A vibrant hybrid of historical and contemporary fiction.
In Callaghan’s novel, a middle-aged woman uncovers a secret in the backyard of a newly acquired heritage home that reveals a sweeping Civil War-era drama.
In the early 2020s, San Francisco Bay Area transplant Iris Pearl and her husband, Benny, have recently purchased a home in rural Pennsylvania whose history dates to the early 1800s. The house has been left to disintegrate over the years, so it requires a total renovation to its structure and the surrounding land. One day, workers uncover a mysterious sack while refurbishing a once-charming backyard pond. Inside is the perfectly preserved corpse of a baby who’s been dead for more than a century. The discovery gets publicity, resulting in outside visitors to the site. Soon, Iris and Benny are forced to confront the realities of a tragic history as they uncover the truth about “Little John Doe.” Running parallel to their story is a romance set during the Civil War, and in the same house. Irish maid Aoife has married William Sprigett and settled into the gracious farmhouse not far from William’s grand family estate, where she once worked. The new couple’s wedded bliss is cut short when war breaks out, and William decides to enlist in the Union Army. With only her husband’s hired farmhand, Thomas Walker, to help, Aoife must draw on her own strength to maintain the farm in her husband’s absence. Aoife, who’s white, and Thomas, who’s Black, become close, which becomes the subject of gossip by members of the surrounding community. Their story launches an epic tale that effectively connects with the Iris and Benny’s 21st-century storyline. Callaghan’s attention to historical accuracy is impressive throughout, and this extends to the parts of the narrative that take place in the modern era, in which the author offers sharp insights into life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, this novel deftly shepherds multiple storylines as they slowly bend toward one another in unexpected and ultimately satisfying ways. What results is an engaging epic about loss, loneliness, and desire that perfectly encapsulates relatable human struggles.
A vibrant hybrid of historical and contemporary fiction.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Empower Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2024
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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