An engaging orphanage tale with enough optimism to counterbalance the narrative’s distressing core.
A coming-of-age novel focuses on a girl born in 1954 who spends her childhood and teenage years in and out of a small-town orphanage.
Rileigh Ophelia Horton, the charming narrator of this disturbing tale, is 6 years old when her unwed mother, Ophelia, suffers from an economic and emotional downward spiral. Ophelia places her daughter in The Margaret Lloyd Stansel’s Children’s Asylum of Abbottville, Georgia. Rileigh soon discovers that most of the kids in the orphanage, who supposedly have no one to care for them, do in fact have one or two living parents or at least an extended family. Despite the condemnation of society and her family, Ophelia had tried to raise the little girl on her own for six years. Sadly, Ophelia’s dependency on alcohol and her proclivity for poor choices in male companions finally took their toll. It is a terrifying first night for Rileigh, who thought her mamma was just taking her on a road trip. But she quickly bonds with four other 6-year-olds— Kirbie Jo Givens, Marla Norris, Loretta Thomas, and Marydale Brown. The five kids form a tight friendship, a sisterhood that lasts well after they have all aged out of the system. The novel is a collection of poignant, sometimes heartbreaking episodes that recall the hopes, bitter disappointments, and triumphs of the next 12 years of Rileigh’s life. Her mother’s visits are painfully rare. Several times, Ophelia brings her back home—until things fall apart again and Rileigh must return to the institution that she calls her “other home.” It is a sad story that contains a surprising buoyancy in spirit. These girls remain resilient in the face of mistreatment, even abuse. Eadie peppers her prose with the vernacular of the time and place, and Rileigh is always ready with a sarcastic, amusing description. Referring to the children in her elementary school who did not come from the orphanage, she says: “We had no more chance to be their friends than a cat in hell with gasoline drawers on.” But the author’s overuse of Rileigh’s standard transitional term anywho becomes irritating.
An engaging orphanage tale with enough optimism to counterbalance the narrative’s distressing core.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2022
ISBN: 979-8410158657
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
