A sad family saga with an uplifting ending.
A brother and sister cope with tragedy in Thomas’ novel.
As the story opens in 2001, middle-aged Vic Serafini has just overdosed on sedatives and antidepressants after losing his family in a tragic accident. He survives the overdose, but is deeply depressed; his sister, Josie, moves in with him to help him recover. It turns out that Vic hasn’t told her that he’s been in touch with their estranged father. The story bounces back and forth between 2001 and various points in Vic’s and Josie’s pasts. In 1971, 18-year-old Vic enlists to fight in Vietnam, much to the chagrin of his family; in 1981, Josie and Vic’s mother is dying of cancer and Josie is pregnant by a man who has left the country and likely won’t be back. Later, in 1997, Josie’s teenage daughter, Ellie, is curious about her biological father even though Josie’s husband, Ben, has been a good adoptive parent to her; shortly after Ellie writes her father a letter, she experiences a personal tragedy. In 2001, Vic goes back to work, and Josie tries to reconnect with Ellie, who’s fallen out of touch with her. The novel continues from this point, focused on Vic’s recovery and Josie’s strained relationships with her father and daughter. There’s also a side story about Vic’s late wife’s brother and a tragedy that befalls him. Readers may find that the novel’s first half is almost unbearably sad, and although it doesn’t cross the line into melodrama, the characters are put through the wringer. The second half is largely about healing and repairing damaged relationships, although it, too, isn’t without tragedy; the characters witness 9/11 on TV, which adds additional pathos, as does the illness of Josie’s horse. The story is told through narrative, letters, and song lyrics—Ellie is a musician—which, when combined with the nonlinear storytelling, can make the novel as a whole feel a little disjointed. The ending is hopeful, though, showing characters looking forward to the next stages of their lives.
A sad family saga with an uplifting ending.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64742-393-3
Page Count: 286
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
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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