This family drama is steeped in suspense, but its likable cast of characters is its main draw.
A family deals with grief after losing one of its members, but questions arise: Who did it, and why?
The Mackie clan is no stranger to loss. After the accidental, tragic death of their young son Griff, Summer and Matt try to move on for the sake of their living children, preteen Willa and 7-year-old Gabe. The family plans a relaxing trip to Zoar Valley Gorge near their hometown of Buffalo, New York. But when Matt, Willa, and Summer fall from a cliff, resulting in Summer’s death, it only leads to another terrible round of grieving. Summer’s sister, Starla, rushes in to help the family. The sheriff’s office suspects foul play. Witnesses noted a stranger yelling at the family before the fall, and young Gabe remembers hearing a clicking noise and seeing a man run past him. Deputy Sheriff Conner Boyle makes it his mission to find out the truth. Summer’s first marriage and her work as a sexual-assault forensics examiner lead to a number of possible suspects, including pedophile Victor Kurtz, who’s been stalking Willa. Victor begins a game of cat and mouse with the police, while the Mackie family takes a much-needed journey to Texas, where Matt’s parents live. There, the Mackies attempt to start over—but Victor keeps outwitting the authorities. Over the course of this book, Neathery immerses the reader in her world with lush metaphors and vivid descriptions of both the New York and Texas settings. The author ably helps the reader navigate the complexity of his characters’ interactions; there are fraught relationships, relationships rekindled, and new relationships formed. She’s particularly deft at capturing the conflicting, layered emotions of grief and heartache while simultaneously weaving a fast-paced mystery into this narrative fabric. At times, the language feels a bit heavy-handed (“Just after midnight, when the air was thick and cloaked in a murky brume…”), but readers will always find themselves rooting for the Mackie family members as they seek happiness.
This family drama is steeped in suspense, but its likable cast of characters is its main draw.Pub Date: July 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73739-202-6
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Imagery Lit
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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