An immersive, if downbeat, historical novel that captures both the wonder and wretchedness of the American West of the early...
In Quaver’s novel, an orphaned musical prodigy is consigned to a children’s asylum before escaping and living as a hobo.
Six-year-old Elly Robin doesn’t like to speak and shies away from direct eye contact—traits that cause many people in the American West to mark her as “touched.” She’s also an incredibly talented musician, and plays piano in her parents’ vaudeville act, wowing audiences to the extent that she has become the troupe’s star attraction. She and her parents travel by train with the troupe from Omaha to Denver, through Salt Lake City, Boise, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. Elly loves her music and is doted on by many members of the troupe. It turns out, however, that a killer is living among them—strangling teenage girls the last night in each city, before the act moves on. Elly sets out to discover who the culprit is, and uncovers their identity while in San Francisco, just as the earthquake of 1906 devastates the city. In the confusion, she’s taken not only for an orphan, but also for an “imbecile,” and sent to the Marysville Benevolent Christian Asylum for Unfortunate Girls, a brutal, for-profit institution where many inmates are taken as subjects for experimental treatments, such as electroconvulsive therapy. Traumatized and widely thought to be unable to talk, Elly nevertheless makes friends with 12-year-olds Hattie Limburg and Martha “Drooly” Dooley. For two years, her life is miserable, though bearable. Then tragedy strikes, and Elly escapes from the asylum and disguises herself as a boy, begging door to door with new acquaintances—both friendly and mean.
Quaver writes primarily from Elly’s third-person perspective, displaying an accomplished prose style that serves admirably both to relate the story and to evoke the historical setting. The racial and socioeconomic prejudices of this era are clear, but presented in such a way that Elly is mostly shielded from them. Thus, she’s given free rein of the train upon which the troupe travels, and happily visits her friends Smiley Hobson and Ah Lin in the “Colored Car.” It’s only during a street altercation, away from the protection of the troupe, that she hears Smiley referred to by a slur. Quaver respectfully approximates the speech patterns of uneducated and ESL characters, but does so in a manner that never seems cartoonish. Characterization is a strength of the book and is effectively realized not just in the person of Elly, but also throughout the troupe, the asylum, and the unhoused community she encounters. The story, which initially presents itself as a cozy mystery, takes a sudden and shocking turn when the earthquake hits. From this point on, Elly truly does experience an ordeal, and readers will be invested in her plight. However, they may lament the lack of a cathartic upswing—at least in this first novel in a nine-volume saga. A dozen full-page line drawings by the author help break up the narrative and set scenes.
An immersive, if downbeat, historical novel that captures both the wonder and wretchedness of the American West of the early 1900s.Pub Date: July 6, 2020
ISBN: 9798638792855
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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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