An impassioned story of anti-fracking activism.
An environmentally minded professor revisits her activist past in Lesert’s novel.
When university professor Rebecca Walton happens to recognize former student Sonya’s image as it flashes across the screen during a nighttime news report, she recalls the events of the previous two years when she, Sonya, and three other students took part in an anti-fracking environmental movement. The four students were among the few who signed up for her new Eco-Literature class in 2012; the newly designed course was shaped by their interests, which eventually led them to take their research into the field and engage in activism. Walton was formerly known as activist “Elizabeth Stone, a rescue climber and writer inside of actions.” This secret was kept from her students for their protection, but when Walton returns to her old activist ways due to her concern for Sonya, the truth becomes known to them when another secret rooted in Rebecca’s past is eventually uncovered. As the narrative alternates between the present day and various periods in the past, the order in which some information is presented or omitted (such as who the “Four Branches” were, why Walton went by “Elizabeth Stone,” and the depth of her relationship with David, a fellow activist) will disorient readers. The blow-by-blow account of the group’s activism could use some tailoring to focus on key moments that would move the story in a dynamic way. For those unfamiliar with fracking, the author doesn’t provide enough background information to bring them up to speed, instead jumping right into using insider terminology in passages describing the process and many more detailing the harm it causes. But the writing shines when Lesert writes about the environment using poetic imagery that’s reverential of the land, “inextricably intertwined with the wildlife and the people who roamed it.”
An impassioned story of anti-fracking activism.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781647426460
Page Count: 288
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 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
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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