Realistic, sharply descriptive, and movingly observant writing.
An American soldier returning from Vietnam struggles with flashbacks and the demands of reintegrating into civilian life in this novel by Hartney.
On a flight out of Vietnam in March 1970, Reid Holcombe finds himself surrounded by fellow U.S. Marines celebrating the ends of their final tours of duty. Reid just wants to forget what he’s seen and done in combat and return to his family’s South Carolina tobacco farm. Things have changed back home: His father has died; his sister, Angela, is running the farm; and his wife, Ellie, had an affair with local consultant Diana Welsch. Reid, while deployed, had an affair with a Vietnamese medic. Instead of trying to reconnect with his spouse, he chooses to live on the struggling farm with his sibling while wrestling with his inner demons. The novel also tells the story of Joe Terrell, a Black soldier who returned to rural South Carolina, where he faces constant racism. When Reid asks Joe and his father to work on the farm, their relationship highlights their differences as well as their shared struggles. Hartney’s prose is thoughtfully descriptive, cleverly contrasting rural stillness with soldiers’ psychological turmoil: “A thrush hopped from branch to branch before flitting away. The farm was peaceful, a lean-to shelter in an emotional rainsquall.” The author effectively captures the anger of men who return from war only to be treated as second-class citizens. Joe’s words are particularly biting: “I’m not wanting to be fighting again, but I can’t live less than a man….South ain’t changed. She’ still a whore.” Hartney skillfully exposes the tensions that exist between those transformed by violence, as when Ellie says of her husband: “I’m sure I still have feelings for him. Love, I think. I’m also sure I can’t live with him. We’re both too changed, too damaged.” Certain passages are slightly repetitive, particularly with respect to unpleasant odors. However, this doesn’t detract from this ambitious novel, which addresses issues of PTSD and racial injustice with believable characterization.
Realistic, sharply descriptive, and movingly observant writing.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1509234622
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
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
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
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