A unique story with a wealth of compelling characters.
A family’s livelihood is on the line in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jordan Pearce is a Louisiana oysterman. His father was an oysterman, and his father’s father was an oysterman. It’s in his blood. So when the oil from the BP spill starts threatening his oyster allotments, Jordan feels his entire world begin to crumble. First his friend and longtime deckhand Doug “Babies” Davies quits suddenly for a higher-paying job working to clean up the spill. After trying all his leads to find a replacement for Babies and quickly discovering that his friend is not the only one jumping ship to work for the oilmen, Jordan almost loses hope. Finally, at his widowed mother May’s urging, Jordan reluctantly convinces his semi-estranged bohemian brother, Benny, to come in from New Orleans to work with him on the boat. Jordan and Benny begin to build back their relationship while everything else around them falls apart. News starts spreading that the dispersant used to clean up the spill is harmful to their health; the oil continues to encroach on the oysters; and the personal lives of Jordan, Benny, and May all hang in the balance. Takacs packs a lot in, taking on politics, environmentalism, addiction, family dysfunction, and love. At times the pacing is awkward, and some parts feel too rushed and overabundant, particularly toward the end. That said, Takacs tells a story that feels fresh in its point of view, all the while lending her characters a humanity that paints them neither as heroes nor as villains, but as messy, complex, and wholly worthy of the reader’s time: “People could disbelieve anything, Benny thought, if it’s too painful. There are no limits. He swiveled to see who was clapping for his brother—people who seemed to think Jordan was being brave. This was fear masquerading as heroism, but it was the only form of heroism available at the moment.”
A unique story with a wealth of compelling characters.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781958506509
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Zibby Books
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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