A thoughtful and often compelling narrative that approaches the Civil War from a refreshing and provocative angle.
Gardner’s historical novel of the Civil War follows the lives and times of a plantation owner’s bitterly divided family.
The novel opens in 1856, describing the fallout of what would become known as the Pottawatomie massacre, in which the abolitionist John Brown and his followers killed five pro-slavery settlers. The impact of the event sent shock waves through American society, which is on the brink of war. The story then focuses specifically on the Hodge family, who live on a 700-acre tobacco plantation in Virginia and enslave more than 80 people. As unrest spreads, the family patriarch, Lawrence, grows increasingly anxious about the potential threat to his livelihood. After war comes, his daughter Emma works as a nurse but loses her job after protesting the abuse of a Black child at the hands of a Confederate States Army major. Lawrence’s son David meets Abel Bowman, a former follower of Brown, as they both witness Brown’s execution in 1859; when the country plunges into war, David goes north, becoming a first-rate war journalist who receives praise from President Abraham Lincoln himself. Both Emma and David become deeply committed to the abolition of slavery. Lawrence’s other daughter, Catherine, unlike her siblings, is a resolute Confederate who refuses to believe Emma’s accusations regarding the abuse of enslaved people on the family plantation and whose belief in the Confederacy seems unshakeable. The novel closes at the beginning of the Reconstruction era in 1865.
Gardner meticulously examines his main characters’ shifting attitudes, particularly through the lens of faith. The novel includes a wealth of thought-provoking dialogue that explores the contentious religious rhetoric that was used to legitimize slavery’s perpetuation: At one point, for example, he shows how Catherine seeks to justify her vile, ingrained beliefs by asking a pastor if enslaving others serves “a doubly useful purpose for society—because it supports not only our southern economy but also the continuing civilization and Christian enlightenment of the slaves themselves?” Portrayals of other characters, such as David, capture a longing for change: “There’s just something inside me that fights against so many of the things I’ve been taught.” Gardner is a keenly observant writer, gently bringing the Virginia landscape to life, such as “the sun-speckled, mirrored surface of the middle portion of the river, broken in only a few spots by small, swirling eddies.” However, the author also ably offers suspenseful and shocking scenes that capture the horrors of slavery. As in his previous novel, Hope of Ages Past (2018), the author seamlessly intertwines fiction with fact, as when David attends a lecture given by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The author’s great attention to detail roots his story firmly in its era and clearly reflects a wealth of careful research. Novels set during this time and place are commonplace, to be sure, but this one stands out due to its contemplative excavation of its characters’ religious beliefs before, during, and after the conflict.
A thoughtful and often compelling narrative that approaches the Civil War from a refreshing and provocative angle.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9998811-5-6
Page Count: 490
Publisher: Zino Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
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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