Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

So Good

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

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This is a searing look at Depression/Dust Bowl/Migrant farmer camps in California, as previously depicted in Steinbeck’s famous Grapes of Wrath, but from the point of view of a woman.  Almost as if the famous portrait by Dorothea Lange come to life. Elsa Wolcott, raised in a prosperous Texas family in 1921, is a so-called old maid and is rejected by her family for her ungainly height and plain looks.  One night, though, she takes a chance on Rafe Martinelli, the handsome young son of […]

All It’s Missing is “Fortunate Son”

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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I have to give credit to Kristin Hannah for one thing: most authors wouldn’t have had the guts to use this many Vietnam War-era cliches in one story. Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a privileged California girl who desperately misses her brother, a Naval Academy grad serving in Vietnam. Misunderstanding her father’s constant bragging about their family’s tradition of service, she signs up to be a nurse, enlisting with the Army because the other branches require years of experience while the Army is desperate for anyone […]

Alice in a wonderland

Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah

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I thought I’d been listening to Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, Magic Hour, but now that I’m writing the review, I just realized it was written back in 2006–so, almost twenty years ago and definitely not her latest novel. I’m a little late to this party. I’ve read a number of Hannah’s novels. Some of them I’ve really liked, and others I’ve found too contrived and I got annoyed. I was immediately drawn into this one, though, and I’m glad I read it. A young, malnourished girl wanders into […]

“Women can be heroes.”

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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The Women (2024) is now the third book I’ve read by Kristin Hannah. I started with The Great Alone, which I loved. Then I moved on to The Nightingale, which I’d seen on countless ‘best of’ lists. There were some good things about The Nightingale, but on the whole, I was disappointed with it. So, it was with just a little bit of trepidation that I started The Women. Fortunately, I thought The Women was a very good book. I would put it behind The Great Alone, but significantly ahead of The Nightingale. The […]

It’s not too late to be in the year’s best

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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So there’s good news and bad news. Good news is, I loved this book. Bad new is that I had my top five already written up before I finished The Women, and now I have to rewrite it. It’s definitely worth the extra work though (although the book that got booted might disagree). The Women is set during the Vietnam war and follows the path of Frankie McGrath, who comes from an affluent family that proudly celebrated military service. Following the path her brother took, […]

Half-Baked Alaska

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

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Thirteen year old Leni doesn’t have the most stable of backgrounds. Her mother, who had her at age fifteen, does the best she can. Her father is a Vietnam vet who spent years in captivity and is drowning his PTSD in alcohol and harebrained get-rich-quick schemes that are invariably abandoned halfway through. It’s the 1970s; the Flower Power movement is in the last of its heyday when Leni’s father receives a letter from the father of a fallen comrade that he’ll give him his son’s […]



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