A well-researched, if somewhat staid, spin on biblical events.
A historical novel about Jesus and Judas that delves into both men’s early days.
Readers familiar with the Christian Gospels will encounter a startling scene at the start of this biblically inspired tale. A young boy named Judas Iscariot, traveling on the road with his parents, sees another boy being bullied and beaten by a group of three other kids. He rushes over to intervene and saves the child from further harm. The boy’s name is Yeshua, and he’s the son of Yosef and Mary of Nazareth. When the two families meet, it turns out that Judas’ father, Simon, is the brother of Mary’s mother, Anne, making Yeshua and Judas cousins. The two become fast friends, and, as a result, Judas has a front-row seat for Yeshua’s rise from a provincial carpenter’s apprentice to a combative young man who increasingly dreams of overthrowing Roman rule. Readers see a well-known story through a very different lens as Yeshua’s disciples, led by Judas, become “captains” dedicated to building an insurrectionist army. A priestess named Mariam, who narrates portions of the book, joins them; Judas likens her to prominent female figures of Scripture, such as Jael and Judith (“Like these women warriors who acted bravely to save the Habirum,” he narrates, “Mariam would fight alongside us”).There are inspirational movements woven throughout the narrative—Yeshua and his followers are very much aware of Yokhanan the Baptizer’s religious activities, for instance—but, interestingly, there are virtually no supernatural moments. Yeshua is a healer, true, but one who uses herbs and other substances; in the book’s version of a familiar incident from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, in which Jesus heals a Roman centurion’s servant, he goes to the man’s house to apply medicines rather than working a miracle. These realistic scenes seem written with an eye toward research rather than drama; the text explains everything from Palestinian politics to Roman fish sauce in laborious detail that is too seldom counterbalanced by more evocative, personal moments, as when Yosef wearily says of his quarrelsome son, “Yeshua will debate with the donkey.” However, fans of Anthony Burgess’ 1979 novel, Man of Nazareth, will likely enjoy this exploration of similar territory.
A well-researched, if somewhat staid, spin on biblical events.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66553-232-7
Page Count: 322
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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