A moving and perceptive story about a man losing everything and finding a new life in Mexico.
In Brewer’s luminous novel, a vacationing couple in Mexico encounters much more than they expected.
Americans Bob and Kathy take a vacation in Mexico, seeing the sights and cavorting in the clear waters. Bob is an underwriter at Midland Mutual and Casualty Insurance Corporation (where Kathy is a secretary), and they use their time in Mexico as a refuge from the ugliness of Bob’s pending divorce from his wife, Carol. But that outside world interferes anyway when Bob learns that his divorce is going to gut him financially (“It’s the best deal you can possibly get,” he’s told). There’s low-key tension between Bob and Kathy—he constantly urges her to undertake tourist excursions as she tries to hold him back from his adventurous impulses—and as these conflicts grow more pronounced, Bob’s inner world begins to unravel as he starts to feel both desperately hopeless and strangely liberated. The quality of his thoughts changes, going from quotidian to cosmic: “Isn’t everyone a victim in the end, a sacrifice to sate the awful power that suffocates and drowns?” he wonders. “Who could escape it?” With judicious restraint, the author slowly and carefully conveys this personal change in Bob as the parti-colored oblivious world continues all around him. Key to his transformation is a 9-year-old boy named Tomcruise Chel Ochoa (his first name is the result of his mother, Dolores, christening him after the actor; his middle name is a reference to the Chel people, who are descendants of the Diving God, a figure from ancient Mayan mythology). Tomcruise wants Bob to teach him how to dive, and by steady measures, limned with deep sensitivity by Brewer, the boy draws Bob into his world and opens him to the possibility of a new life, “the chance to be better than he was and, for once, the chance to be of worth to someone—and to himself.” This story of personal reinvention is well crafted and often beautifully written, in the vein of Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.
A moving and perceptive story about a man losing everything and finding a new life in Mexico.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2023
ISBN: 9798369405901
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Xlibris US
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Simply charming.
A lovable gaggle of competitive quilters attempts to defy the odds.
The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza, and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield, Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden, OQA’s leader and most faithful member, who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws, this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface, Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off, OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate, Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant, a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting, and his best friend, shy, artistic Rob, both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning, clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”), all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict, trauma, and, let’s face it, a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable, but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender, touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.
Simply charming.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798890920461
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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