Those iconic figures manage more human-speak than they did in Gettysburg (2003), and the battle scenes continue war-lovingly...
The Gingrich and Forstchen (military historian) “what-if” take on the Civil War gathers some steam.
After Lee’s glittering Gettysburg triumph (ending volume one of what bids fair to be at least a trilogy) the tactical question becomes—what next? Strike at the now vulnerable enemy capital? The decimated Army of the Potomac appears unable to protect Washington, and if Lee can occupy the city—as President Jefferson Davis is certain he can—perhaps the nightmarish struggle will be at last resolved. Failing that longed-for consummation, France and/or England might be willing to regard the Confederacy as legitimate and worthy of an alliance. But Lee’s vaunted Army of Northern Virginia isn’t what it once was. Victories have been costly. Manpower shortages are everywhere and critical. And, in the west, there’s this new player, a worrisome Union general named Ulysses S. Grant, fresh from his own monster victory at Vicksburg. Urged on by the overconfident Davis, Lee attempts to storm Washington, where he meets much stiffer resistance than predicted—mounted, among others, by the elegant and aristocratic Colonel Robert Shaw (Matthew Broderick in Glory) and his legendary fifty-fourth of Massachusetts. (“Lincoln saw the columns of veterans beginning to shake out into the battle line, the men professional-looking, moving sharply. . . and they were colored.”) The bloody chess game continues. Bold gambits are countered by desperate defenses as the armies maneuver for position, and always, always, with horrific slaughter of young men. Lincoln throws his full support behind Grant. Unaccountably, Jeff Davis’s support for Lee begins to waver. As this second installment ends, Grant seems headed for Richmond. Is that where Gingrich–Forstchen’s champion heavyweights will finally slug it out?
Those iconic figures manage more human-speak than they did in Gettysburg (2003), and the battle scenes continue war-lovingly rendered. Civil War buffs will be entertained.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-30937-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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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