A lengthy work of historical fiction that often successfully combines bold imagery and a slow-burning plot.
A sweeping debutnovel about one man’s trip into the American West during the gold rush.
Albert Picket “A.P.” Chapman comes from a long line of men who made their living on the banks of the Connecticut River. Although he began his training in shipbuilding, he quickly changed careers and became a warehouse clerk. He’s good at his job but finds himself aching to do something bigger. In 1848, he and his friend Jim Kent book passage to San Francisco to become gold miners in California. A.P.’s wife, Carrie, is left behind to take care of their children, and her parents, by herself. One day, A.P. sees a valley that seems like it’s “calling” to him. He decides to build a ranch there, believing that there’s more economic opportunity in this place than in nearly fruitless prospecting. Soon, he begins building cabins and working on an emigrant road in what he and his friends call Sierra Valley, a locale that he believes will “feed the entire region.” Meanwhile, Carrie is growing more frustrated and unsure of how she and her children fit into A.P.’s dreams, and she wonders if she should join her husband in California. Purdom presents a lengthy but comprehensive tale that’s ideal for fans of thorough, unhurried storytelling. His prose is replete with vivid imagery, which is evident right from the strong, scene-setting opening in which a Pequot boy is shot dead by a soldier in Connecticut: “It is better that the boy can no longer see….It is better that he can no longer hear ripening corn burning in the fields.” A.P.’s saga is presented slowly, with Purdom taking time to detail his fictional world; indeed, the characters don’t even reach California until nearly 100 pages in. Still, the worldbuilding is precise and offers historical context, although some moments feel needlessly drawn out or repetitive. Overall, though, Purdom’s story is rich and evocative, highlighting humankind’s desire for possibility: “It is not at all about the gold, the riches, but about reaching.”
A lengthy work of historical fiction that often successfully combines bold imagery and a slow-burning plot.Pub Date: July 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7370172-0-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Chapman Saddle Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2021
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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