An engaging and thought-provoking work, led by a well-developed protagonist.
In Birdwell’s historical novel, a progressive white Southern woman is forced to choose between her family and the truth.
Narcissa “Cissa” Tarver was a surprise baby to her aging parents, born a decade after the Civil War in Mississippi. Her Black nurse, Julia, is her best, if not only, friend; a lonely child, Cissa spends much of her time playing in nature, especially with her favorite barn cat. Cissa’s future changes at age 6, when an untreated spider bite leads to gangrene and the loss of two fingers. She learns to write left-handed and discovers that she enjoys writing; as a teenager, she’s hired to cover social events for the local newspaper. As a reporter, she questions the attitudes of racist Southerners, especially the sentiments of her older brother, Duncan, who runs for office. Her decision to stand up to him results in tension with other family members. She also develops a mutual attraction with Hector Davis, a detective who’s seeking evidence against Duncan and his followers. Her father wills the family home to her, but she must take care of her elderly mother, and she struggles to find a way to build a life of her own. In this story, loosely based on Birdwell’s family history, the author has created a fascinating character in Cissa, who’s always determined to do what’s right, no matter what it may cost her personally. Cissa forthrightly questions why only white men can participate in the electoral process; she also yearns to be a reporter covering important stories, but her circumstances always keep her from making that leap. With the huge family sizes of the era, and the high child-mortality rates, readers may sometimes find it difficult to keep track of who’s who among the Tarvers, let alone their extended relations. Nonetheless, Birdwell has built a strong period piece on the foundation of an intriguing woman’s story.
An engaging and thought-provoking work, led by a well-developed protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 389
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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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