A sensitively conceived, well-written book that will dazzle lovers of historical family intrigue.
A boy’s summer on an Illinois farm gives him memories to last a lifetime in Blois’ historical novel.
It’s 1917, and Will Parlor, from Pittsburgh, is sent with his parents’ blessing to spend a summer working on the Helgevelds’ large and prosperous farm in central Illinois. The Helgevelds are salt of the earth; they hire a bunch of boys every summer to earn money and hopefully learn the virtues of hard work. Others are two Black boys, Isaiah and Moses Butler from Alabama, and Roy March, the requisite rotten apple. Roy is lazy, sneaky, and hate-filled. The Butler boys are a real boon because their granddad has taught them how to fix practically anything. Alwin, the oldest Helgeveld son, is essentially the foreman, no-nonsense but fair; Vlinder is his beautiful and wise younger sister, and eventually she and Will fall in love. There is happiness and also tragedy along the way. At summer’s end, Will vows to Vlinder to come back next year. But then life, as they say, happens—like the Spanish flu and the death of Will’s brother and father, so Will has to be the man in the family and take over the family’s feed and supply stores. The years roll by and successes and failures come and go. But always in Will’s heart there are “bits of emptiness that…resurface unannounced.” Then one day in 1949, on a busy street in Chicago, Will sees a young woman—someone who conjures up old memories—from across the street who will change his life forever. This is a compulsively readable feel-good novel and an impressively written debut (and Blois hints at more to come). Is there too much wish fulfillment here? Maybe. Will Vlinder and Will live happily ever after? Whatever the case, the reader will be riveted throughout.
A sensitively conceived, well-written book that will dazzle lovers of historical family intrigue.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798999265302
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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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