An ingeniously constructed, if slightly uneven, historical page-turner.
One man’s escape from slavery irrevocably transforms the lives of two women in Friedland’s latest historical novel.
The author reimagines the lives of two important 19th-century Americans: Ann Phillips, a prominent Boston abolitionist, and Anthony Burns, who escaped slavery by sneaking aboard a ship to Boston. Their stories are intertwined with the narrative of fictional Southern belle Colette Randolph, who befriends Anthony in Richmond, Virginia, before his flight to the North. Both Ann and Colette are passionately against slavery, but the women’s anti-slavery efforts can only go so far. Ann is limited by her poor health, and Colette is hampered by her restrictive role as the wife of the man who founded one of Richmond’s most successful tobacco factories. Ann contributes to the abolitionist cause by writing speeches for her husband, Wendell, a prominent lecturer who champions the “enslaved, the downtrodden, the persecuted, at every opportunity.” After a chance meeting with Anthony, Colette surreptitiously gives him reading lessons before he flees to Boston. Anthony’s capture and prosecution under the Fugitive Slave Act ultimately transforms both women’s lives in monumental yet hidden ways. Friedland’s story of how these two very different women clandestinely help Anthony build a future also speaks to how important women were to the abolitionist movement. “History is a finicky friend,” Friedland writes, but there is nothing finicky about the impeccable research that forms the backbone of this novel. Evocative period detail abounds in Friedland’s work; characters are pulled directly from history. In addition to Ann and Anthony, Henry David Thoreau makes an appearance, and many other prominent figures come up in conversation. Colette, however, never springs to life as vividly as Ann or Anthony. Moreover, there is not enough interaction between Colette and Anthony in Richmond to believe that she eventually becomes “preoccupied about Anthony all the time.” By contrast, Ann and Wendell’s marriage contains all the minor annoyances of any contemporary long-term relationship. The nuanced depiction of Ann and Wendell’s marriage and Friedland’s atmospheric storytelling are enough to make the reader overlook these minor flaws.
An ingeniously constructed, if slightly uneven, historical page-turner.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9781684632145
Page Count: 328
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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