A dense but intriguing account of a Black family in and out of slavery.
A fiction collection sequel spins more tales of a 19th-century Black American family.
Sarah Freedom, the free daughter of two enslaved people stolen from Fante-land in Africa, has seen and heard a lot in her time. Now, on the cusp of the American Civil War, the practiced storyteller sets down further chapters of her life and the histories of those around her. There are the peregrinations of Caesar, the Shawnee warrior with African ancestry who fought against the Americans in the War of 1812 and rescued Sarah and her brothers from slavery. There are the many tall tales of her brother Dan, who served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, owned a stagecoach business in Cincinnati, and fathered numerous children by numerous women. There’s the account of Sarah’s other brother, Robin, known as a “Colonel” for the escape that he helped plan after being captured and enslaved again in Georgia. Set mostly in an Ohio Quaker community composed of both Black and White residents, the book covers the entirety of the Antebellum period and represents a patchwork of experiences, all happening in a time when slavery still touched every facet of American life. Wilson’s prose is highly textured, resurrecting a past that is every bit as fractious and fraught as the present. Storytelling is central to the understanding of Sarah’s history, not just for her, but for nearly every other character as well. “Why not die like men and women who was worth being re-remembered?” asks Robin. When someone tells him that the word is remembered, he responds: “No it ain’t….We was already remembering we was born to be warriors and it was for others to remember us more than once if they had good sense, and this land is as mean as I think it is.” Though the work bills itself as a collection of stories, the pieces read less like short tales than vignettes or anecdotes. The book is highly researched, and the author isn’t afraid to get bogged down in the details, even at the expense of narrative momentum. Those who have enjoyed his previous effort will likely be satisfied with this continuation of his project.
A dense but intriguing account of a Black family in and out of slavery.Pub Date: May 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955062-46-6
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
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
A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.
See’s latest novel exposes a forgotten, ugly chapter in LA history—the brutal 1871 massacre of 18 Chinese immigrant men and boys.
In July 1870, two Chinese women arrive in Lo Sang, a dusty frontier town known by its white and Hispanic residents as Los Angeles. Seventeen-year-old Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar fallen on hard times, is the new second wife of Old Man Sing, a merchant in the tiny Chinese community on Calle de los Negros. Barefoot, dark-skinned Petal, sold into servitude to a Gold Mountain tong by her desperately poor peasant father, is destined for the Midnight Garden, a bawdy house owned by Headman Sam. Witnessing the newcomers’ arrival is Moon, the wife of a successful doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. Unlike Petal and Dove, she speaks English, and she assists her husband in his clinic. The three alternating narratives—Petal tells her story as she lives it in 1870; an elderly Moon recalls past events from 1926; and Dove’s tale is recounted in a distant third-person voice—create a portrait of a tiny immigrant community surrounded by a hostile culture and ruled by rival tongs. It’s a shootout between these disputing factions that sets off the horrifying events of Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob of about 500 white and Latine residents torture and lynch their Chinese victims. Although meticulously researched, See’s novel feels curiously flat. Despite continual descriptions of gunfights breaking out, Los Angeles never fully comes to life as a rough-and-tumble Wild West town. While the author’s female protagonists, inspired by historical figures, are well drawn (kudos to the feisty and determined Petal), most of her male characters—Chinese, Anglo, and Mexican—are as flat and indistinguishable as cardboard. Another drawback is See’s stilted and stylized dialogue, typical of historical fiction but wearying to the modern reader.
A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781982117054
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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