A compelling story about two people who long for their spouses in a time of war.
A gravely wounded Union soldier heals with the ministrations of a Southern woman.
It’s 1864 in Virginia, and Union Captain Jonathan Weybridge loses his right leg and several fingers on the battlefield at Gilbert’s Ford. A fellow soldier stanches the bleeding by applying a tourniquet, but otherwise leaves him to die. Then, a formerly enslaved woman named Sally discovers him and brings him to the home of 24-year-old Libby Steadman. She is a white woman whose husband, Peter, had freed the people enslaved at the gristmill he inherited and is now in a Yankee prison, if he’s even still alive. Sally and her husband, Joseph, now work at the gristmill, but the other freed slaves have long since skedaddled. Libby has a 12-year-old niece, Jubilee, who refers to Weybridge as a jackal, a not uncommon insult hurled at Union soldiers. Weybridge’s health slowly returns while he frets about his wife in Vermont. Libby and her family come to recognize his human decency, that he’s more than simply a jackal or a “bluebelly.” Meanwhile, rumors circulate that Libby is harboring a wounded Yankee, and she and her family go to great lengths to hide him. She and the captain will quickly hang if discovered. She secretly enlists the help of a local doctor and part-time drunk whom she isn’t convinced she can trust, but she has no choice. Will Libby and the captain ever hear from their beloved spouses again? She refers to him as “someone…I kept alive at a price I could not afford.” Bohjalian’s inspiration for the novel comes from documented historical events—a Virginia woman really did save a Union soldier who’d hailed from Vermont—and the set-up has led to a masterful yarn. No one knows how close to each other the real people became, and there’s no evidence that the real Libby ever shot two Confederate soldiers dead with a Colt pistol or that a freedman (Joseph, in the story) killed a man who’d tried to rape her. Those and other details are a credit to the author’s imagination. If there is a nit to pick, it’s with a title that might misdirect readers’ expectations. It’s not wrong, but don’t expect anything steamy or licentious.
A compelling story about two people who long for their spouses in a time of war.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780385547642
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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