A meditative celebration of the simple joys of living off the land.
In Heidgerd Garrick’s novel, a young couple move to West Virginia in the late 1970s and immerse themselves in rural life.
Lily’s partner, Sonny, is addicted to drugs. Sonny’s friend Jed has promised to let Sonny dry out at his isolated homestead in West Virginia—as long as Sonny and Lily work to earn their keep. Lily, eager to recapture the magic of childhood camping trips and to help Sonny, agrees—for the sake of their connection, Lily is ready to sacrifice everything. In West Virginia, Lily and Sonny are thrust into the natural world in all its beauty and intensity; they experience crisp spring water, coiling snakes, and striking vistas, in addition to outhouses and limited electricity. Disconnecting from the outside world, the two learn how to live off the land via home canning, animal husbandry, and the sneaky satisfaction of growing bumper crops of marijuana. Proving their mettle and dedication, Sonny and Lily are drawn deeper into the complicated, vibrant dynamics of their tight-knit new community. Their new life, free from the comforts and constraints of modernity, may be challenging, but it’s their own. Lily’s narrative voice is melodic and soothing—her delight in the pleasures of country life (“I am pinching myself. I can hardly wait to have Horseshoe Hollow to ourselves”) is refreshing and engagingly highlights the satisfactions of hard work and self-sufficiency. The cast of vividly rendered supporting characters, both human and animal, crackle on the page with expressive energy. But while Lily’s appreciation for her new lifestyle is evident, the motivation behind her eagerness to flee her own past life and keep her tight grasp on Sonny remains obscure, which leaves a frustrating hole at the novel’s center. Her unshakable belief in the necessity of love and devotion merits deeper exploration, especially since the quiet of Lily’s country days only amplifies these questions.
A meditative celebration of the simple joys of living off the land.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781966293385
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Epigraph
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
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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