A well-researched Civil War drama, highly informative about cotton’s importance to both sides.
A Civil War novel traces a wealthy plantation owner’s fight to protect his family’s lands as the North extends its blockade to Georgia’s outer islands and ports.
In May 1861, Randolph Spalding figures that it is just a matter of time before the Union blockade of Southern ports hits his cotton business. Union troops would likely occupy his beloved Sapelo Island in Georgia and confiscate his cotton to feed the “Insatiable English and Northern textile mills” that “craved all the cotton the South could produce.” Randolph, like his father, Thomas, before him, seeks to dissuade the Georgia legislature from joining the other Southern states in the Secession. But his pleading is ignored. A shortage of “competent military officers” causes Georgia Gov. Joseph E. Brown to appoint “prominent men to lead their local militias.” Randolph is commissioned as a colonel and ordered to report to Brig. Gen. Alexander Lawton, the commander of Georgia’s coastal defenses based in Savannah, because his knowledge of the waterways in and around Sapelo Island is considered invaluable. Brown’s narrative centers on the real-life Spalding family, powerful plantation owners in Georgia during the Civil War era, and lays bare the complex questions surrounding slavery, issues that still reverberate in today’s political discourse. His focus on the home-front experiences rather than the actions on the battlefields captures the conviction of the plantation class that the war was about states’ rights, not slavery. Upon hearing the song “The Bonnie Blue Flag…Hurrah! Hurrah! for Southern Rights,” Randolph proclaims: “We just want to preserve our god given rights” to self-determination. Brown is an able wordsmith. His precise descriptions of period dress and culture as well as his use of racial slurs in the dialogue are evocative of the time and place. While light on tension, the novel skillfully underscores the economic importance of cotton to both the North and South. When Lawton suggests that the North has enough troops to just disrupt the South’s ports, Randolph argues that President Abraham Lincoln needs cotton for the North’s mills and will go on the offensive to secure it.
A well-researched Civil War drama, highly informative about cotton’s importance to both sides.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798888240441
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wistfully nostalgic look at endings, beginnings, and loving the people who will always have your back.
Exes pretend they’re still together for the sake of their friends on their annual summer vacation.
Wyn Connor and Harriet Kilpatrick were the perfect couple—until Wyn dumped Harriet for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. They’ve been part of the same boisterous friend group since college, and they know that their breakup will devastate the others and make things more than a little awkward. So they keep it a secret from their friends and families—in fact, Harriet barely even admits it to herself, focusing instead on her grueling hours as a surgical resident. She’s ready for a vacation at her happy place—the Maine cottage she and her friends visit every summer. But (surprise!) Wyn is there too, and he and Harriet have to share a (very romantic) room and a bed. Telling the truth about their breakup is out of the question, because the cottage is up for sale, and this is the group’s last hurrah. Determined to make sure everyone has the perfect last trip, Harriet and Wyn resolve to fake their relationship for the week. The problem with this plan, of course, is that Harriet still has major feelings for Wyn—feelings that only get stronger as they pretend to be blissfully in love. As always, Henry’s dialogue is sparkling and the banter between characters is snappy and hilarious. Wyn and Harriet’s relationship, shown both in the past and the present, feels achingly real. Their breakup, as well as their complicated relationships with their own families, adds a twinge of melancholy, as do the relatable growing pains of a group of friends whose lives are taking them in different directions.
A wistfully nostalgic look at endings, beginnings, and loving the people who will always have your back.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593441275
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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