An engrossing, well-told tale of a father and daughter separated by decades.
In this literary novel, a minister deals with the reappearance of his secret child.
The Rev. David Wilder is a man of God. Married to the same woman for years, he oversees his congregation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lending his parishioners a hand when they need it and spending his free time fishing in the cool waters of the Quanasee River. But when he gets a letter from a woman claiming to be his long-lost love child, he’s frozen in place, unsure of what to tell his wife, Tallulah, who never knew about the baby and is currently dying of cancer. What’s more, he made a promise years ago to the infant’s mother, one he never plans to break. The woman who wrote the letter, Molly Westbrook, is a young biology teacher in Georgia. Raised by adoptive parents, she’s never known much about her origins, and now that she is about to become a mother herself, she’s interested in connecting with her birth father. When Tallulah dies, David is sent into a spiral of memory and regret, refusing to meet with Molly even as she circles closer and closer. Will the guilt he feels about what happened in the past prevent him from seeing his only child? Lovett’s prose is elegant and descriptive, as here where David visits his hometown after decades away: “The Spinning Wheel Café looked unchanged. David slowed the car to a crawl and peered out at the café. The red-lettered wooden sign over the entrance gave him an eerie feeling of déjà vu; even the daily specials were still taped to the glass.” The narration shifts effectively between David’s and Molly’s points of view and between the past of the 1960s and the present of the ’90s. The novel is perhaps a bit long for the amount of story, and the plot unfolds in a fairly predictable way, but the reading experience is a rich one filled with feelings of regret, grief, and longing.
An engrossing, well-told tale of a father and daughter separated by decades.Pub Date: July 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73646-400-7
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Words of Passion
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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