Engrossing and carefully penned, with a formidable female protagonist.
The daughter of a California winemaker fights for her father’s approval in Williams’ novel.
It is May, 1960. Forty-year-old Sofia Russo is swirling a glass of Pinot Noir poured from the first bottle from her second harvest. On her desk sits a blank sheet of paper, waiting for her to write words of tribute to her father, Giovanni Russo, to be spoken at the opening ceremony of Russo Vineyards’ first tasting room. The festivities will also serve as the official handover of the vineyard from father to son, from Giovanni to Sofia’s twin brother Alonso (Al) Russo—but it is Sofia who has always dreamed of being the next Russo vintner, whose soul is infused with the smells and labor of the vineyard. Al is a graphic artist, with little interest in winemaking, but he is resigned to accepting responsibility for preserving the family heritage. From the time she was a toddler, Sofia would follow her father and grandfather into the fields, spending every possible moment with her Papa. All that changed at the twins’ 10th birthday party, the day that Giovanni made clear that Al would inherit the vineyard (“as fathers, we are blessed to have sons to carry on the family name”); her relationship with her father has been fractured ever since. After renting a patch of land from friend and neighboring winemaker Mateo Parisi, Sofia has just produced her own outstanding vintage. Williams’ narrative is a vibrant tale of complex filial relationships. Of equal weight is the vivid presentation of the struggles of Napa Valley vintners during Prohibition and the Great Depression—some of the novel’s most compelling and poignant sections are found in these historical chapters. Additionally, the story serves as a primer on the extraordinarily intricate day-by-day decisions involved in producing a fine vintage, with Sofia scrupulously following her beloved grandfather’s inspiration and tutelage. The technical information can become a bit mind-numbing for the average wine consumer, but connoisseurs will enjoy having their attention to vintage subtleties validated.
Engrossing and carefully penned, with a formidable female protagonist.Pub Date: July 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781989144282
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Rippling Effects
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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