Atmospheric, historically interesting escapism.
In a spy thriller set in Chicago during the Red Scare of the early 1950s, Fields combines a paean to feminist empowerment with old-fashioned romance, both centered on a female scientist.
During World War II, Rosalind Porter, now 30, was the only woman—and Enrico Fermi's favorite—among 50 people working on what she calls "the project." But the dropping of the A-bomb and its human cost devastated her. Then her lover, Thomas Weaver, a British scientist with the project, broke her heart, not only dumping her for another woman but, Roz suspects, also writing the report that ruined her career. Four years later, she yearns to return to science but has been reduced to selling jewelry at Marshall Field’s. Then Weaver re-appears, begging for a second chance, though at first he resists explaining why he left or why he’s returned. Roz is struggling to resist her strong feelings for Weaver when she’s approached by FBI agent Charlie Szydlo, who asks her to keep seeing Weaver and pass on what she learns. Charlie suspects Weaver is giving scientific secrets to the Soviet Union. Compelled by a mix of patriotism and desire, Roz reluctantly agrees to see Weaver. After they have passionate sex, he acknowledges that there are secrets he'll eventually need to share. Rosalyn feels torn. She loves him deeply but isn't sure she trusts him. Nevertheless, she agrees to hide his safe deposit box key without telling Charlie, for whom she is also developing feelings. After all, not only is he handsome, despite a ruined hand—the result of his stay in a brutal Japanese POW camp—but he's also reliable in ways Weaver is not. Both men adore Roz for her Hedy Lamarr beauty and brains (which the real Lamarr also had), but neither is anxious to share the secret demons tormenting him. After creating intriguing, complex characters—particularly enigmatic Weaver—Fields rushes the obvious espionage plot toward both a professional and romantic ending for Roz that is every woman’s wish fulfillment.
Atmospheric, historically interesting escapism.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08533-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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
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
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