A roving, authentic bildungsroman with a unique lead.
Ehrlich’s novel traces a teenage girl’s travels Westward during the Civil War.
Seven months after Abraham Lincoln’s death, 16-year-old Tennessean Ellis Cady finds herself at her aunt and uncle’s Missouri ranch trying to find her father. After her beloved twin brother, Earl, was killed in the war, and her mother, family, and friends can’t be found, Ellis is adrift. Although appreciative of the ranch she can call home, Ellis flounders in grief and longs to ride her horse, Ace, on the Western trails instead of working at the ranch. Continuing her search for her father, Ellis, who’s an author, travels with Ace to St. Louis to meet with Lucas Bilford, her great friend, mentor, and editor. In St. Louis, the teen, who has passed as a boy to ride and fight in the war, meets Jimmie and Joe, trick riders of Levi Jack’s Wild West Show, and she considers joining them as a trick rider. A shady businessman hires them to deliver post and packages following the Pony Express’s closure, and they all take on the lucrative, possibly dangerous work. While working delivering packages, Ellis longs to travel Westward to honor her late twin, who’d always wanted to explore new Western territories on horseback. Ehrlich’s novel movingly depicts a family and country devasted by war as well as the difficulties of building a country in a forbidding environment (“The railroads’ll be built, it’ll get easier to get there, but the land—the land will retaliate. You mark my words”). The sensory details, including fireside meals on the trails, add color to the storytelling, and the author succeeds in integrating issues of identity—especially gender and sexuality—into a work that’s timeless. Most of all, this tale provides a nuanced depiction of a unique protagonist’s growth from girlhood to adulthood.
A roving, authentic bildungsroman with a unique lead.Pub Date: June 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798985997422
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Bay Feather Books
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2024
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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