Sunday Books and Culture
This week’s reviews include Colleen Oakley’s romantic thriller “Jane and Dan at the End of the World” and Jack Wang’s WWII novel of star-crossed lovers “The Riveter.”
Sunday Books and Culture is edited by Vanessa Sekinger
Jane and Dan at the End of the Road
By Colleen Oakley
Published by Berkley (March 11, 2025)
Hardcover $22.83
Audiobook $13.86
Reviewed by Penny A. Parrish
Picture your worst date night ever. Jane and Dan have you beat. It’s their 19th wedding anniversary (Dan thinks it’s their 20th). They have a reservation which he won in a raffle for dinner at the famous La Fin du Monde (The End of the World). What Dan won was a chance to get in ahead of the hundreds who are waiting a year for a table, but he still has to pay for the dinner ().
Little does he know what Jane is planning: to tell him she wants a divorce. She is the tired mother of two teenagers and the wife of a podiatrist (Dan) who she thinks is having an affair. Jane wrote a failed novel six years ago and is lost, unhappy and not planning on mincing any words or failing to take action to get her way (in everything).
Into the midst of this mid-life and marriage crisis, Jane and Dan are seated at their table. All cell phones are confiscated (the Chef wants everyone to focus on his amazing creations.) The diners are given their first of nine courses (they miss the next eight, but that is part of the story). This course is “goose barnacles in a leek-sherry coulis with fiddleheads, celery and wild greens.”
Suddenly, a group of eco-terrorists with assault rifles and handguns storms into the tiny restaurant. And everyone is now a hostage.
Nothing like facing death to make you re-evaluate your priorities in life. That man you want to divorce may now be your hero. The wife who wants to leave you might be brave enough to look for an escape when no one else will move. And those teenagers—one of them plays a major role in the next few hours. Nothing will go according to plan for the diners or restaurant staff. Nothing will go according to plan for the terrorists. And nothing will go according to plan for the tiny police department and its lead Deputy, whose most serious case before this was a baby seal stuck on some rocks.
But the evening follows the plot of Jane’s failed book. So, she is the only one besides the terrorists who knows what is about to happen. Can she do something to change the disastrous ending?
This is a fun book, with wonderful writing. The author has captured perfectly the demands, challenges, and joy of motherhood, marriage, and relationships. A perfect read to take you from winter into spring.
Penny A Parrish is a local writer and photographer. You can see her pictures at PennyAParrishPhotography.com.
The Riveter
By Jack Wang
Published by HarperVia (February 11, 2025)
Hardback $23.99
Audiobook $17.63
Reviewed by Ashley Riggleson
World War II novels are not my usual fare, so it takes one that is truly special to catch my interest and keep me reading. But Jack Wang’s new novel, The Riveter, more than makes the cut.
As the novel opens, readers are introduced to an Asian Canadian man named Josiah Chang whose family has been in Canada for generations. His father has died and he, initially unable to fight in the war effort, moves to Vancouver to find work. A strapping man, he is hired as a riveter in a shipyard almost immediately. It is here that he soon meets Poppy, a headstrong woman taking advantage of the shortage of available working men to take a job a woman would ordinarily never be able to fill.
Josiah and Poppy, though from different backgrounds, are immediately attracted to each other, and while their relationship is not perfect, it quickly turns to love. Josiah and Poppy plan to marry each other, but despite best wishes, a fairy tale ending for the two is not to be. Bigoted laws mean that Josiah, family history notwithstanding, is not a citizen.
What is more, Poppy will lose her citizenship if she marries Josiah, and he knows her parents do not approve. And, after an incident in the shipyard, Josiah sees only one way forward, to join the fight abroad. Here, he becomes an elite paratrooper, jumping from planes to help the allies win in Europe. He hopes that his service abroad will change his status at home.
Josiah joins the war effort for love, and he is a brave man, but one of the notable things about this novel is that Josiah is also extremely flawed. He often does things that are mean or self-serving, and readers may sometimes find themselves wondering, “Do I even like this man?” At the same time, it is impossible to not root for him and impossible to not be angry at the society that treats him as a second-class person despite what he is willing to sacrifice for his nation.
It is this believable portrait of a complicated soldier fighting for rights in an imperfect homeland that kept me so involved in this novel. I read this novel for long periods at a time, and found that, even when I was forced to put it down and engage with the real world, I was constantly thinking about Josiah and Poppy, hoping against hope that they would get the lives they wanted.
The Riveter is a novel that is both epic in scope and intimate in detail, and Wang uses the timeless setup of two star-crossed lovers separated by war to explore themes of historical interracial love, systemic racism, and birthright citizenship. Although in some ways this story is as old as time, The Riveter is also a novel that feels achingly of this moment.
Wang is a wise and compassionate novelist whose work, though technically historical, asks readers to consider how much has changed—and not changed—since Josiah’s time.
And although his writing is mostly straight forward, with plot and character work privileged over lyrical prose, there are moments of such stark beauty that they took my breath away.
In short, The Riveter is a worthy addition to the canon of war literature, and readers who pick up this novel will not regret it. I, for one, cannot wait to see what Wang does next.
Ashley Riggleson is a free-lance book reviewer from Rappahannock County. When she is not reading or writing book reviews, she can usually be found playing with her pets, listening to podcasts, or watching television with friends and family.
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