A jolting but thoughtful drama.
In Jackson’s novel, a struggling artist, upon learning her estranged sister is missing, returns to her childhood home and uncovers long-buried secrets.
In 2019, 35-year-old Cate Finley has a toughness that’s led her friend Levi Saaga to nickname her “Tiger Cate.” She needs a wild cat’s strength because her life presents significant challenges. She lives in a 1978 camper truck, which she calls “Max,” on the streets of Los Angeles. She paints murals on the sides of buildings; it’s sometimes dangerous work that results in skimpy paychecks. Cate still grieves her parents who died in a plane crash, and she left the Arizona horse ranch of her childhood on bad terms with her 50-year-old sister, Margaret. Cate’s son was taken away by his wealthy father, a physically abusive man. The one bright spot is her friend Levi, an apparently unhoused IT technician working to bring his mom to L.A. from Samoa. When Cate receives mysterious texts about her sister’s disappearance, she journeys back home to Arizona, where the ranch her sister ran is now controlled by Estelle Parker, a stranger claiming to be a cousin. The newcomer has a mysterious hold over the ranch’s employees and reveals a plan to sell the land to developers. Jackson keeps excitement levels high right from the start; in the opening pages, Cate dangles from scaffolding 100 feet above the ground before the story flashes back. The steady drip of revelations about Margaret, Cate’s parents, Estelle, Levi, and others makes for enough material to power an entire soap opera season. However, Jackson effectively keeps the story from being melodramatic with fast pacing and well-developed characters. The author strategically spaces out surprises throughout the book and balances them with quieter scenes of interiority, such as Cate painting. The characters are mostly flawed but likable, and even the worst villains are given context for their actions.
A jolting but thoughtful drama.Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9798988298014
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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