A fresh, heartfelt take on the American dream and the golden era of the national pastime.
The Burcats’ historical novel follows the exploits of a rabid Phillies fan and aspiring novelist.
In the rough-and-tumble Philadelphia of the mid-1930s, young Benjamin Green is a normal kid whose daydreams of big-league baseball play out on the dusty sandlots of his South Philly neighborhood. At the novel’s opening, Ben is on the mound with his dad watching from home plate, and even though Ben gives up the game-winning hit, his father still surprises him with the best gift Ben could imagine: tickets to the Phillies double-header that day against the infamous Brooklyn Dodgers. Tragically, Ben’s father is killed in a car accident shortly thereafter. The story jumps ahead 15 years to 1950; readers find Ben out of the Navy and married to Debby, a sweet hometown girl pregnant with their first child. They live with Debby’s parents while she works a day job and Ben studies English literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Though Ben dreams of becoming a celebrated novelist—his first manuscript is woven throughout these pages—he is torn between following his dream and more practical concerns. His buddy from college and the Navy, Stan, comes from a fabulously wealthy family who owns an ad agency at which Stan plans to work and where he thinks he can get Ben a job, too. “Look man,” Stan tells Ben, “you need a paying job. Debby’s pregnant, remember? Do you want to be a part-time elevator operator for the rest of your life?” Though the offer is enticing, Ben would have to hide a fundamental part of himself: his Jewish identity. As Ben navigates these competing desires to build a life, his journey is effectively juxtaposed with the rise of the 1950 Phillies squad, the eponymously nicknamed “Whiz Kids.” Father-and-son writing team Joel and the late David Burcat have crafted a novel rich with Philadelphia history and a heavy dose of baseball. Fresh literary ground may not have been broken here, and readers not familiar with the game may not connect as strongly with this work, but baseball fans are sure to hang through to the final out.
A fresh, heartfelt take on the American dream and the golden era of the national pastime.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798888193297
Page Count: 281
Publisher: Sunbury Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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