A disturbing, absorbing, and valuable addition to the literature of cruelty inflicted upon Indigenous peoples.
Chilton’s historical novel imagines the harrowing tale of three Virginian Patawomeck women who survived the 1666 massacre of the men of their tribe and were sold into slavery.
The small Native American Patawomeck tribe make their home in northern Virginia, near the Chesapeake. In 1666, frustrated with the tribe’s refusal to sell their land or accept the Virginia Governor’s Council’s choice for a new chief, the council chooses to respond with violence. On one summer night of that year, the Virginia militia enter the Patawomeck territory carrying their “thunder sticks” and savagely shoot every adult male in the village. They seize babies and corral the women, who are placed on a ship and sold into slavery in Barbados. Among these women are Ah’SaWei (Golden Fawn), a young mother, and her close friend, NePa’WeXo (Shining Moon). Once in Barbados, Ah’SaWei, her mother, and her daughter are sold to the Mount Faith Manor Plantation, owned by master Russell White, a Quaker. They are luckier than Xo and her daughter, who are purchased by the vicious, sexually avaricious master James Lewis of the Sugar Grove Plantation. In alternating chapters, Ah’SaWei, whose name is changed to Rebecca, and Xo, renamed Leah, narrate their tales of struggle and survival—on the ship, on the plantations, and after their triumphant return to the colonies in 1669. Packed with Indigenous culture and customs and sprinkled with tribal terminology, the narrative is vivid, magnetic, and chilling. The author is herself a Patawomeck descendant, and she’s combined scant available written records with tribal oral history to inform her creation of two emotionally powerful, vibrant female protagonists. Mixed in with the tragedies that befall these women are humorous moments, such as their descriptions of the English men: “They rarely bathe, their breath and teeth repulsive. They are hairy and filthy; they cover themselves with woven layers, fetid with sweat and dirt.” Several sections move languidly, but plenty of action, tears, cheers, and historical detail work to keep the pages turning.
A disturbing, absorbing, and valuable addition to the literature of cruelty inflicted upon Indigenous peoples.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781960573957
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Sibylline Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
A classic Green portrait of young love…but here the fault is in our social media.
A relationship between young screen actors is magical, fraught, and relentlessly public in Green’s first novel for adults.
“Every movie romance needs an Obstacle, a reason the characters don’t naturally fall into each other.” In the off-screen romance between actors Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie, the obstacle is a moving target. Juniper notices early on that as flirty and forward as Kai is, he seems “closed off to a romantic connection”; that turns out to be the tip of a very problematic iceberg. The two meet in the lobby of a Pittsburgh hotel where they will be spending the evening with Matthew Malone, the megastar playing Andy Warhol in a movie they’re about to begin shooting, Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. Kai has been cast as Andy’s intern, Juniper as a journalist who gets in over her head. This is Juniper’s first adult role after a long run as a Nickelodeon child star, and newcomer Kai’s first role of any kind. Green evokes in compelling detail all the phases and aspects of the film project, from the table read to the screening of the rough cut, from the social media fanfare to the public premiere and the press junket, moving back and forth between Juniper’s and Kai’s first-person perspectives. In a meeting with one of the ubiquitous publicists, Kai learns that somehow “the high school stuff” he never talks about—despite their growing inseparability and seemingly profound connection, he hasn’t even brought himself to share it with Juniper—has surfaced. Details emerge slowly, then blow up in the media; the book’s third act focuses on the destructive potential of celebrity culture in a climate that makes Warhol’s milieu look innocent by comparison. After a long break from writing fiction—his last two books were Everything Is Tuberculosis (2025) and The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021)—Green fills this novel with carefully observed details of Hollywood culture and characters, including running jokes about vegan cuisine, media training, and the way Kai’s agent constantly and boorishly consults his young female assistant on points of political correctness. Can he talk about “hot girls”? Can he quote T.S. Eliot? OK to say “dog vomit”?
A classic Green portrait of young love…but here the fault is in our social media.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9780525426073
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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