A warmhearted and fulfilling wartime family saga.
In Baldwin’s debut historical novel, World War II tests people on the battlefield and on the home front in a small Montana town.
Around 1937,Maire MacDonnell, a 16-year-old girl from Northern Ireland, flees to America to escape homicidal bully Broin Mulvaney. Four years later, she falls in love with young American Franklin Cooper, who’s about to ship out as a signal corpsman. They marry and Frank sends her—pregnant—to live with his family in Pigeon River, Montana. Meanwhile, Mulvaney has sworn to track her down; he’s always on her mind, a living nightmare. Frank is stationed in Tunisia, and the story toggles between there and Pigeon River, where readers meet Leo Cooper, Frank’s father, who’s a beekeeper and Methodist minister; Jereldene “Doc” Jesperson, the town doctor; Jesse Cooper, Frank’s drifter brother who finds out that he has Native American ancestry; and the Blackfoot tribe who took him in. Jesse eventually returns home with a Blackfoot wife, Willow, and their toddler son, Drummond. Pigeon River has its own troubles involving food quotas and a lack of farm workers, due to the war overseas. Jesse strikes a deal to bring Indigenous men to town to work, which lays bare local racism: “The red world is full of hurt, and the white world is full of hate,” says one Indigenous character. Frank returns home, but deeply damaged in body and soul. How will things work out for him and his loved ones? And will Mulvaney find Maire? Overall, Baldwin delivers an impressive and skillfully written novel. Amid the realism of wartime life, mystical visitations—involving bees and their hive wisdom, or Maire’s grandmother and faerie wisdom—intriguingly come to characters who are open to them. The story also effectively explores Leo’s troubled relationship with his sons. Doc Jesperson is a wonderful, memorable character as well, a no-nonsense professional who’s as deeply compassionate as she is skilled; Baldwin shows how she and Leo manage to hold the town together. Indeed, Doc’s confrontation with a bigoted character is one that would have been worthy of a Frank Capra movie.
A warmhearted and fulfilling wartime family saga.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798991671804
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2024
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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