An engrossing novel that ambitiously tackles big moral and philosophical issues.
Two brothers—one a criminal and the other a gentleman—find their sibling rivalry taking on dangerous dimensions in Springer’s historical novel.
Both Cyrus Caine and his younger brother Morgan grow up around horses; their father, Cyrus Sr., is an experienced horse trainer. In 1933, after a heated argument (and a “lifetime of hate”), 13-year-old Cyrus kills his father and sets alight the stable that becomes his grave. Cyrus and Morgan, who’s 10, flee the Kentucky stables in which they worked, hoping to reach Chicago, but the truck they steal from their father runs out of gas. George “Doc” Reese, the owner of Harmony Farm & Stables, takes the brothers in, and they eventually become both his wards and employees. Cyrus is a “magician” with horses, but he’s also a cruel, nihilistic boy who eventually goes to prison for raping a 15-year-old girl. Morgan, on the other hand, enlists in the military after Pearl Harbor is attacked and returns home a war hero. In this psychologically searching novel, the two brothers follow parallel but starkly different paths—both become successful entrepreneurs breeding and racing horses, but Cyrus is a disreputable gangster while Morgan is a beloved pillar of the community. Cyrus grows especially resentful when Morgan marries Kat, George Reese’s granddaughter, and the two become an admired “Golden Couple.” The author’s development of the contrasting brothers (whose acrimony is obviously inspired by the biblical tale of Cain and Abel) is artistically subtle: Morgan is sired by a different father, and one can help but wonder if this is the source of his moral instincts. The story covers a great expanse of time but moves at a gripping pace; the plot finally crescendos in grim acts of violence that feel neither cheap nor gratuitous. This is a work of impressive narrative nuance and restraint.
An engrossing novel that ambitiously tackles big moral and philosophical issues.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781662897023
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2025
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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