A poignant debut with beautiful writing.
In Payne’s novel, an elementary school janitor helps a troubled boy and is forced to face his own trauma as a result.
In Michigan, janitor Buddy Robertson spends most days the same way; he silently cleans up around the elementary school where he works, gardens around his creek-facing property, and settles into his once romantic, now platonic domestic partnership with Mags and their bevy of cats. Buddy’s outlook is less than pleasant: “Life was funny. Crap happened, and sometimes you didn’t think you’d recover from it, but then another crappy thing happened to take your mind off the last thing.” Buddy mainly finds solace in the nature around him, an appreciation passed down from his grandfather. In flashbacks to 1969, when Buddy is a boy, his mother has taken up with James Shearing, an antagonistic and abusive man. The family moves with James to Ohio, and it is there that James sexually assaults Buddy. In the present day, while cleaning the school, Buddy spots Ben Jameson, a student, in the bathroom with a bloody razor. After alerting the principal, it is revealed that Ben is the victim of the same kind of abuse Buddy survived. As Ben and his older sister get closer to Buddy and Mags, and Ben’s case goes to trial, Buddy must contend with accusations of predatory grooming and his own unprocessed trauma. Payne’s moving story contains many evocative layers. Though the narrative tackles heavy subjects, it never reads like misery-literature. Payne’s greatest strength is her redolent prose, which is highly detailed and evokes a slight stream-of-consciousness quality: “He said their names like a prayer, not just to the darkness of night but sometimes in the middle of the day, at noon, when people were worried about their lunches and the leaves were turning color. His whispers sometimes fell on the weeds in his garden, sometimes on his work mop.”
A poignant debut with beautiful writing.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781961302426
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Mission Point Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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
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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