RaveBookPageLouis Bayard dramatically re-creates the months after Abraham Lincoln’s 1840 winter arrival in Springfield with delicious detail and diligent diplomacy ... Bayard offers an insider\'s view ... Bayard does an exceptional job of keeping readers engrossed as he weaves fact and fiction in this intriguing tale of intimacy between Lincoln and his two closest confidantes.
Kathleen Alcott
RaveBookPageKathleen Alcott writes with pulsating, intense prose ... The voices of Fay, Vincent and Wright are marvelously crystal-clear ... Alcott has a powerful ability to separate these three characters into equal and opposing forces ... Her extensive research into the Apollo program, the Weatherman underground protest group and the AIDS crisis in America serve her well as she intertwines facts with fiction. America Was Hard to Find leaves readers wanting more of this story and everything else Alcott has written.
Gregory Maguire
RaveBookPagePaying homage to Hoffmann’s original tale, Maguire keeps us enchanted with the life of Drosselmeier, called Dirk, a boy of desperate beginnings who will later become a toymaker and the godfather to Klara (the girl who will receive the Nutcracker) and whose interactions with the natural world make us long for the innocence and imagination of our own childhoods ... For those who are willing to hear and believe, Maguire unlocks the toymaker’s secrets—without sugar plum fairies but with plenty of mesmerizing mysteries and the magic of childhood.
