An enjoyable, if rather leisurely, tale of Traveler life.
A college graduate reunites with his Traveler friends in Gallagher’s sequel to Lowlands (2017).
It’s been seven years since James Ward had any contact with the Dragons, an itinerant group of Travelers with Irish and British roots. He’d initially befriended them as a high schooler in New York City; now out of college, he hears from Vivien Widdershins, the Dragons’ queen. With no job prospects, James heads to Pennsylvania where the Travelers have taken up residence. He makes himself comfortable at their wooded settlement, which he dubs “Dragon Town,” but the person whom he’s most excited to see is at another nearby tribe’s encampment: Cornelia Parsons, who’s around the same age as him and was the first Traveler he met, all those years ago. As days become weeks, James helps with laundry and landscaping but he’s rather lacking at other jobs that require manual labor, such as woodwork and repair. He spends most of his time contemplating his future. He’s sure that his classics degree won’t lead to a viable career, so he seriously considers Vivien’s offer to be the Dragons’ exclusive solicitor. A permanent home with the Travelers wouldn’t be so bad; he has a fondness for their way of life, and others already think of him and Cornelia as an “item.” Before he can make a decision, though, a sudden police raid leads to the shocking deaths of two tribe members. The Dragons are distraught and worried, as there’s a possibility that one of their enemies made a false report of drug activity that led to the raid.
Gallagher delivers a winsome portrayal of Travelers in this second series installment. The Dragons are shown to display a natural kindness and welcome James into their community. Although the story centers on Dragon Town, there are some signs of discrimination from outsiders, despite the fact that Travelers do their best to keep mostly to themselves. However, the story often feels stagnant; James is essentially on vacation, and as a result, there’s minimal action. Readers may find the protagonist’s lackadaisical attitude off-putting; he boasts of a near-full-ride scholarship and being debt free, but he also deems his college major impractical without even bothering to look for work. Still, James at least appreciates his leisure, as aptly expressed in Gallagher’s unadorned prose: “I was always glad for a day’s rain or an afternoon’s downpour, to take the time to doze and listen to the heavy drops. Not to exaggerate; they didn’t work me all that hard. But it wasn’t the life I was used to.” Dragon Town, nevertheless, isn’t completely uneventful before the raid; for example, at one point, an unknown dog storms the property and seemingly targets a 4-year-old boy. In a more comical turn, James joins a Traveler to collect an overdue bill—which, in practice, necessitates stealing something of equal or lesser value. The startling deaths unsurprisingly send the plot in a new direction in later sections, which include time jumps and a clear setup for another installment.
An enjoyable, if rather leisurely, tale of Traveler life.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60489-276-5
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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