A strong, vivid batch of tales about ordinary folks living Biloxi lives.
A collection of short stories focused on Biloxi, Mississippi.
In this anthology of 11 tales ranging from 5 to 15 pages each, Franz explores the lives of ordinary people who reside in and around Biloxi. They struggle with personal weaknesses, unresolved tragedies, and the persistent sense of longing that comes from the fact that Biloxi is home to the world’s “longest man-made beach,” with all that this implies about a greater, more natural world somewhere beyond the town limits. In “Tchoutacabouffa (Life on a River),” for instance, a woman named Ashley Rose Jackson has tensely and carefully planned an escape for herself and her two daughters from their abusive father. She promises them that their new life will be better. “We’re going to a real ocean,” she tells them. “They’ve got a boardwalk and everything.” Likewise, in “A Good Home,” set during the Covid-19 pandemic, Emily and Ryan live in a shabby two-bedroom house off Interstate 10. Ryan’s a recovering addict in a methadone treatment program, and he’s floored when Emily tells him she’s pregnant. As they make their grim plans, Emily recalls an old dream: “The panes trembled in their white wooden grid from a big rig out on I-10, which she’d heard could take you all the way to the Pacific Ocean. To cold, clean water, a real ocean, a real beach.” All of these stories are markedly, sometimes startlingly spare, which underscores Franz’s deft ability to convey whole lives and worlds with minimal, very controlled brushstrokes. In “Broadwater,” the older brother of a young man named Tyler, who vanished 11 years ago, spends the whole story reflecting on the events that led to his brother’s murder, now a cold case. (“Hard to believe,” he thinks at one point, “my little brother would be thirty years old today.”) Rather than providing readers with an expected sense of closure, Franz ends the tale with the brother reflecting, “My best guess, life’s a one-shot deal. Gone is gone.” This clipped, almost brutal tone runs throughout most of these stories and makes them truly memorable.
A strong, vivid batch of tales about ordinary folks living Biloxi lives.Pub Date: March 1, 2026
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Watertower Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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