A compelling and diverse historical novel.
Mayo presents a novel set in the world of health care in 1890 New York City.
Eighteen-year-old Lillian Dolan takes a job as a nursing assistant at the New York Cancer Hospital. Determined to make a better life for herself and her younger sister, Marie, who’s sightless and has a cognitive disorder due to the effects of scarlet fever, Lillian aims to prove that she has “a stomach built for nursing,” and she does her best to absorb all she can from her colleagues at the hospital so that she may one day become a nurse herself. But Lillian soon learns that the medical field is rife with questionable ethics, and she even finds herself rethinking her definitions of good and evil. When Lillian takes responsibility for the care of Mrs. Sokolova, a strong-willed Russian immigrant, she must confront a monumental moral challenge that could change her life forever. Along the way, a trio of supporting characters help Lillian grapple with the demands of her job and broaden the straight, White woman’s worldview: Michael Dolan, her caring and generous gay cousin; Jupiter Scott, an earnest Black crematorium worker; and Josephine, a witty lesbian sex worker. Mayo’s novel not only offers a close look at health care at the turn of the 20th century, but also addresses the racial, class, and sexual tensions that existed alongside strict, bigoted Victorian-era standards of morality. Mayo brings her characters and settings to life with deft prose and careful research. Her descriptions of the crowded streets of New York are visceral and authentic; for example, during Lillian’s commute to the hospital, she weaves through throngs of people with “hats, bobbing like corks in the sea. Derbys, Hombergs and flat caps of drab colors mixed with women’s bonnets.” Descriptions of medical procedures are graphic yet graceful; during a surgical procedure, for instance, Lilian observes the “terrain” of “blue veins and yellow clumps of fat and bulges of white and lavender, hills and valleys and rivers.”
A compelling and diverse historical novel.Pub Date: May 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-942762-83-6
Page Count: 283
Publisher: Heliotrope Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.
This engrossing historical novel focuses on the lives of three Black Americans in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1948, Ozzie Philips is a newly enlisted young soldier from Philadelphia who arrives at his station in occupied Germany just in time for the order by President Harry Truman desegregating the U.S. military. It’s inspiring news, but Ozzie will find it’s a rough transition. In 1950, Ethel Gathers is a journalist and the wife of a U.S. Army officer posted to Mannheim in occupied Germany. Unhappily childless, one day she sees a group of young biracial children tended by nuns and ends up volunteering at their orphanage. When Ethel discovers thousands of these children, born as the result of relationships between American soldiers and German women, she’s fired with purpose. In 1965 in Maryland, Sophia Clark is the ambitious teenage daughter of a hardworking farm family. When she’s unexpectedly selected for a scholarship to a fancy boarding school, she’s eager for the opportunity, if unprepared for what she’ll face as one of the first Black students to attend. The novel traces each character’s life in separate chapters, eventually revealing the connections among them. Their stories are firmly grounded in meticulous research, from the current events of each period down to details of clothing styles. Ozzie copes with the infuriating indignities imposed on “colored” soldiers despite their essential contributions, and Ethel and Sophia each learn to navigate arcane hierarchies—for Ethel, the scorekeeping of military wives and the barriers of bureaucracy, and for Sophia, the perils of boarding school. Their individual experiences are all part of the larger historical force of World War II and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. At some points the dialogue can be stilted in its efforts to convey history, but the characters and rich details are warmly engaging.
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781668069912
Page Count: 464
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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