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
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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