A deftly told story of the difficulties that come from living close to the wild.
Heacox’s novel follows three overlapping lives in a remote Alaskan town.
Salt d’Alene is a devout Christian and former trapper who lives with his family in the coastal Alaskan village of Strawberry Flats. He’s trying to provide for his wife, Hannah, and four sons—including Solomon, who has muscular dystrophy—but money’s tight even after working 60 hours a week at a mechanic shop. Salt gets a covert offer that could pay for his son’s medical treatment and requires him to keep an eye on the pack of wolves that’s recently taken up residence near town. The wolves include Silver, a young male with exceptional hunting abilities, even if the rest of the pack fails to appreciate them—a mistake, given how scarce food has become. Eleven-year-old Kes Nash has just moved to her uncle’s compound outside of Strawberry Flats. Her father hasn’t spoken since his Humvee was blown up in Afghanistan—an incident that cost him his legs—and the family hopes time in remote Alaska will help him recover. The community of veterans living there isn’t thrilled when they learn that a road and bridge are planned that will connect Strawberry Flats with the rest of the world—a scheme that will also affect the fate of Silver’s pack of wolves. The novel’s painterly prose evokes Alaska as a place of great beauty and scarcity, where animals of all sorts compete for space and food: “Silver awakens, startled by the moonlight and a deep-throated growling coming from the direction of the dead whale. On his feet in an instant, he travels fast through the shadowed forest….He finds the big male coastal brown bear atop one end of the whale, near the head.” Salt is an especially memorable character of fascinating contradictions. The book mostly manages to overcome the sentimentality of its premise (sympathetic wolf point of view, wounded war veteran) to present a well-plotted tale of frontier utopianism that should appeal to nature lovers.
A deftly told story of the difficulties that come from living close to the wild.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781513139111
Page Count: 304
Publisher: West Margin Press
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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