An ambitious, engaging novel that explores the power of finding personal connection to the past.
Stories, letters, and journals connect the tumultuous lives of several women in a single family over three centuries in this debut novel.
In a prologue set in 2014, Rachel Pearson Strand reflects on her mother’s enigmatic last words: “I am like Ana,” she says. “I have failed Juliana.” Those names, unfamiliar to Rachel, act as a springboard for D’Harlingue’s debut historical novel, which interweaves the lives of characters over multiple generations. In the first part, set in 1661 Madrid, Ana grieves her physician husband, Emilio Cardero Diaz, and helps her brother, also widowed, raise his 16-year-old daughter, Juliana, who’s never been told the truth about her mother’s death. The story unfolds in short, alternating chapters, each focusing on a different character, with many in diary or letter form. Ana discovers her late husband’s journal, which reveals his long-held desire to travel to the New World, and then finds Juliana’s diary, which she kept after she fled her childhood home. Her father had killed a man who’d raped her but then aimed to kill Juliana, as well, because he couldn’t bear the loss of “honor.” The book’s second part shifts to 1992, when Rachel, who’s pregnant, reveals to her dying mother that she’s about to have a girl. Rachel, who teaches Spanish at a university, later finds a packet of documents that continue Juliana’s story, including her escape to Mexico City and her life in a convent, which also shelters her daughter. D’Harlingue’s prose is languid and sure throughout this novel and especially effective at threading in intriguing details of 17th-century Spain and Mexico City, including the role of education in the lives of women. Ana, Juliana, and Rachel are all distinct characters, with Juliana’s journey the most compelling. However, the episodic, often epistolary plot structure somewhat slackens the tension and drama surrounding Juliana’s courageous life choices. The inclusion of each generation makes for a crowded closing section, as well. Nevertheless, the rhythms of these women’s lives are sure to resonate with readers.
An ambitious, engaging novel that explores the power of finding personal connection to the past.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-743-2
Page Count: 360
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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