A measured generational family saga about the passing of a way of life.
A family of fishermen struggles to evolve with the times in Johnston’s debut literary novel.
The Brennans of Worland, Minnesota, make their living in two ways. The first is commercial fishing on the Lake of the Woods, where for three generations they have caught walleye and sturgeon using pound nets. The second is mink farming—a complementary business, since a diet of fish is, as patriarch Arthur claims, “low cost and produces lustrous fur” in the minks. In 1960, Arthur’s 21-year-old son, Pete, returns home after his two-year stint in the Army, craving freedom and the open water. Arthur puts him to work on the family fishing boat, but on his very first day, Pete accidentally severs his leg with a cable. Pete fears his whole future has been snatched away from him (“In a matter of days, I’d gone from everything possible to nothing possible”), but his fortunes improve with the arrival of Julia, the lovely nurse who helps him adapt to life with a prosthetic. Pete eventually masters his balance enough to get back on the boat. Arthur’s older son, Wayne, a former hockey player and Air Force vet, has been given control of the mink farm, but his drinking is beginning to cause trouble. When new laws against pound nets threaten their livelihood, both Brennan businesses are at risk of capsizing. Into this climate steps the next generation of Brennans in the form of Pete and Julia’s son, Jay, who takes over as narrator from his father about halfway through the novel. When Jay suffers his own fishing boat accident, it seems the family’s fate might finally be sealed.
One gets the sense from Johnston’s plainspoken prose that he intimately knows the setting and the occupations he writes about. Here, Pete shows his sister, Mary, an artist whose marriage to the town’s rival business clan causes interfamily tensions, how to kill a mink: “I shoved the animal headfirst into the shoebox-sized device and held its tail with my right hand. Inside, the animal’s skull was under a steel plate attached to a twelve-inch handle that stuck out the top…A metallic crack bounced off the top of the shed. The animal stopped moving.” The plot’s procession through the decades allows it to nod toward various social changes of the later 20th century (the animal rights movement comes for the mink farm), but in some ways the sweeping time frame works against the book’s dramatic potential—the story ends up being less about the conflicts between its characters than the unsparing passage of time, which comes for all industries and those who work them. When, near the end of the book, a would-be customer asks Pete if he knows where he can get any walleye, Pete replies, with blunt resignation, “I’m the last commercial fisherman on Lake of the Woods and the last walleye fisherman in the United States.” To Johnston’s credit, by the time this line arrives, the reader understands the weight those words carry.
A measured generational family saga about the passing of a way of life.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781962834353
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Calumet Editions
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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