A moving exploration of the profound costs of trying to be a good person.
In this novel, a teenage boy fails to stop a rape committed by a high school football star and becomes locked within the legal and moral drama that ensues.
In 1963, Danny Prescott is an ordinary 16-year-old boy in Banning, Iowa, who is unaccustomed to being noticed by the likes of Brent Arrington, a star high school football player and the “closest thing Banning had to a celebrity.” So Danny, who is also on the football team, is surprised when Brent asks him for a ride to the home of Loretta Tinsley, a 13-year-old girl in junior high. While there, Brent and Loretta disappear into a hay loft, where Brent rapes her and casually emerges unperturbed by her anguished cries, grotesquely satisfied by his conquest. Danny does nothing to help her and even gives Brent a ride back to town. Danny quickly becomes emotionally overwhelmed by his cowardly inaction, which finally leaves him “shimmering with shame and humiliation,” an ignominy sensitively depicted by Whipple. Loretta presses charges, and Brent is arrested for rape while Danny is considered an accessory to the assault. Danny desperately wants to atone for his part in Loretta’s agony, especially after she attempts suicide, and tells the truth about what he saw. He even pines to testify against Brent. But Danny becomes the town pariah—some hate him because he won’t defend Brent, who makes a state football championship possible, and others because they see him as the star athlete’s accomplice. The school’s principal, Mr. Larson, tries to expel Danny, and local mothers take up a petition to remove him from school. Coach Esker discourages Danny from continuing to play football, and many of his teammates, Brent’s “loyalists,” shun him. Even worse, Brent assaults him brutally and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut.
Whipple’s moral drama is layered with complexity—the Prescotts have a long and fraught relationship with the Arringtons. This is especially impressive given the ordinariness of this town—Danny calls it a “grease spot on an Iowa map”—which serves as a perfect stage for the story, a small place that gives birth to big sins. At the heart of the novel is a delicately portrayed maturation of Danny—this unassuming virgin who longs to escape the aching provinciality of his life is compelled to grow up fast and ask himself hard questions about what it means to be a man. Whipple’s writing is generally poetically unembellished, but its plainness is the source of its gathering power, and it brings into sharp relief the averageness of those who participate in this moral contest. Here, Loretta’s father, Evert, confronts Danny regarding his responsibility for her rape: “Why didn’t you help my little girl? They say you’re a good kid. Why didn’t you help her when she cried out?…Why would someone she considered a friend…bring a monster to our farm?” This is an absorbing look into the ways even the most ordinary human beings can suddenly become key players in a terrible drama.
A moving exploration of the profound costs of trying to be a good person.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798218534776
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Whipple Prestige Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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