A deeply emotional historical novel tackling race and queerness in early-20th-century America.
In Stuart’s historical novel, a Black man in segregated Kentucky cares for the white daughter of the family for whom he works.
In the 1930s in the town of Horse Cave, Black residents live in the neighborhood of Kingdom, across the train tracks from white townspeople. Paul Carew, the son of Baptist preacher Elijah, spends his time with his neighbor and best friend, Moses Daniels, or helping his mother, Lily, cook, clean, and care for his younger siblings. Elijah is tough on Paul, berating his “delicate” gender expression, while Paul despises Elijah for not helping Lily with any of her work around the house. One day, while his family is participating in church-related events, Paul sneaks home to put on one of Lily’s dresses and her makeup. While he’s dancing alone, Elijah surprises him and becomes enraged, stripping Paul and beating him with his belt before Lily arrives home and intervenes. Paul’s life changes drastically when his cousin Lorene, who works for a wealthy white family, gets him a job alongside her to keep him away from Elijah’s anger. Sally and Walter Jackson hire him to cook with Lorene and work in Sally’s garden. When the Jacksons welcome a new granddaughter, Jane, Paul is given the responsibility to care for the child, sending the protagonist on an emotional journey that takes a turn during D-Day on June 6, 1944. Throughout Stuart’s novel, Paul effectively grapples with gender identity and with his unorthodox connections to whiteness and privilege through his position with the Jackson family. In author’s notes, Stuart, who is white, and Flower, a Black author, tell of how they came to co-write the story, and Stuart reveals that the novel offers a version of her own life, employing fictionalized aspects to tell the story from the main character’s distinct point of view. The authors imbue Paul’s voice with emotion and grace, crafting a moving story of a courageous person in a difficult time.
A deeply emotional historical novel tackling race and queerness in early-20th-century America.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781736458310
Page Count: 376
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2025
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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