A beautifully written tale of the Pacific Northwest, rich with myth and character.
Dunn’s novel chronicles the life of a pirate broadcaster raised in the harsh logging territories of the Pacific Northwest.
The novel begins with a modern version of one of the world’s oldest tales: A baby, abandoned but otherwise healthy, is discovered in a makeshift vessel along the watery shores. Lancelot Aloysius Bauer, better known as Bear, is living in the furthest northwest reaches of Washington state—where he has always lived—working in the logging industry, the only life he has known ever since he was a boy serving as a prep cook for ravenous loggers. One day, while strolling by the shallow waters just off the shore of the Pacific, he discovers a metal drum, and inside it, a lone baby. As simply as that, the care of this child is thrust upon him as if by divine providence. (In a nifty bit of irony in this narrative, which is steeped in the natural environment, the boy is named Petr, after the word on the side of the drum in which he was found: “Petroleum.”) Though Bear is wholly unprepared for fatherhood, his good-hearted attempts to parent do occasionally hit the mark, such as when he purchases Petr a Realtone TR-1088 transistor radio, which fosters the passion that comes to drive Petr’s young life: the medium of radio. As Petr’s fascination grows, he lights out on his own, broadcasting pirate radio waves from the enchanted forests of his native stomping grounds. Meanwhile, Baie, the novel’s other protagonist, is back in the area, fresh from a French monastery and looking to start over after the death of her parents—her story is a surprising but equal counterpart to Petr’s tale.
Dunn’s richly-drawn landscape of the remote stretches of the Pacific Northwest is rife with magic and mysticism, and the sense that larger, more cosmic forces are at play all around us—none more so than the narrator, revealed to be the voice of a sort of mythical raven. (Baie, too, has an animal companion—in her case, a white otter.) Separated as a youth from his flock, the raven is marooned near Mount Olympus and present from the very moment of Petr’s discovery. The raven’s journey inspires some of the author’s best prose: “My skull became a tuner, my beak an antenna, and as I received, I lost my compass. Alive with radio waves, my body skipped off the upper atmosphere. Brilliant as magnesium flame and then black as coal, I tumbled back to earth, vibrating.” Such colorful language abounds in Dunn’s text, and he employs his skills as a poet—he has published several volumes of poetry in addition to novels—to excellent effect to limn the inhabitants of his rich environment, especially when providing brief sketches of childhood (Bear’s, in particular) to contextualize his characters as adults. While the novel may be a touch longer than is strictly necessary, Dunn’s inventive, lush prose and his sense of playfulness between humans and animals (and animals and the Earth) will carry readers through to a satisfying conclusion.
A beautifully written tale of the Pacific Northwest, rich with myth and character.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781642280944
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Izzard Ink
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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