A gripping war tale with a romance as a lagniappe.
This second installment of a historical fiction series focuses on the hard-fought Battle of Belvedere, in which the Free French African forces distinguish themselves—especially the ambulance drivers, all women.
It is late January 1944 during World War II. Italy has surrendered but the Germans have occupied that country. The Allies are marching up the peninsula, determined to take Rome. The Germans have dug in at the so-called Gustav Line, halfway between Naples and Rome. The Americans, British, and French are determined to break that all but impregnable line. The battle rages for two weeks until there is a temporary stalemate after hundreds of French soldiers are killed or wounded. The weather is horrible: cold and rainy, with the roads becoming sluices of mud. And everywhere there are mines. The battle involves valor writ large. A subplot explores the passionate affair between Sous-Lt. Madeleine Sauveterre, the officer in charge of the ambulances, and Lt. Jean-Paul Morane, a company commander. Some of these characters, like those French lovers, are fictional, but other figures and most of the events, such as the attack on the Gustav Line, are all too true. Myers is a keen student of history (this is Book 2 of the author’s Fighting France Series). The battle, which takes up most of the work, is described in wrenching, gory detail. Most of all, Myers makes readers feel the sheer fatigue. One battalion has been without food, water, or sleep for nearly 24 hours. But when told to attack yet again, the soldiers obey without question. Another strong theme concerns women proving themselves, showing that they can be as tough as the men, even standing up to a chauvinistic officer, who backs down. The women, many of them quite young, are a brave bunch. They are also sassy and not shy with the available soldiers. Life is a heightened proposition when death is always just a few inches away. Readers know that the battle will be resumed in the spring when perhaps there will not be so much mud. These are indefatigable people. Myers is clearly awed by them, and readers will be too.
A gripping war tale with a romance as a lagniappe. (maps, bibliography)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-68-188887-1
Page Count: 367
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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