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A Novel
by Leah Weiss
Book Reviewed by:A Southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of World War II.
Deep in the tobacco land of North Carolina, nothing's been the same since the boys shipped off to war and worry took their place. Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is precocious and itching for adventure. Then Allie Bert Tucker wanders into town, an outcast with a puzzling past, and Lucy figures the two of them can solve any curious crime they find―just like her hero, Nancy Drew.
Their chance comes when a man goes missing, a woman stops speaking, and an eccentric gives the girls a mystery to solve that takes them beyond the ordinary. Their quiet town, seasoned with honeybees and sweet tea, becomes home to a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. More men go missing. And together, the girls embark on a journey to discover if we ever really know who the enemy is.
Lush with Southern atmosphere, All The Little Hopes is the story of two girls growing up as war creeps closer, blurring the difference between what's right, what's wrong, and what we know to be true.
Paperback original
The novel shimmers with the vivid voices of its two narrators, Lucy and Bert. The girls are different enough to offer two unique perspectives of everything that unfolds in Riverton, but similar in the important ways that foster a flourishing friendship. Readers might easily identify with Lucy, the bookworm who wishes more than anything that Nancy Drew was real, or tomboyish Bert who struggles with guilt related to her mother's death and later falls easily under the spell of a touring musician lothario. Both characters are charming and well-developed, and both will appeal to those with fond memories of encountering Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
In Leah Weiss's All the Little Hopes, the Brown family's North Carolina farm receives an influx of laborers in the form of captured German soldiers sent from the nearby prisoner-of-war (POW) camp. Some readers may be surprised to learn that there were many such camps in the United States during World War II, and that it was not uncommon for these men to be put to work just as Weiss describes.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, more than 400,000 prisoners captured from the armies of the Axis powers (Germany, Japan and Italy) by the Americans and British came to the United States to be detained in POW camps from 1942-1945. There were 155 base camps and 511 smaller branch camps located in 46 of the 48 states, though most were ...
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If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas...
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Bren McClain, author of One Good Mama Bone
Leah Weiss has done it again. Another powerful, masterly observed story. This time, firmly setting us down in tobacco land North Carolina with two teenaged girls at its heart and told in language that is uniquely Leah's. I read the novel with my jaw dropped open. For Leah's fans, prepare to be thrilled again. For future ones, get set to be.
