A thoughtful and often beautiful volume of poetry that explores the Middle East and America.
Glancy (Trigger Dance, 2015, etc.) contemplates history and culture in this new collection of poems.
The impetus for this book, as Glancy explains early on, was a trip she took in spring 1994 through Syria and Jordan on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency. A cultural ambassador of sorts for the U.S., she confronted the depth of the history that surrounded her: “Standing at the ruins of Ebla in Syria, there was an older oldthan any of the history I knew in America.” The author’s travels in the Levant forced her to consider the disconnect she felt between the Holy Land of the Christian Bible—a place so revered by Americans—and the modern Muslim nations that Americans regard with such suspicion. These Syria and Jordan poems sit side by side with others set in North Dakota, Arizona, New Hampshire, and elsewhere in the U.S., in which Glancy examines her personal history as well as her own cultural background as a Native American. As the poet writes, “You know how seeing another country / makes you see your own / and you know how America’s eye is always on itself.” The second section of the book revisits the Syria of recent years, ruminating on how the holy desert of Glancy’s travels has become a conflagration of violence and inhumanity. In these poems, she mourns the loss of the people and places she saw in 1994, wondering what has become of them: “I thought of the dyer of blue cloth in Damascus / … / What happened to the patterns and jars of blue? / The maker of them?” The work moves back and forth between narrative verse poems and contemplative prose poems, tackling complex ideas from multiple angles. The result is a book that is both analytical and lyrically satisfying, a profound meditation on the nature of nationhood, history, and the narratives readers allow themselves to live in. The question Glancy poses in the title poem is as true of America as it is of Syria: “What can be trusted to be true / in the complexities of a country at war with itself?”
A thoughtful and often beautiful volume of poetry that explores the Middle East and America.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5326-0302-0
Page Count: 94
Publisher: Wipf and Stock
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
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