A three-part story that’s enlivened by an ephemeral, dreamlike structure and musical prose.
Proffit follows up his historical novella Scapegoat (2025) with a return to the story of his ancestor Susannah North Martin, who was hanged for witchcraft in Salem in the 1690s.
The author combines his own story of coming to terms with his identity as a gay man while seeking conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War with that of his ancestor Susannah, tragically executed during the Salem witch trials. The novel also incorporates the story of Joseph Ring, one of the men who accused Susannah of witchcraft. Along the way, he weaves together storylines and genres to create something that’s hard to categorize but even harder to put down. He presents much of the book as a series of brief, enchanting prose passages that feel more like interconnected pieces of flash fiction than chapters; the author labels the structure of the book by using the language of missals and hymnals: canticles, preludes, and so on. Sprinkled among these elements are sections written in verse, as well as notes, commentary, and memoiristic passages. The overall effect is dreamlike, following the logic of a montage. Overall, the work feels a bit like an impressionistic painting, with each element intriguing and beautifully rendered but impossible to fully process, except holistically. The soaring writing, dreamy organization, and thematic clarity create a book whose substance far outpaces its brevity. Proffit beautifully, honestly, and realistically reflects on the othering that he experienced as he relates it to Susannah’s. Even so, the parts that feature his ancestor are easily the strongest, largely because he portrays her as such a compelling and steady character. Her calm, firm refusal to cower in front of her accusers, or even accept their premise, is inspiring; she delivers a barrage of retorts imbued with a righteous, defiant, and matter-of-fact certainty: “I believe a lie, repeated until it feels like scripture, can make even a girl believe what she performs. I think you give too much credit to Satan and not enough blame to yourselves.”
A three-part story that’s enlivened by an ephemeral, dreamlike structure and musical prose.Pub Date: May 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781971533018
Page Count: -
Publisher: Synthetic Prophetic
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
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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