An enjoyable western with contemporary sensitivities.
In search of adventure, a young man from Chicago finds more than he bargained for in the wilds of 1878 Colorado in McSweegan’s novel.
In the middle of the night, Nolan Carter, his younger brother, Brian, and their childhood friend, Davey Tyler, are sleeping by their campsite in the Colorado foothills when they are awakened by the sound of twigs snapping. Davey sits upright and is promptly shot in the head by an unseen assailant. Nolan and Brian grab their guns, begin shooting in the direction of the gunfire, and chase off their attackers. Brian has had enough of Colorado and returns to Chicago with Davey’s body. Nolan stays behind, still “looking for something.” Working as a freight hauler between Pueblo and Denver, he heads over to the rail station to check on potential hauling prospects. There he encounters Professor Maria Mitchell, who is in charge of three younger women (Mitchell’s younger sister and two former students) and in a state of distress. They are astronomers from Vassar College, traveling to Denver to view and record the 1878 total solar eclipse, stopping in Pueblo to change trains. But they have arrived in the middle of a railway war between two companies; the ladies, with their baggage and valuable telescopes in tow, are stuck in Pueblo. Nolan offers his hauling services and the action-packed narrative shifts into high gear. McSweegan seamlessly weaves together traditional frontier story elements with the sociological battles of the emerging Suffragette and women’s equality movements, then adds a hearty portion of astronomy. Descriptions of the solar eclipse, with daylight vanishing behind a blackened moon surrounded by a pulsing corona, are riveting (“it appeared like a giant black mouth about to devour us”). Desperados, gunfights, a quartet of marauding Indigenous people, dusty trails, and drenching storms are juxtaposed against Eastern refinement and comforts. Nolan, the soulful, newly-minted cowboy from Chicago, is a winning hero. During the long, treacherous journey to Denver, he discovers that young astronomer Cora Harrison is as indomitable as he.
An enjoyable western with contemporary sensitivities.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781509248322
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
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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