A historically authentic and dramatically engrossing work.
In Haynes’ 1850s-set historical novel, three men—two abolitionists and a pro-slavery Southerner—become embroiled in a murderous conspiracy.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 makes a massive swath of territory to the west of Iowa and Missouri open to slavery, as determined by popular vote. As a result, Northerners and Southerners alike rush to settle there in a bid to tip the electoral scale, a situation that quickly becomes violent: “Kansas was a tinderbox. All awaited the spark that would ignite a blaze.” Monty Tolliver, a former Whig congressman in Ohio and an ardent abolitionist, decides to move his family to Kansas to do his part and discovers an all-out war being waged there by pro-slavery agitators. He joins the local militia and becomes a key player in the effort to organize a constitutional convention that will establish Kansas as a free state. He’s aided by Robert Geddis, who comes to Kansas from Rhode Island to work for the Herald of Freedom newspaper. Violence is committed by both sides of the conflict, a grim scenario rigorously depicted by the author. A series of grisly murders is undertaken by devoted abolitionists, followed by equally grotesque killings by pro-slavers in retaliation—some of which are pinned on Billy Rutledge, a young man from Mississippi. But Geddis knows Billy, and despite Billy’s support of slavery, he considers him incapable of murder. This complex narrative at times becomes convoluted—there are simply too many plot twists and subplots, and they become a tedious distraction. However, the author’s portrayal of this chapter in the history of the nation is impressively astute, and he brings the clash of ideologies that sparked it to electrifying life. The novel is unflinchingly honest and evenhanded—while slavery was a vile institution, Haynes acknowledges that people who opposed it were fully capable of gross moral failings of their own. Ultimately, this is a worthwhile work of historical drama, simultaneously edifying and entertaining.
A historically authentic and dramatically engrossing work.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781737766926
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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