A remarkable tale of war and its ghastly ramifications.
A young Southerner watches his father die at the hands of Union soldiers and vengefully enters the Civil War in this historical drama.
As the story opens, Missourian Zechariah Ashby Marchbank feels “conflicted about everything: the war, slaves, Jehovah, and what part I was to play in it all.” Then the Civil War shows up at his door in the form of a gang of Union fighters known as Jayhawks, who hang his dadright in front of him. As a result, Ashby soon decides to join a band of guerilla fighters—nominally, he does so to defend Missouri against Union soldiers, but primarily he joins the group as an exercise in revenge.Debut author Dean captures Ashby’s thirst for violence in powerful prose that’s typical of this often sharp-edged work: “I’d never felt so bloodthirsty as when I thought about [Jayhawks leader] Jennison and how I wanted to kill him. I’d already killed him a thousand times in my dreams in as many creative ways.” Under the command of the brutal Col.William Clarke Quantrill, Ashby and his cohorts, which include future notorious outlaws Frank and Jesse James, ride through Missouri and Kansas in search of Union men. However, as they do so, Ashby fears for his own life—not only because of the recklessness of the crew that he’s joined, but also because of their horrific savagery, which is sometimes directed toward members of their own ranks. In a framing device, Ashby relates his story to John N. Edwards, an ambitious “son-of-a-bitch journalist,” as the protagonist puts it, who’s looking to rewrite history and help himself professionally.
Over the course of this book, Dean deftly limns a picture of the war in which Confederate and Union partisans commit unspeakable atrocities, driven by a lust for destruction. Once Ashby is pulled into the war, he finds it nearly impossible to withdraw from it—but it’s a combination of necessity and venomous anger that keeps him in, not an attachment to a particular ideology or principle. However, Ashby does note that while the infamous Quantrill and his men would be “mostly reviled and nearly forgotten by history,” Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who committed similarly rapacious acts, would be hailed as “a great man, a heroic figure, who had only done what needed to be done to avoid more bloodshed.” Ashby is a complex protagonist—for all his wounded anger, he seems incapable of fully surrendering to it, too self-aware of the damage that his losses have imposed on his soul as he feels his reserves of empathy fully deplete. Dean’s writing also offers a striking brew of poetry and punch, combining unflinching realism with delicately woven imagery. Although the portrayal of the war is as historically rigorous as it is dramatically affecting, the real core of the novel is Ashby’s inner conflict as he tries to salvage some vestige of his humanity during this “time of violence.”
A remarkable tale of war and its ghastly ramifications.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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