A wild ride and an immersive Chicago novel, in which the town threatens to toddle off its axis.
In the wake of the JFK assassination, another death shakes Chicago.
Before “true crime” and “cold case” became cultural bywords, the real-life mystery surrounding Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet obsessed her hometown. She was the 22-year-old daughter of Irv “Kup” Kupcinet, whose daily newspaper column and late-night TV gabfest had tagged him with the title “Mr. Chicago.” A struggling starlet since moving to LA, Cookie had experienced a series of setbacks—a shoplifting conviction, an abortion, a romantic breakup. When she was found dead in her apartment, was it suicide or murder? Could it have had something to do with the Kennedy assassination? The Kupcinets insisted there was foul play, though no suspects were charged and the case remains officially unresolved. Six decades later, the case is mostly forgotten, but it obsesses the narrator of this novel. Jed Rosenthal is a struggling author, academic, and father. He takes a deep dive into this mystery, at least partly because there’s so little else going on in his life. Plus, it’s personal for him—his grandparents had been best friends with the Kupcinets, until Cookie’s death. Another mystery? It seems that Jed has never forgotten nor forgiven the way the Kupcinets cut the Rosenthals off. Within the novel, literary allusions abound, from Chicago (including Saul Bellow, whose Humboldt’s Gift featured a fictionalized Kup) and beyond (James Ellroy in particular takes a beating). The novel also abounds with names that Chicagoans of a certain age will recognize, the sort of names so often boldfaced in Kup’s column. As Jed muses, “A friend of mine, a novelist, once said that minor characters don’t know they’re minor. Doesn’t this apply to us all?” Because all these characters are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Including Jed and Cookie. Even Kup’s luster has dimmed since his death. But in conjuring Chicago as it existed before he was born, Jed attempts to show how everything connects, how the pieces of this puzzle—his family’s and his city’s—might somehow fit together. And maybe even amount to something.
A wild ride and an immersive Chicago novel, in which the town threatens to toddle off its axis.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780316224659
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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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