Realistic, sharply descriptive, and movingly observant writing.
An American soldier returning from Vietnam struggles with flashbacks and the demands of reintegrating into civilian life in this novel by Hartney.
On a flight out of Vietnam in March 1970, Reid Holcombe finds himself surrounded by fellow U.S. Marines celebrating the ends of their final tours of duty. Reid just wants to forget what he’s seen and done in combat and return to his family’s South Carolina tobacco farm. Things have changed back home: His father has died; his sister, Angela, is running the farm; and his wife, Ellie, had an affair with local consultant Diana Welsch. Reid, while deployed, had an affair with a Vietnamese medic. Instead of trying to reconnect with his spouse, he chooses to live on the struggling farm with his sibling while wrestling with his inner demons. The novel also tells the story of Joe Terrell, a Black soldier who returned to rural South Carolina, where he faces constant racism. When Reid asks Joe and his father to work on the farm, their relationship highlights their differences as well as their shared struggles. Hartney’s prose is thoughtfully descriptive, cleverly contrasting rural stillness with soldiers’ psychological turmoil: “A thrush hopped from branch to branch before flitting away. The farm was peaceful, a lean-to shelter in an emotional rainsquall.” The author effectively captures the anger of men who return from war only to be treated as second-class citizens. Joe’s words are particularly biting: “I’m not wanting to be fighting again, but I can’t live less than a man….South ain’t changed. She’ still a whore.” Hartney skillfully exposes the tensions that exist between those transformed by violence, as when Ellie says of her husband: “I’m sure I still have feelings for him. Love, I think. I’m also sure I can’t live with him. We’re both too changed, too damaged.” Certain passages are slightly repetitive, particularly with respect to unpleasant odors. However, this doesn’t detract from this ambitious novel, which addresses issues of PTSD and racial injustice with believable characterization.
Realistic, sharply descriptive, and movingly observant writing.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1509234622
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
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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