An engaging, Steinbeckian look at climate change and its emotional costs.
A rural California family, struggling to make financial and emotional ends meet, faces the destructive threat of wildfires.
In the gold country of the California foothills, a place of picturesque natural beauty, residents know full well that conditions are always primed for a forest fire, that, in the words of Wallace Stegner—used here as an epigraph—the beautiful land ultimately “imposes itself” on them, and “sets the rules for [their] existence.” Briefly imprisoned a decade ago for growing medical marijuana, 65-year-old grape farmer Ben Hecht has been keeping a low profile, a little tired but grateful to have returned to his challenging yet rewarding farm life and to Ada, his novelist wife. Like early-evening sunlight streaming down the mountains, their world lately has been looking good, even promising. Their son, Yoel, has been painfully estranged from Ben, but now, back home after working in Los Angeles, seems surprisingly interested in reconciliation. Family and new friends surround them, proffering glasses of good wine or an occasional joint, just as they are surrounded by a happy menagerie of dogs, chickens, geese, and emus. There has even emerged the distinct possibility of Ben starting a wine-making business. Then, one day, a distant black plume of smoke changes everything. The wildfire that eventually tears through the area hurts the Hechts financially, but it is the obliteration of Ada’s work in progress that tips the family into a tailspin—this, and Yoel’s sudden involvement with an environmental group preparing to move from complaint to physical action, and Ben’s now-constant, justified worry of another, greater fire that would plunge them into poverty. Gumbiner examines the minutiae of the Hecht family’s life, their viniculture, their industry, their mellow California woods culture, sometimes to the detriment of narrative action, but his characters glow tenderly on the page. They are a good group of people to root for, at the shifting mercy of the winds that blow past their heads, trapped inside an ecosystem heating up steadily, past the point of hopeful disregard. Gumbiner crafts an important story, the fictional equivalent of outdoor warning sirens screaming above smoldering pine trees.
An engaging, Steinbeckian look at climate change and its emotional costs.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781662602429
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
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
Simply charming.
A lovable gaggle of competitive quilters attempts to defy the odds.
The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza, and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield, Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden, OQA’s leader and most faithful member, who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws, this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface, Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off, OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate, Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant, a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting, and his best friend, shy, artistic Rob, both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning, clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”), all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict, trauma, and, let’s face it, a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable, but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender, touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.
Simply charming.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798890920461
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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