A compassionate, moving story of friendship, love, and letting go of the past.
In Sammon’s novel, an aging ghostwriter reunites with a dying friend whose story urges her to confront her own long-buried past.
Darby Small, a successful ghostwriter, lives with her elderly mother in a ramshackle house in the small town of Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Her quiet life is turned upside down when her recently estranged best friend, Phoebe Zaslove, contacts her with shattering news: She is losing her fight with cancer and would like Darby to help write her story before she dies. Darby flies to Phoebe’s home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the two spend their days reconnecting. As they talk, it becomes clear that Phoebe’s goal in putting her life on paper is to reconcile with her history and break the cycle of keeping silent in the face of trauma. Phoebe’s bravery when she finally reveals a horrific secret from her past compels Darby to consider her own secrets and the ways in which they have shaped her relationship with her mother and influenced her choice of career. As Phoebe’s cancer battle draws to its devastating conclusion, Darby must decide once and for all just how much silence she’s willing to carry. Sammon has crafted a quietly devastating tale of sexual abuse and assault that explores the generational trauma that mothers can unwittingly pass down to their daughters. Darby proves to be an incredibly sympathetic narrator, waxing almost poetic as she reflects on her life and expresses sentiments that will likely ring universal for readers: “There are the places of invisibility that we carefully craft for ourselves and the ones where we get wholly sucked in by another.” While some of the symbolism comes across as excessively heavy-handed (Darby’s last name is Small, and she feels small; she is a ghostwriter, and she feels like a ghost), the novel shines as a testament to the power of speaking one’s truth, no matter how long that may take.
A compassionate, moving story of friendship, love, and letting go of the past.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781662969898
Page Count: 364
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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