A poignant exploration of generational trauma and healing.
Tucker’s novel, set in mid-20th century Northern California, offers a deeply personal look at a family shaken by tragedy.
The landscape of Lyla Hawkins’ childhood is dominated by two towering figures: her charismatic father and the gigantic oak tree that looms in her grandmother’s backyard. Charles Hawkins is very much the “fun” parent; he’s the one who takes Lyla speeding along the coastline in a convertible with the top down, or who eggs her on to climb along the highest branch in a backyard oak tree to hang a rope swing. However, his mood often teeters on a knife-edge; his experiences in World War II left him prone to uncontrollable bouts of crying and alcohol abuse. When he hangs himself from the aforementioned oak tree,10-year-old Lyla can’t untangle the grief of losing her father from her misplaced guilt: “Was it me?. . .Was it my fault? Because of my swing?” she later asks her mother, who refuses to answer. In the years that follow, she tries to navigate her feelings of loss while also dealing with her complicated relationships with her devastated mother and implacable grandmother. Later, as an adult, she leaves California for a while, ends up with men with whom she unknowingly repeats unhealthy patterns from childhood, but eventually feels called back home. Although Tucker’s novel is told primarily from Lyla’s third-person perspective, the inclusion of other characters’ points of view humanizes figures who might otherwise come across as unfeeling or unknowable, such as Lyla’s mother, Louise. A late-stage reveal of a family secret kept for decades feels more like an afterthought and doesn’t particularly serve the narrative; the plot and themes would have remained intact and affecting without its inclusion. However, the resolution of Lyla’s complicated feelings regarding the oak tree is satisfying and handled with nuance.
A poignant exploration of generational trauma and healing.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781647428341
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2024
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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