A complex and appealingly lucid account of one man’s deeply troubled past.
Tate offers a story of a troubled life that includes a real-life tragedy in 1970 Peru.
Sister Pilar is a nun at the Divine Mercy Covenant in Yungay. Part of her duties is to care for a disabled woman named Ana Lucia, who’s been raped three times, with each assault resulting in a pregnancy. Ana Lucia’s first two children live in the home of a local landowner named Don Fernando, “hidden by the convent, taken, and hidden again before they were introduced to the community as the biological children of a wealthy couple.” Ana Lucia’s third and latest pregnancy raises new questions, as Pilar knows that only those in the religious order have a key to the woman’s convent room. That child, born in 1964, is named Santiago, and a novitiate named Isabel Cristina takes care of him; the plan is for her to take him to Don Fernando’s, as well. But after Don Fernando attempts to assault Isabel Cristina, she flees; when she returns and attempts to take Santiago away, tragedy strikes—and that’s merely the beginning of Santiago’s tumultuous young life, which will be marked by a particularly devastating event. Tate’s account of Santiago’s early days is a complicated affair with many figures playing parts in his backstory. Nevertheless, the straightforward prose throughout the book helps guide readers through his trying circumstances. This is the case when, in 1970, the 6-year-old Santiago finds himself in the midst of “the worst natural disaster in Peru’s known history.” Later chapters, in which the protagonist moves to Mexico, feel less intense, and the narration notably lacks urgency after Santiago becomes a tour guide at age 17—a position in which his background in acting “gave him a big advantage in terms of presentation and professionalism.” Still, because readers know the difficulties Santiago faced coming into the world, they’ll likely find the rest of his story intriguing.
A complex and appealingly lucid account of one man’s deeply troubled past.Pub Date: May 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798998773730
Page Count: 187
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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