This rich historical novel widens the scope on the variety of Black American experiences.
The lives of three Black women—one free, one enslaved, one in between—are entwined in Philadelphia in 1837.
Nell lives a life of relative privilege as the daughter of a prosperous, socially elite Black family that’s been free for generations. As she enters adulthood, she wants to give back, and so she throws herself into working with an abolitionist organization. Philadelphia, her home, is an ostensibly free city, but all around her she sees signs of racism and proslavery rhetoric that sometimes explode into violence. Evie is an enslaved teenager, brought from her home on a Maryland plantation to Philadelphia by her owner, a self-absorbed young widow, Kate, who has already sold off Evie’s mother and brother, leaving the girl brokenhearted. Linking Evie and Nell is another young woman. Nell knows her as Charlotte, a free Black domestic worker with a quick mind and ambitions, whom she befriends as an abolitionist ally. Evie has known her, much longer, as Carrie. They were enslaved on the same Maryland plantation until a few years before, when Carrie’s father, Jack, escaped with his daughter. In Philadelphia, Jack calls himself James—light-skinned enough to pass for white, he has established a successful woodworking business. But to maintain his disguise, his dark-skinned daughter must pose as his housekeeper, always hiding her past and calling herself Charlotte. Each woman wants to rise above her current life, but Evie’s need is most urgent—Kate is about to remarry and move to South Carolina, legendary for exceptionally brutal treatment of the enslaved. As Nell and Charlotte resolve to help Evie escape, Lattimore shows us the complex, deeply restrictive social structure that they must overcome to take action. The first part of the book moves slowly, but the pace picks up in the latter half as the escape plan for Evie takes shape. Although the book’s history lessons sometimes interrupt its narrative, the well-rounded main characters keep the reader engaged.
This rich historical novel widens the scope on the variety of Black American experiences.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593600153
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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