A vibrant tale of 1950s Chicago.
Joseph offers a sweeping saga highlighting how race and religion shape people’s lives in the second book of his Chicago Trilogy, following To Love Mercy (2006).
It’s 1952, and a project of so-called “Urban Renewal” is in full swing in Bronzeville, Chicago’s predominantly Black neighborhood. With Jim Crow laws still in effect, the government is using the power of eminent domain to destroy the community, forcing families out of their homes. However, the novel’s plot centers mainly on a lost family heirloom—a small silver piece with Hebrew markings. Steve Feinberg, a white Jewish boy from Hyde Park, and Jesse Owens Trimble—a Black youngster from Bronzeville known around the neighborhood as “Sass,” due to his “smart mouth,” as Steve puts it—live very different lives. They’re connected through Mattie, Sass’ mom who works at the ticket counter at the Calumet Theater, which is owned by Mister Nate, Steve’s grandfather. The two leave the theater to search for the “silver thing” after Mister Nate loses it and unjustly accuses Sass of stealing it and they end up traveling all over the city. Later reunited by chance in high school, Steve and Sass’ shared love of jazz has them joining an a cappella group together, eventually leading them into the orbit of alto sax player and notorious gangster Mister Lucky. Intriguingly, the work goes on to explore how Chicago’s 1950s jazz scene served as an extension of the local civil rights movement. Sass’ troublesome older brother, Isaiah, known as “Nubby,” works for Mister Lucky running numbers, bringing trouble into his loved ones’ lives. The richly developed characters, including Dora, an aging Sunday school teacher who works for the Feinbergs as a maid, and Ezell, a boy with a stutter who has a natural ability to defuse conflict, are among the book’s strengths. Throughout the story, Joseph frequently reminds readers how socioeconomic factors influence how people interact with the world. The cast is large and diverse, and their often charming, relatable interactions will draw readers deeply into the story.
A vibrant tale of 1950s Chicago.Pub Date: May 16, 2025
ISBN: 9798990440944
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Key Literary
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2025
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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