A memorable coming-of-age story that vividly evokes the tumultuous late ’60s.
A paperboy in Virginia discovers hidden aspects of his diverse community in this historical fiction debut.
In 1988, 34-year-old Sanford “Sandy” Jackson Rivers, who’s white, has worked for the Richmond Times-Daily for nearly a decade, becoming one of the most influential journalists in the state. One day, an obituary-desk photo of an African American man on a battered bicycle sends him rushing off to attend the funeral; then, the story looks back to April 4, 1968, when paperboy Sandy has his first early morning encounter with Henry Clayton Woods, the man in the photo. That same day, the Rev. Martin Luther King is assassinated, and over the next 16 tumultuous months, Sandy tries to make sense of how the headlines in the papers that he delivers affect real lives. Deans, the author of Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment (2012), spent 25 years as a journalist, and his novel is a meditation on the “audacious proposition” that the world can be condensed into “eight straight columns of black and white,” delivered before breakfast. He also effectively shows how Sandy has the makings of a journalist early on, as he observes the “roaring din” of the presses, a service in a black church for a soldier killed in Vietnam, and his friend Winston’s determination to serve in the military. The glimpses of Sandy as an adult that bookend the story are tantalizingly brief, but the story of his younger, searching self is even more engaging. Deans’ prose elegantly portrays the natural world that serves as a backdrop for Sandy’s nuanced interactions—“Dawn wander[s] in as though it might not stay”—and marks each of Sandy’s daily journeys as he awakens to the concepts of love, loss, and forgiveness.
A memorable coming-of-age story that vividly evokes the tumultuous late ’60s. (author question & answer)Pub Date: April 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-929647-50-7
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Evening Post Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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