An intriguing, if uneven, novel of becoming a woman in the modern American West.
Janssen presents a coming-of-age tale based on true events, set in the early 20th-century American Southwest.
Josie Belle Gore isn’t the oldest but she’s clearly the boldest child in her family. At the age of 6, for example, she uses a rope to retrieve the corpse of a jackrabbit that’s spoiling their well water. She takes in stride the family’s many moves—from New Mexico to Arizona, Texas, “Old Mexico,” and back to Arizona. When her mother dies, she’s left, at 14, to care for four younger siblings, including an infant. When her father becomes determined to marry her off, however, she runs away, first seeking shelter with an older sister but then striking out on her own, eventually finding a career with Western Union. Once she’s settled in California, though, she realizes it’s time to reunite with her family. Janssen weaves together aspects of her grandmother’s life with historical events; as such, Josie experiences boom-and-bust mining towns, Halley’s Comet, revolution in Mexico, homesteading in the desert, World War I, the influenza epidemic of 1918, and Prohibition in the ’20s. The modernizing West has horses and cowboys but also cars and flappers. Janssen weaves into the narrative stories about water—an important resource of the arid region, which explains the book’s title. However, her repeated metaphor that Josie’s life is like a river (“Life, like a river, can take some sharp twists and turns”) does not quite work, as our hero definitely and repeatedly takes initiative, rather than just flowing with the tide. Janssen writes in Josie’s voice, which allows readers to get to know her as a brave, complicated woman, and witnessing her growth as a confident person is an engaging experience. Other characters, however, are rather flat and their motivations vague. Also, some plot points seem unlikely, as when Josie, who lacks fashion sense, easily gets a job working the counter of a fancy hotel. Overall, though, Janssen creates a believable West that holds both opportunities and obstacles for her protagonist.
An intriguing, if uneven, novel of becoming a woman in the modern American West.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425838
Page Count: 440
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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