A very satisfying novel with two intriguing leads who strive to live ethically.
A tragic hit-and-run death brings together a woman with a failed marriage and a cop with troubles of his own.
Charlotte Oakes is walking in her Chicago neighborhood when a little girl runs into the street and is struck and killed by a car that looks awfully like her own, a car that doesn’t stop. Did her daughter, Libby, borrow her car? Libby, who struggles with OCD and addiction issues, has always been a cross to bear. And Charlotte and her husband, Daniel, are in a marriage that died long ago. Another witness is Ed Kelly, a Chicago cop. He was recently wounded—and his partner killed—in a showdown with a drug dealer. And now it looks as though it was a bullet from his own gun that killed Tommy, so Ed is on paid leave, which he uses to stake out the intersection and try to find the mystery car. On separate missions—Charlotte, bereft over the little girl and hoping that the car was not hers, and Ed, determined to break this case—both visit the site almost daily and eventually become friends. Meanwhile, Charlotte has had an affair and is pregnant. And Ed’s daughter and her husband are so desperate for a child that she persuades her mother to be a surrogate. So, we have two good people facing a ton of challenges. Charlotte finally tells Daniel, who, surprisingly, offers to accept the child and save the marriage, but will Charlotte stay? This story is about a search for the rogue driver and Charlotte and Ed, who slowly work through a lot of issues, trying to accommodate what life—and new life—has thrown at them. Uhlmann is an experienced writer whose characters ring true: the resourceful Charlotte who slowly finds the courage to rethink her life and Ed, a good guy who is not all that sensitive or intuitive, but kind beyond measure. The title is apt in many ways: We are talking about more than cross streets.
A very satisfying novel with two intriguing leads who strive to live ethically.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781647428891
Page Count: 296
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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