by Sophia Alexander ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 2022
A richly embroidered story of early-20th-century rural life in South Carolina.
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A young girl struggles in her relationship with her overbearing stepmother in Alexander’s second historical novel in a series.
In Greeleyville, South Carolina, in 1918, 12-year-old Gaynelle Bell lives a difficult life on her family’s farm. Her stepmom, Jessie, seems bent on making everyone’s days joyless, and her 16-year-old sister, Vivian, hasn’t been herself lately. Gaynelle finds escape in the stables, where she reads books that her father, Clayton, secretly gives to her. Nearly a year ago, the town doctor, Stephen Connor—who may be Vivian’s biological father—offered to pay for the older girl to attend boarding school in Charleston. However, Jessie has been secretly slipping poison into Vivian’s tea to keep her at home. Clayton takes Gaynelle on visits to Aunt Anna, the widowed best friend of the sisters’ late mother. Gaynelle is fascinated by a tapestry in Anna’s house: “It depicted a young woman in a high tower. Impossibly-long, honey-colored hair flowed out the tower window to the ground, where a raven-haired young man in royal garb stood.” When the poisoning—but not the culprit—is discovered and Vivian is sent away to school, Gaynelle is left to fend for herself against her stepmother’s cruelties. She thinks her handsome prince may have arrived in the form of new farmhand Tommy Salters, but Jessie proves a daunting guardian. Alexander’s prose ably replicates the rhythms of speech—and life—in the 1920s South, as when Tommy bids Gaynelle farewell at the end of the harvest: “ ‘Your Pa just don’t need me right now. Leastways, not for a couple o’ months. But he will in the spring. We’ll figure it out.’….Winter had arrived, and they were making their final goodbyes.” The novel does take a while to get going, but once it does, readers will find themselves hooked by the more dramatic elements of this coming-of-age tale. Fans of the previous volume, Silk (2021), about Gaynelle and Vivian’s mother, will likely get more from this sequel than newcomers will, but all are likely to find much to enjoy here.
A richly embroidered story of early-20th-century rural life in South Carolina.Pub Date: April 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955444-26-2
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Onalex Books
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Jodi Picoult ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 2024
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
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New York Times Bestseller
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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