Review: Evergreen, by Naomi Hirahara Soho, 2023. 280 pp. $28 It’s 1946, and Aki Nakasone and her family have finally been permitted to return to Los Angeles after their imprisonment at Manzanar internment camp and forced relocation to Chicago. But nothing’s the same in LA. Like other Japanese Americans, they’ve lost jobs, property, and their home and have little left except pride, endurance, and determination. Pettit’s Studio photograph of downtown Los Angeles, 1946 (courtesy Pettit’s Studio via Wikimedia Commons; public domain) Aki has one thing to look forward to, however: the return of he ..read more

Review: A True Account, by Katherine Howe Holt, 2023. 268 pp. $29 One blistering Boston day in June 1726, Hannah Masury attends a hanging of three pirates, whose sendoff is ministered to by no less a personage than Cotton Mather. Having played hooky from a wharfside inn where she toils for pennies, that night she decides to bed down in the barn, where she finds a boy, desperate and terrified, demanding a bite to eat. Against her better judgment, Hannah leads him to the inn kitchen; two men pursue them. Hannah evades them, but they cut the boy’s head off with a machete and hunt her too. Knowing ..read more

Review: Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, by Laura Stanfill Lanternfish, 2022. 334 pp. $19 The nineteenth-century French village of Mireville has a peculiar destiny and makeup. Not only does the sun never shine, which makes growing anything edible a pointless chore; the key industry, so to speak, is fabricating elaborate music boxes called serinettes. These gadgets perfectly imitate pitches that birds sing, except the music is popular songs. Why would anyone want that, you ask? To teach canaries to sing music recognizable to human ears—of course!—and to hold competitions. Or such is the ..read more

Review: The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua Minotaur, 2023. 362 pp. $28 It’s March 1944, and Walter Wilkinson, a frequent guest at the fancy Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California, is found murdered—shot at twice, surviving the first confrontation but not the second. However, Wilkinson is more than just a prominent out-of-towner; he ran for president against FDR in 1940 and was presumed a candidate for the ’44 election as well. (Chau has based him loosely on Wendell Wilkie.) Consequently, the murder has enormous implications, and Detective Al Sullivan has a thousand pieces to fit together in this ji ..read more

Review: Essex Dogs, by Dan Jones Viking, 2022. 450 pp. $30 In July 1346, King Edward III of England invades France, claiming that the throne of that country belongs to him, igniting what would later be called the Hundred Years’ War. Among the invading host landing on the Norman coast is a band of men self-styled the Essex Dogs, led by Loveday FitzTalbot, a former thief turned soldier-of-fortune. But hardened veteran though he is, Loveday feels the strain of this campaign. Signed on for forty days at a penny per and all the booty they can carry, the Dogs have no particular loyalty to their mona ..read more

Review: Sergeant Salinger, by Jerome Charyn Bellevue, 2021. 286 pp. $29 When we first meet Sonny Salinger, he’s twenty-three, it’s April 1942, and he’s not liable for military service because of a heart murmur. He has the luxury, therefore, to visit the Stork Club, the famous Manhattan night spot, to see his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, the impossibly beautiful Oona O’Neill (the Nobel Prize-winning playwright’s daughter). The club fashions her a debutante, an attraction for visitors but also, be it known, for lecherous power brokers like the newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, a regular there ..read more

Review: The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman S&S, 2015. 362 pp. $28 The second line of this novel reads, “I rarely did as I was told.” No kidding. Rachel Pomié, growing up in St. Thomas in the early nineteenth century, has a hard road ahead. Born to a family of Marranos, Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition for Danish territory where they might live and worship freely, she finds little freedom. Her best (only) friend is Jestine, daughter of a slave, who has even less. However, both girls swear they’ll have true love, and from the youngest age, Rachel steeps herself in African lo ..read more

Review: City of Ink, by Elsa Hart Minotaur, 2018. 338 pp. $26 The year 1711 sees Li Du in Beijing, the place from which he was exiled, and to which he has returned, hiding the past two years in a modest clerkship at the North Borough Office. But when a double murder occurs at a roof tile factory—of a man and a married woman—he must play a public role, assisting his boss, Chief Inspector Sun, in the investigation. The Kangxi Emperor, who ruled for 61 years, ushered in the era known as High Qing, the zenith of that dynasty. Anonymous court painter, probably early eighteenth century (courtesy Pa ..read more

Review: Once We Were Home, by Jennifer Rosner Flatiron, 2023. 267 pp. $28 Marseille, 1946. Roger, a young Jewish boy who lives in the convent that protected him during the war, hears that he’ll be saved. Since the war’s over, this seems odd, because he thinks he already is saved—and then, a monk spirits him across the mountains into Spain. Lodz ghetto, 1942. Mira, about nine, and her three-year-old brother, Daniel, are smuggled out of the city to live with Polish farmers. Mira hates to leave her sick father, and she resents her mother’s admonitions to watch over Daniel. Instantly, Mira must as ..read more

Review: The General and Julia, by Jon Clinch Atria, 2023. 256 pp. $27 It’s 1885 in upstate New York, and time is running out. Former President Ulysses S. Grant is struggling to finish writing his memoirs, knowing he has weeks to live. He cares little for posterity. Rather, he wishes to secure his loved ones’ financial future, and his friend and publisher, Samuel Clemens, assures him that the book he’s writing will achieve that. Guilt drives the dying soldier, in part. His family’s reduced circumstances are his fault, for he sank his savings in a scheme that turned out to be a swindle and persu ..read more