A collection of painfully honest and consistently empathetic glimpses of modern American soldiers in war and peace.
The lives of combat soldiers in America’s “forever wars.”
Glose adds his impressive voice to those of writers like Kevin Powers and Phil Klay who have produced powerful fiction about the experience of American soldiers fighting in the 21st-century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 18 linked stories in this debut collection follow the fortunes of six members of a single platoon of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division (in which Glose served during the 1991 Gulf War), some of whose members have experienced four tours of combat duty in four years. They gaze with an unblinking eye at the physical and emotional tolls exacted from soldiers who aren’t fighting for a great cause but instead “because it was their job, each man risking everything because he loved the man next to him. Simple as that.” The relentless fear that grips these men and their anxiety and nightmares only partially quelled by cocktails of prescription drugs when they return to a country that has little understanding of all they’ve sacrificed are recurring themes. Accounts from the war zone like “Dirge,” in which one character is killed by an IED and another sustains a disfiguring facial wound, or “The Dead Aren’t Allowed To Walk,” in which an avoidable friendly fire incident takes the life of a key member of the platoon, reveal the omnipresence of random sudden death or catastrophic injury. In settings that range from an upscale suburban neighborhood in Princeton, New Jersey (“Sacrifices”), to a seedy bar in Pensacola, Florida (“First Drunk Night Back”), Glose exposes painful truths about the devastation wreaked on these soldiers and the families that ached for their safe returns and now struggle to relate to them when they arrive home. Throughout, he makes no effort to conceal the harsh realities of these damaged lives.
A collection of painfully honest and consistently empathetic glimpses of modern American soldiers in war and peace.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2502-7988-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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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