McMorris’ strong pacing keeps the two stories zipping along and all its many strings connected for a gratifying conclusion.
Two narratives, one concerning Nazi spies and the other a troubled boy in contemporary Oregon, begin to converge at the halfway point in this novel of espionage, reincarnation and doomed romance.
For the first 100 pages, there is little to connect the two stories, told in alternating chapters. Recently widowed veterinarian Audra is coping with her 7-year-old son’s increasingly erratic behavior. Audra hopes moving cross-country will distance them from the pain of her husband’s death. The other story concerns Vivian, an American diplomat’s daughter, living in London on the eve of World War II. The independent Vivian is conducting an illicit affair with Issak, an American of Swiss descent, who is at university in London. As war becomes inevitable, Issak begs Vivian for help in relocating his family from Germany to Switzerland (he confesses to a lot of holes in his life story: His family is actually German, where they returned after his childhood in America; they’ve been forced by the Nazis to cooperate) by getting information from her father’s intel reports. Vivian is suspicious, but her love for Issak outweighs concerns for international security. As it happens, Vivian is sent back to America, and Issak, who promised to accompany her, is stuck in Germany trying to help his family. Back in Portland, Audra has read a book on the effects of reincarnation on children. The whole thing seems crazy to her, but then the details (Jack’s drawings of Nazis in electric chairs, his obsession with flying, his mumblings in what seem to be German) build a compelling case to a mother at wit’s end. When Audra shares her theories with Jack’s paternal grandparents, they sue her for custody of Jack. Audra feels that her only hope is to research the German name she has, with the help of wounded veteran Sean Malloy, a man Jack is inexplicably drawn to and, unbeknownst to everyone, Vivian’s grandson. Back in the States, Vivian works on a military base as a telephone operator, where she begins a romance with charming military intelligence officer Gene Sullivan. But then one day, Issak contacts her. He is in New York, sent by the Nazis as the head of a secret force sent to invade America. And he asks her to risk everything and trust him again.
McMorris’ strong pacing keeps the two stories zipping along and all its many strings connected for a gratifying conclusion.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8116-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
