An ambitious but uneven novel with strong-willed characters.
A single mother revisits memories of her haunting past to prevent her teen daughter from committing to a terrible man in Foyt’s novel.
The book opens on Florida’s Sanibel Island in 1985, where Angel del Corazón lives with her daughter, Faith, who’s approaching her high school graduation. Angel has devoted the past 18 years to raising her child and ensuring she has both the grades and the finances to attend college. Faith has always lived up to expectations, but recently, she’s been lying about her whereabouts. The tension between mother and daughter comes to a head when Faith stumbles onto correspondence revealing that her father, Santiago—whom she’s never known—is not dead, as Angel had always claimed. As a result, Faith declares her distaste for her mother and her intention to reunite with her dad. Readers learn through several flashbacks that Angel’s history with Santiago was rocky and violent; her decision to lie to Faith was based entirely on a desire to protect her. When Angel meets Faith’s new boyfriend, a controlling older man, she decides to come clean about her past to keep her daughter from making a mistake; she begins revealing her story through a series of letters, but is she already too late to make a difference? Foyt’s story alternates between sections in 1985 Sanibel, told in the third person, and sections on Angel’s past decades earlier, narrated by Angel herself. Interspersed are vignettes about mermaids and sea goddesses, related to myths and religious teachings that Angel learned in her youth. The novel gets off to a slow start, revealing key information slowly and sporadically. Eventually, though, the story becomes more insightful and compelling as the author delves deep into issues such as family dysfunction, abusive relationships, and self-doubt. However, as the author attempts to combine a coming-of-age tale with elements of romance, familial drama, and magical realism, it becomes needlessly complicated. Still, by the end, readers will be disarmed by the two endearing and fiercely loyal female leads.
An ambitious but uneven novel with strong-willed characters.Pub Date: July 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64786-455-2
Page Count: 291
Publisher: Sand Dollar Press, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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