Fraught relationships, wartime letters, and complex characters make this a satisfying read.
In the third entry in the author’s French Letters series (Engaged in War, 2018, etc.), two brothers cope with the aftermaths of two wars.
In Colorado in 1983, Woodrow Wilson Hastings jumps off a Colorado overpass into oncoming traffic, and “Will Hastings’ time on earth was over.” At the funeral, his sons, Peter and Frank, quarrel bitterly. Peter calls Frank “an actual bastard” whom Will had brought home from World War II in France, where Will had been a combat surgeon. Peter’s written apology never reaches Frank, and hard feelings grow as Frank tries to prove that he’s not the adopted son of a French whore—but the discovery of old wartime letters shakes Frank’s understanding of who he is. They’re very different characters: Peter had been a star athlete, an Air Force Academy graduate and a gunship pilot in Vietnam, and now he is a Pan Am pilot who loves “the freedom of flight.” Frank has a learning disability and “grew up largely invisible but observant.” He fought as a grunt in Vietnam and now reports for the local paper while writing a war novel on the side. Meanwhile, their mother, Virginia, sits in Loving Arms rest home, “demented as a bedbug.” Each squabbling brother then faces his own life-changing event, and Peter’s is a doozy. He’s deadheading—a pilot riding as a passenger—on a 747 that’s hijacked and flown to Karachi. Frank flies to France to find his grandmother and learn more about who he really is. His travels through Normandy and small towns such as Saint-Lô combine with Will’s wartime backstory to bring a rich feel to the tale. While readers wonder whether the brothers will reconcile, interesting surprises await.
Fraught relationships, wartime letters, and complex characters make this a satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9906121-8-6
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Vire Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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