A crafty, page-turning spin on chronicling Black family history.
An intriguing hybrid of historical romance and fantasy suggests that going back in time may be one way to weed out generational trauma.
“My family tree has poisoned roots,” Cecily Bridge-Davis announces at the start of this haunting saga about the “curse” of time travel. It is May 1964 and Cecily, an African American professor of history, has come into possession of her father’s 65-acre patch of Virginia farmland. When she leaves her Tennessee home to see what’s there, she finds an empty cabin, a spool made from a maple tree, and a family Bible with a yellowed flyleaf listing the names and birth dates of every Bridge family member born on the farm from the 1760s to the 1920s. She also hears from an elderly local about a long-ago murder-kidnapping implicating one of her ancestors. Which turns out to be slightly less shocking than discovering the reason why some of those ancestors vanished for decades: One Bridge offspring in each generation is somehow transported back in time. She also finds a map with locations of strange containers along with a list of “Bridge Family Rules” for time travel: “Never interfere with past events.” “Always carry your freedom papers.” “Search for the survival packs in the orchard.” “Do not speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary.” Cecily presses her inquiry into the family’s temporally peripatetic history all the way back to the 18th century and such precursors as Luke, whose tumble through time takes him from freedom to slavery and eventually into the Continental Army, where he undergoes the travails of Valley Forge. After her forays in the library for more information, Cecily herself is compelled to leave 1964 for 1911, where she takes a different identity and eventually gets a teaching job in circa 1924 Washington, D.C., where she tells one of her students, a young woman named Amelia Bridge, that they’re related and that “Millie” must make the most important time jaunt of their shared family history. Sometimes all this gets even more complicated than it reads here. But Madison shows considerable skill and narrative control. To her credit, it’s hard not to be reminded of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, as well as The Time Traveler’s Wife and some of Ray Bradbury’s time-displacement stories.
A crafty, page-turning spin on chronicling Black family history.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780063290594
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
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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