An engaging tale offers a bit of farce, a touch of love, and quixotic characters.
The brutality of war meets the theater of the absurd in this historical novel set in Texas during its rebellion against Mexico.
In 1835, Texas, still a part of Mexico, is a place where Americans go for a fresh start and European immigrants arrive, hoping to make their fortunes from promotional offerings of vast tracts of land. The two central protagonists, “Señorita” Charlotte Vernon, originally from Surrey, England, and Harry Birchfield, a cobbler from the Whitechapel section of London, alternate narration, she aligned with the Mexicans and he with the Texans. And occasionally, even Davy Crockett gets to helm a few lively and sardonic chapters from the Alamo. Charlotte is a 30-something single artist, rescued from a New Orleans jail by Captain of Artillery Andreas Gerber, a Swiss mercenary hired by the Mexican army. Andreas brings Charlotte to Texas with him, where she is conscripted to paint battle scenes portraying the Mexicans in all their military glory. Meanwhile, Harry just wants to claim his acres of land and establish a cotton plantation that will bring him a life of leisure. He did not anticipate war with Mexico would be part of the bargain. But he takes charge of a decrepit cannon, originally given to the citizens of Gonzales by the Mexican government for defense against Comanche raiders. Now the Mexicans want it back; the ragtag volunteer Texas army wishes to keep it for the revolution; and Harry winds up a recruit. In this offbeat and melancholy tale, Giesser has a fine ear for language, and his characters speak in the jargon and cadence suiting their origins and stations. Readers get to know them primarily through dialogue filled with quips and musings. But the audience will have to pay close attention to follow the timeline. The novel opens in June 1836, just months before the book ends. Then it jumps back to 1835, filling in bits and pieces gradually, always holding back enough to keep things intriguing, albeit sometimes confusing. Although there is plenty of history and a smattering of politics to be found here, this is essentially an engrossing, character-driven tragedy.
An engaging tale offers a bit of farce, a touch of love, and quixotic characters.Pub Date: May 7, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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