A multilayered and consistently engaging rags-to-riches story.
In Fisher and Orey’s historical novel, a successful entrepreneur sees his professional and personal life torn apart.
As the story opens in 1974, readers meet Scott Newman, a high roller with a posh Fifth Avenue office and an enormous bank account. As he looks out on his world, he considers it to be heaven on Earth, and a far cry from his former, blue-collar life. He remembers how his father, a low-paid route salesman for a local bread company worked himself into an early grave; Scott decides early on that he doesn’t want a life like that for himself. Instead, he eventually builds a light bulb telemarketing company, Argon Industries, into a powerhouse that makes him very wealthy. Then, one day, FBI agents burst into his trading rooms, accusing him and his partner, Doug Kaufman, of criminal activity. As the raid and its aftermath unfold, the narrative follows Scott’s memories of founding the company with Doug and meeting a wide array of challenges, from building their business expertise to dealing with thuggish extortionists. This flashback narrative spans decades, and when it loops back to the present, readers find Scott fuming with rage over his heavy-handed treatment at the hands of the FBI—and this stress lands him in the hospital. His challenge is to find a way to survive his setbacks and return to success, but the obstacles seem insurmountable as the government closes in.
Fisher and Orey’s novel opens with a rather familiar setup, but the book’s extensive flashbacks, detailing Scott and Doug’s past, will grab readers’ interest. The stories of their rise to corporate dominance are told with considerable slang and energy and get across the forward momentum of two guys trying to scratch and hustle their way to financial success: “Today it’s only a crazy dream,” Scott says about possibly opening a jewelry store, “but tomorrow I’ll begin working to make this reality.” The supporting characters in Scott’s life are as well fleshed out as the rest of his backstory; the present-day storyline, though, features by-the-numbers portrayals of federal agents, which the authors see fit to portray as almost uniformly snide, sneering, and whip-cracking—the type of antagonists who can be relied upon to say,Godfather-style, “this isn’t personal.” Fisher and Orey compensate by developing the chemistry between Scott and Doug, which is compelling at every stage of their association. The authors smartly anchor the book’s final act in the present rather than the past, bringing the action to a climax with some dramatic courtroom scenes in which Scott must fight for his life against charges of fraud and money laundering—even after it seems as if he’s been betrayed by his nearest and dearest. The work would have benefited from a stronger copy edit, and some elements of the story itself might raise eyebrows among less ardent capitalists—Scott may be charismatic, but no reader would want to do business with him. Ultimately, though, the novel’s sheer narrative energy carries the day.
A multilayered and consistently engaging rags-to-riches story.Pub Date: June 24, 2021
ISBN: 979-8524589842
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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