A historically rigorous and emotionally riveting period piece.
Slager’s historical novel, largely set at the end of the 17th century, chronicles the tale of a whaling village on the western coast of the future United States, threatened by natural disaster.
In 1699, Dushuuw is a battle-hardened warrior in Wuh-uhch, where his father, Chahbuhť̓, is a powerful and revered whaling chief. At 19, he’s the youngestson in his family and grows up in the shadow of his 22-year-old brother, Q̓otsik, who’s established himself as a prodigious whaler who’s likely to succeed Chahbuhť̓ one day. Dushuuw’s position within the tribe is compromised when he catches a man, Wiikihbis, having sex with his wife, and kills him. The marriage is a strategic one, cementing an important alliance, so the political fallout is considerable. Moreover, the man he killed was a whaler on Q̓otsik’s canoe, and now he must take his place—a job he doesn’t relish, and for which he possesses little natural talent; it’s a predicament that Slager portrays with great psychological subtlety and dramatic power. Meanwhile, Amuun’ax̱sum, the daughter of another whaling chief,is taken hostage by an invading tribe after they murder her mother and father. She’s later enslaved by Eekbis, the shaman of Dushuuw’s tribe. She longs to recapture the nobility that she now must hide to stay alive. Amuun’ax̱sum and Dushuuw fall in love, but their prospects for happiness seem dim, given the social expanse that separates them. Also, a disastrous earthquake and tsunami threatens to end their lives before they can make a bid for romantic bliss.
Slager’s novel is based on the Makah tribe, who live in the Cape Flattery area of what is now Washington state, and she brings the everyday lives and customs of its people into vivid relief. The natural disaster that waylaid the tribe is a real one, with her research into it and scholarly command of all the relevant source material nothing short of magisterial. Readers get a remarkable glimpse into a whaling community before European contact. However, this book is, first and foremost, a novel, and it tells an engrossing story. Both the principal characters are portrayed with notable nuance, and their budding relationship is both plausible and moving. Some people in Dushuuw’s tribe wonder if he’s more trouble than he’s worth, due to his taste for violence: “A man who takes that much human life—perhaps the spirit of the whale cringes from it, you see?” Dushuuw hears an elderly man say. “Is there really a way to get rid of so much human stench, such darkness of heart?” Amuun’ax̱sum also proves to be a compelling character, and Slager depicts the burden of her grief—over the loss of her family, and of her noble identity—with affecting complexity: “She wanted to fill a river with tears, and shoot her fear to the moon. She wanted a bench, not a mat. To own things, not hide them. A home. A voice. A name—to be known.”
A historically rigorous and emotionally riveting period piece.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798991543514
Page Count: 520
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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