An often deft blend of emotional drama and historical reconstruction.
A sister and brother are orphaned and separated when war arrives at their Judean village in this novel of the ancient world.
In 135 B.C.E., Keziah, who’s not yet a teenager, lives in precarious circumstances: Her mother has leprosy, a disease that the family hides from their fellow villagers, and nearby Jerusalem is under siege by Greeks from the Seleucid Empire. One day, Keziah returns home to find her house on fire, and she witnesses the savage murders of both her parents and her younger brother, Moshe; her neighbors had discovered her family’s dark secret. A kind Iturean trader and a shopkeeper help her escape death, and she makes her way to Galilee, where she has family. Meanwhile, her older brother, Joazar, is taken captive by the Greek invaders and is made the servant of Jugurtha, who was once enslaved but is now the head of the treasury. Jugurtha attempts to school Joazar in what he sees as the ways of the world—a bottomless cynicism that profoundly challenges Joazar’s faith, as Potter eloquently depicts: “The ease with which he discarded childhood superstitions was proof of something he chose not to name.” The author’s research is impeccable over the course of the novel, although there’s an occasional tendency to bombard the reader with minute details of the day’s political conflicts. However, his prose can also turn leaden and grave, almost as if it’s meant to be carved in marble: “Humankind’s role was simple: skirt the attention of the gods, seek their clemency or succour only as much as needed, and revel in as much godlike madness as circumstance allowed. The only difference between slave and king was means.” Nonetheless, this is a magisterial work of ancient worldbuilding, and a dramatically affecting one, as well, as both siblings struggle to repair their broken lives—Keziah takes solace in a new family and her musical talent while Joazar desperately looks for her—and their desire for peace is repeatedly frustrated.
An often deft blend of emotional drama and historical reconstruction.Pub Date: March 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77730-732-5
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Paper Stone Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A virtuoso performance from Li. Brava!
“What can a miserable man and a miserable woman do for each other?” Li illustrates how two Romantic era musicians navigated such a relationship.
An unusually placed coda serves as a prelude, not a conclusion, to Li’s recreation of the tumultuous lives of musicians Adelaide Percheron and John Field. Adelaide, an Indian-born orphan of mixed racial heritage, has just learned of the death of her estranged husband, John—credited with the development of the nocturne as a musical form—after years of living separately and pursuing their individual artistic passions. Following that intriguing introduction is an insightful account of the indirect paths each took to survive challenging early years and to advance in the world of music. John was born in Dublin in 1782 into a family of Irish musicians who invested heavily in his musical training, hoping to produce “the next Mozart” despite the talented boy’s sensitive and dreamy nature. The precocious and preternaturally self-possessed Adelaide learns the rudiments of the pianoforte from a governess and strategic life lessons from her grandmother. Eventually, she sets out from Pondicherry for the broader opportunities she believes await her in her father’s native France. Against a background of social upheaval across Europe due to revolutions and Napoleon’s rising power, the two grow and mature in musicality and pursue the lives they’ve imagined for themselves. John and Adelaide have just met, in 1807 Moscow, as this volume ends, leaving the door open for Li to explore their relationship in future installments. Peppered with interludes and glances into the future, Li’s novel explores both the modern commodification of music and the value of art as a means of ensuring immortality, a hedge against the “night” that falls when a life ends. Her keen psychological study of the musicians and their muses delivers the themes elegantly.
A virtuoso performance from Li. Brava!Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780374613051
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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