by Diane Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1999
A colorful and credible first novel, by science/environment writer Smith, takes an epistolary approach to a tale of a budding young naturalist who’s invited to join a Smithsonian-backed expedition to Yellowstone in the summer of 1898, but who first has to overcome the dismay of her colleagues when they discover their naturalist is a woman. Although the initial correspondence between A.E. Bartram and the expedition leader, Montana college professor Merriam, is cordial and professional, the first sight of Alex (short for Alexandria) after she arrives in Yellowstone gives rise to a different dynamic. The mild-mannered, bespectacled Merriam hems and haws about what to do with her. Then, knowing how desperately shorthanded his expedition is, he decides to let her come along’secretly hoping she’ll soon call it quits herself. Alex quickly proves her competence, with a degree of scientific rigor easily exceeding Merriam’s own, yet her independence precipitates the team’s first crisis: she goes in search of specimens one day without telling anyone where she’s headed, so that when a spring snowstorm envelops them all, Merriam goes to her rescue. Then, however, he tumbles off a cliff and needs her to keep him alive. Other trials involve another member of the team, a brandy-soused meteorologist who prefers the park’s hotels to the outdoors, and Alex’s mentor and fiancÇ, a Cornell biology professor, who is sent by the young woman’s parents to Montana to bring her home. The fiancÇ, unable to adjust to Alex’s new free-spirited behavior, soon goes back east alone, and Alex finds herself changing even more, confronted with Merriam’s broader view of science and his obvious respect for the herbal knowledge of his Crow Indian assistant. A warm, satisfying story. Despite repetition from overlapping correspondence and rather conventional plot twists, the magic of a Yellowstone summer shimmers here enticingly.
Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88631-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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More by Mika Brzezinski
BOOK REVIEW
by Mika Brzezinski with Diane Smith
BOOK REVIEW
by Diane Smith
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
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
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More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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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