A riveting tale that celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit.
Eager to escape his past, a widower embarks on a voyage to discover sunken treasure in this novelette of adventure and survival set in the 19th century.
When Cornelius Braddock meets Georges Dufort in the port city of Grimsby, England, he is unaware that his life is about to change. Dufort, “an older man with a walrus-tusk beard hiding most of his wrinkles,” tells Braddock a fantastical tale about treasure lost in a shipwreck in 1808 and furnishes proof of his story’s veracity. Braddock, eager to escape every reminder of the life he shared with his recently deceased wife, agrees to finance and lead a voyage to find the riches. What follows is a tale of intrigue and betrayal modeled after 19th-century adventure novels like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Dufort disappears on the day of the voyage, and Braddock, who had overestimated his abilities as a sea captain, is at the mercy of the ship’s crew, which keeps him in a holding cell, routinely beats him, and forces him to retrieve the gold. Braddock escapes but is shipwrecked on the shores of Brittany, where he befriends a young boy and his mother, who nurses him back to health. Eventually, Braddock is discovered and escorted to Grimsby, where he is unjustly accused of murdering the crew; he is sentenced to death. Ryan’s book pulls readers in with the romance of buried treasure and holds them with an exciting narrative of an individual’s survival against all odds: Braddock “smiled a survivor’s smile as he floated weightlessly on the sea and watched the amber sunset reflect off the water and illuminate the gold doubloons in his hand.” Even though the story is not linear—the author shuttles back and forth in time—Ryan will hold his readers through the wild ride. Unfortunately, there are several illogical strands in the plot—including the ending—that may leave readers scratching their heads in confusion.
A riveting tale that celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 9781737814
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021
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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