.
An engaging narrator draws the reader through this compelling story of love, betrayal, and identity.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9798885740364
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hub City Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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