An addictive, well-composed, and historically engaging read.
In Bryant’s historical novel, as World War II rages, a box of 25-year-old letters turns the thoughts of a twice-widowed Titanicsurvivor back to World War I.
Florence Cumings Swain is at the family summer retreat in York Harbor, Maine. Now in her late 60s, she is ready to part with the large house that holds so many memories. With her is her youngest and only remaining son, Thayer (aka Tax), who hands her a box of old letters written by her now-deceased sons Jack and Wells during the first World War. There is also a diary kept by Wells during his time on the front lines. Florence is not eager to relive the painful history of her traumatic losses—first, her husband, Bradley Cumings, went down with the Titanicas a terrified Florence watched from a lifeboat; next, Wells perished on the battlefield of Belleau Wood; finally, Jack died from a stroke when he was in his late 30s. Expecting to be alone for the week after Thayer’s departure, fortified with a glass of white wine, she reluctantly begins to read the letters. The ghostly presence of Bradley sits next to her whispering as she reads and reminisces (“I am here”). The next day, Jack’s widow and Florence’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Eva, arrive from New York, asking if Eva may spend the summer with her grandmother; Florence and Eva begin poring through the letters together. Bryant’s melancholy drama about profound loss and renewed forward-facing fortitude is a fictional portrait of the real Florence Cumings Swain. Florence narrates the story emotionally as she once again confronts each of the tragedies she has endured—Eva lightens the novel and reenergizes her grandmother with the buoyancy and hopefulness of youth. The letters and journal transport readers directly to the horrific battle in Belleau Wood, and the detailed and evocative prose, which carries a touch of mysticism, vividly captures the upper-class settings of both periods.
An addictive, well-composed, and historically engaging read.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9781685137069
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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