A powerful novel that will resonate with anyone who has returned to a place they no longer recognize as home.
A woman returns to her rural hometown after nearly 40 years to care for her ailing mother in Anderson’s intimate family saga.
On the cusp of 60, Cassandra Soelberg arrives in the small town of Big Horn, Utah, after a brother she hasn’t spoken to in decades demands she care for their aging mother, Dorothy, who has dementia. Having been forced as a teenager to give up a baby, Cassandra abandoned her roots in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and has been living a fulfilling life as an artist in Minnesota; she dreads her impromptu return to her childhood home. Interspersing flashbacks of Cassandra’s past, Anderson crafts a gorgeously descriptive narrative of aging, religious harm, and childhood trauma, complete with colorful characters who mostly eschew Mormon stereotypes. Through present-day Cassandra, the author offers up a refreshing depiction of older women and doesn't shy away from visible descriptions of age, from graying hair to sagging breasts. The story is also peppered with queer themes and characters, such as Cassandra’s third sibling, Matilda—born Matthew—who is decidedly not cisgender, though their exact identity is left vague. But the story shines brightest in its depiction of female bonding. Cassandra becomes a patchwork of the women who have left their marks on her life: Her grandmother Irene, who cast aside all the restraints of womanhood after the death of her husband; Elodie Linhardt, a worldly college professor who nurtures Cassandra’s artistic ability; even Toni Fuller, the Relief Society president, whom she initially distrusts. These encounters with other women, who rarely linger in the narrative yet become fully fleshed out in the space they’re given, are imbued with Anderson’s lyrical writing, which equally elevates the vast rural landscape, as in this speech from Irene: “Marvelous doesn’t mean perfect….Marvelous calls us to live on the earth, amidst the wreckage, above the mundane hours that tick on toward tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, toward that stifling heaven of a poor prophet’s wet dream.”
A powerful novel that will resonate with anyone who has returned to a place they no longer recognize as home.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781948814799
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.
A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.
In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489277
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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