A sensitive but unsparing coming-of-age drama.
An earnest novel about the journey of a young Mexican immigrant.
This debut novel by Thomas, a longtime immigration rights activist, opens in Los Angeles in 2015, when Alma Cruz’s 14-year-old daughter, Luz, accuses her of knowing nothing about the plight of Central American refugee children detained at the Texas border. Luz’s outburst prompts Alma to reflect on her own life and on secrets that she can never reveal. Her story begins when her beloved father, Juan Cruz—who traveled annually from Oaxaca City, Mexico, to work in California—disappears in 1997, leaving his wife and four children back home. Alma’s dream of becoming a math teacher is shattered, and her mother’s distant cousin moves in with them, which further complicates matters. Unwilling to accept that her father has deserted them, Alma hatches a plan to go north and seek help from her half brother, Diego, in Los Angeles and from Dolores Huerta, a famous activist about whom her father had spoken. Alma and her sister, Rosa, eventually team up with Manuel, a 16-year-old refugee from Guatemala. In an author’s note, Thomas addresses at length the research she undertook and the issues involved in telling this story as a non-Latina author. Her use of Alma’s math journal, which includes story problems (with answers provided in the back of the book), is an especially effective storytelling device. This, along with the tender depiction of first love and an epilogue by Alma’s daughter, Luz, may make the novel intriguing for YA readers. Readers should be warned, however, that the characters’ attempts to cross the border build to a tragic, life-changing event in the Arizona desert involving sexual assault. Alma is a compelling narrator throughout, and Thomas’ clear, simple prose conveys the terrifying encounters and moments of danger that mark her journey. Minor characters, including Alma’s former teacher and a nurse’s aide who helps Alma evade a detention center, also emerge as fully rounded individuals.
A sensitive but unsparing coming-of-age drama.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-870-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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