An intense, addictive drama with a hint of light at the end of the tunnel.
With the American Civil War still raging, a South Carolina mother heads to the front line in Tennessee to bring home her severely injured son in Joslin’s historical novel.
It is late October, 1863, when Susannah Shelburne receives the telegram she has been dreading: Her son Francis, a Confederate soldier, has been wounded in battle. Jacob, her husband, is seriously ill, leaving her the only one who can travel to Tennessee to tend to Francis’ injuries and bring him back to Ardwyn, the family home. Susannah, the daughter of an abolitionist preacher, was only 15 years old when she married Jacob, who was 25 years her senior. He is also an abolitionist, and although he currently retains two Black servants (the elderly manservant Hawk and Letty, a personal maid to Susannah), Jacob pays them wages and has given them certificates of freedom, an arrangement necessarily kept secret from the neighbors. To Susannah and Jacob’s great dismay, Francis enlisted in the Confederate army the day he turned 18; he and his mother parted acrimoniously. Now, she heads out on the arduous journey to Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, to the small farmhouse that serves as a makeshift field headquarters where Francis is located. They will spend the next five months there as she tends to his wounds, hoping to spare him the amputation of his leg. During these most difficult months of her life, she must also endure her son’s vitriol and vicious mockery. Nell’s novel is compellingly narrated by Susannah and set against the vivid backdrop of the physical, social, emotional, and familial devastations of the war. Composed in carefully textured prose filled with detailed, period-appropriate cultural minutia (“In his haversack, I found a scant handful of dried beans, another of corn kernels, and a few acorns—his sustenance for fighting all day on the side of a mountain”), the narrative reflects upon Susannah’s earlier heartbreaks even as she struggles through the current torrent of verbal abuse and physical assaults. Letty is a standout secondary character—when she eventually joins Susannah and Francis in the farmhouse, she offers support, love, hope, and critical homely wisdom in a voice seasoned by hardships.
An intense, addictive drama with a hint of light at the end of the tunnel.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781646036127
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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