A warm and lovingly written tribute to a special mom.
Wells’ fictionalized biography of his mother stretches from her life in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to late-century Southern California.
The author’s mother, Barbara Jean Owen, was born in the depths of the Depression and the Dust Bowl era to Erma Owen, a stubborn and resourceful woman. As the story goes, Erma divorces Barbara’s biological father and takes up with a better man, Clay Stanley. At this point Oklahoma has nothing to offer them, but California is begging for farm workers. Clay finds work, but by the time Erma arrives, Clay has been killed in a freak accident. She marries another decent man, Vince Rose, who meets a tragic end in World War II. Barbara, now orphaned, experiences the worst (and then the best) foster homes; by the mid-1970s, readers are left with Barbara and Rod Wells, along with three kids, one of whom is the author. Wells is an accomplished writer. The best parts of the book are the trek he describes from Oklahoma to the promised land of Southern California with Erma and Barbara Jean, just a toddler riding the rails. And then there’s Vince, surviving North Africa, Italy, and Omaha Beach (all described in grisly, meticulous detail), only to die weeks before the war’s end and shatter the little family. Any book that treats the Okie experience does so in the shadow of the master, John Steinbeck, which is not a knock on Wells. In fact, he takes a page from the master in that he begins many chapters with moving set pieces (think of Steinbeck’s famous tortoise crossing Route 66). Chapter 5 begins, “US Route 66 was the ant trail to the picnic blanket,” and then he works that metaphor wonderfully. Readers will look forward to these moving sections, many of which read like prose poetry. And when things look bleak, a good person always shows up to bolster one’s faith, like Fred Barley, the compassionate train boss who buys Erma and Barbara breakfast and a bus ticket.
A warm and lovingly written tribute to a special mom.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798994773017
Page Count: 465
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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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