An addictive drama with moments of engaging excitement and an admirable young female hero.
A teenage girl is abandoned by her parents in Whitney’s historical drama of struggle and redemption.
Readers meet 13-year-old Silstice “Silly” Trayson in August of 1934. She is terrified, sitting in the sheriff’s office in Calhoun County, Michigan, after being caught stealing school supplies from her former one-room schoolhouse. Silly is a shy, timid girl, the fourth of six siblings born to poverty-stricken, neglectful, and abusive parents. (The family is known in the community as the “Trashy Traysons.”) Fortunately, Silly has two advocates: Her 17-year-old sister, Alberta, makes assurances to the sheriff that Silly has never been in trouble before, brings her home, and arranges for her to join the local 4-H club, where Edna Goetz becomes her mentor in the girls’ sewing and cooking division. Edna is a gentle and generous elderly lady who develops an immediate fondness for the young girl. Edna’s husband, Vernon, the crotchety, volatile 4-H county Beef Club mentor, is decidedly displeased with Edna’s attention to Silly. When Silly’s house burns to the ground, the fragile girl is left homeless. Her father runs off, never to be seen again; her mother places Silly’s twin 15-year-old sisters with their aunt and takes off with the family’s two young sons to live with her own parents. Alberta moves in with her best friend’s family. Nobody has room for Silly until Edna devises a clever and generous plan to take her in. Whitney’s novel is narrated by three alternating and distinctive voices, those of Silly, Edna, and Vernon, each defining the relationship developing among them. In equal measure, this is an affecting coming-of-age tale about Silly, who begins to find her inner strength and confidence, and the poignant story of Vernon’s gradual transformation (“He hadn’t been an easy man to live with”) after experiencing profound loss. Whitney keeps the action moving with a subplot in which Silly’s brothers become victims of an extortion and child-abduction ring operating in the town. Although the narrative borders on high melodrama, the author viscerally captures the deprivation, hunger, and despair suffered by many during the height of the Depression.
An addictive drama with moments of engaging excitement and an admirable young female hero.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781647428365
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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