An engrossing modern horror story that blends the power of Indigenous spiritualism with earthly terrors.
An Indigenous woman encounters the supernatural when she touches her missing mother’s old bracelet and raises a monster.
Kari James would be the first to tell you she’s not a traditional Indigenous woman. “I was more of a work at the bar, go to the bar, thrash at a heavy metal concert kind of Indian than a powwow Indian,” she admits. In her mid-30s, Kari lives a disorderly life. She cares for her disabled father but still revels in late nights drinking and smoking at her favorite dive bar, White Horse, and enjoying the music of headbanger Dave Mustaine, the horror novels of Stephen King, and the occasional random hookup. She's mostly ignored the spiritual aspects of her Apache and Chickasaw ancestors, preferring a good party instead. Then her cousin Debby finds an old family bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, who'd vanished when Kari was a baby. Kari has always assumed her mother abandoned her, but when she touches the bracelet, she experiences violent, troubling visions about the past and her family, and a dangerous monster is unleashed. Set in and around Denver and its neighboring communities, this is a unique, dark twist on the modern ghost story that deftly blends an understanding of the mysticism of Indigenous culture with the horrors of poverty, abuse, and addiction. Sometimes the plot feels a bit chaotic, but the tumult mirrors Kari’s roiling emotions. She’s haunted not only by her mother’s disappearance, but also by the death of her best friend from an overdose, a tragedy Kari believes she could have prevented. As Kari fumbles toward the truth about her family and faces off against a nightmarish entity, Wurth—who is of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent—paints a compelling portrait of friendship, love, and the quest for self-respect, offering a fierce and generous vision of contemporary Native American life.
An engrossing modern horror story that blends the power of Indigenous spiritualism with earthly terrors.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2508-4765-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
