An entertaining romp, but not particularly insightful or nuanced.
In Tenney’s satirical novel, scientists use time travel to bring Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to the present during a constitutional crisis.
In the year 2022, the United States has fallen under the leadership of the despotic President Ryan Bribe (“I’m the fucking President of the United States and they’ll do what I want! If not, they will pay!”), who lies and cheats and blackmails his way into power. Concerned for the future of their country, the descendants of Benjamin Franklin—twin sisters and scientists Summer and Spring Franklin—develop a quantum teleportation device that allows them to bring figures from the past into the present. Their plan is to corral Jefferson and Washington to help them find a “Secret Amendment” that they believe was drafted by Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as a stopgap to depose presidents who aspire to be kings. When Jefferson and Washington wake up in the present-day museums that were once their homes at Mt. Vernon and Monticello, however, hijinks ensue. Jefferson accidentally steals some important artifacts (though they all technically belong to him) from the museum, including a priceless necklace, making him a fugitive from the law. Washington, donned in his period’s attire, is mistaken for an actor at Mt. Vernon before he trips an alarm and rows up the Potomac to his namesake capital city, where he and Jefferson eventually (and randomly) unite; the Franklin sisters scramble to get the former presidents to cooperate with their plan. Tenney’s novel is fast-paced and cleanly written, but its satiric edge is dulled a bit by some too-obvious references (Bribe uses the same nicknames for his political opponents as Trump does) and surface-level politics. The Franklin sisters have no qualms about working with a tech billionaire, and the answer to everyone’s problems is to run a political moderate; this is not exactly biting commentary. It’s cute imagining Jefferson scarfing down McDonald’s and staying at a homeless shelter, but the fish-out-of-water concept doesn’t really take readers anywhere new.
An entertaining romp, but not particularly insightful or nuanced.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798896490470
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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