A delightful small-town drama expertly bedecked with all of the trappings of a classic romance.
In O’Neill’s historical novel, a young woman confined by societal pressures finds her world turned upside down with the arrival of a handsome pilot with a complicated past.
In June of 1954, 19-year-old Sabina McTigue is staying with her Aunt Poppy at her house on Cape Cod for the summer. According to her family’s expectations, Sabina will attend Weston College in the fall and settle down into marriage with a suitable man. The problem is, she isn’t sure that’s what she wants for her life (“In her mind, Sabina could see it all unfolding: the next four years of her life, like a series of grim snapshots”). She becomes more uncertain after she meets Colin Hatch, a pilot who has been mysteriously discharged from the United States Army and has a reputation for romancing the local women. Sabina and Colin are drawn to each other, but the arrival of actress Isolde Martin complicates matters when she hires Colin to be her personal pilot. More dramas unfold as a socially significantwedding gets underway (with surprising results), Colin raises the ire of a wealthy real estate developer (whose scheme to turn Cape Cod into the next major tourist area depends on getting enough votes from the locals), and a hurricane barrels toward them all. O’Neill constructs an intricate web of societal and emotional entanglements that could easily snag in less capable hands; here, all of the pieces manage to fall into place with relative ease. (The somewhat drawn-out summary of Colin’s checkered past near the novel’s conclusion is a rare instance of narrative clumsiness). With snappy dialogue (“Congratulations. I do crossword puzzles in my bed jacket. Let’s not burn daylight, dear”) and well-developed characters (even the minor players feel rich and fully drawn), O’Neill has written a compelling story of love, dashed expectations, and second chances.
A delightful small-town drama expertly bedecked with all of the trappings of a classic romance.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9798896360247
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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