A well-researched historical novel with a very human core.
A family fights for religious freedom and a better life in Richards’ saga of 16th-century Amsterdam.
It’s 1572 and the Netherlands are under the control of Catholic King Philip II of Spain, who is out to bring the Dutch to heel and beat back what he sees as Calvinist heresy that has taken root. The story proper opens dramatically with Maarten van der Voort and the Sea Beggars, essentially privateers, capturing a Spanish warship, which sets the tone for the next several years of back-and-forth fighting. Philip sets up a version of the Inquisition in Amsterdam, but eventually the Calvinists prevail and the Catholics who don’t flee the city accept their second-class status. When Philip deploys his forces elsewhere in Europe in 1590, Maarten and the Sea Beggars can tentatively get on with their lives, which revolve around sea trading, from Gdansk in the north to Amsterdam—and points farther south that are sufficiently clear of the Spanish. Through hard work they expand their fleet and prosper, sailing as far as Livorno, Italy, and becoming very shrewd bargainers along the way. They establish a major mercantile power—the Dutch East India Company—on the world stage in 1602. The principal characters, each drawn with distinct personalities, include Maarten, the adopted son of saintly old Papa Hasbrouk, Maarten’s wife Betje, and their two sons, Nicolaas and Dirck (Dirck, defending his meager quarters, comically protests, “It's small, but not nearly as cramped as my cabin at sea, or as dank. It even has a window!”). The author follows their progress over the next couple of decades, marrying, having babies, and sometimes meeting untimely ends. Considering the many plot threads that could easily have become tangled, such as those following Dirck’s social cluelessness, Nicolaas’ womanizing, and Betje's endless fretting, Richards is to be congratulated for keeping each strand in place, all requiring just the right amount of our attention. Richards is a competent and earnest writer, not given to lyricism. But her love for the time and place is palpable, and this well-told tale leaves the reader eager for further chapters.
A well-researched historical novel with a very human core.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2023
ISBN: 9780984541089
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Aries Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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