A solid historical novel that explores how love, hate, and prejudice can last for decades.
A migrant worker and a rancher's daughter form a lasting connection in this historical novel.
Webster, the author of Soul of Toledo (2016), presents a narrative that bounces between the late 1960s, the 1990s, and beyond, showing the lasting impact that people can have on each other’s lives. Mexican Carlos Montoya, who regularly travels between his home country and the United States as a migrant worker, goes to work in the fields of the Booker family’s ranch in California in 1967. He catches the eye of the owner’s wife, Amy Booker, who hires him to pose for her provocative drawings, which she uses to irritate her husband; however, Carlos ends up sleeping with Amy’s 20-ish daughter, Julie. Although he loves his wife, Isabel, back in Mexico, Carlos also begins an emotional and eventually sexual affair with a local woman, María. Carlos becomes the victim of police brutality—with details revealed over the course of the book—and returns to Mexico, where he wants to forget about his California years. In 1994, as debate rages over Proposition 187, which aims to deny state services to the undocumented, Lilia Gomez, who works for Julie, goes to visit Carlos in Michoacán. Carlos, now a widower, reluctantly tells her the story of his time with Julie; however, he and Lilia later fall for each other. Meanwhile, Benito Ortega, a young San Francisco activist, fights for immigrant rights while discovering his own connection to Carlos, and Julie resolves her own loose ends. Despite the sprawling and occasionally melodramatic plot, this novel is highly readable and easy to follow as the narrative and characters move between different eras and locales. Throughout, Carlos is a challenging protagonist, and his attempts to justify his infidelity are particularly infuriating, but Webster depicts his complexities with empathy. The author’s depictions of racism and brutality straddle the line between evocative and cartoonish (“Don’t you know that ranchers conspire against their workers?” Julie says. “María’s overseer would beat you for fun, then hand you to my father”). Overall, though, they generally help to present a vivid portrait of the challenges that Carlos faces throughout the story.
A solid historical novel that explores how love, hate, and prejudice can last for decades.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9970320-1-7
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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