A compelling, disturbing, and loving tribute to a departed friend.
In Reiton’s memoir/novel hybrid, a waitress in Wisconsin befriends an elderly German WWII veteran who shares his memories of growing up under Hitler.
The unique friendship between the author and Heinz Jedermann began when Reiton was waitressing in a Wisconsin restaurant and Jedermann was sitting at the bar. He was approaching his 90th birthday when the two struck up a conversation. Jedermann had outlived family and friends and was living alone in his house by the lake. He was raised in Nazi Germany, where he witnessed violence against his Jewish friend and served in the army despite his hatred for Hitler and his goons. Reiton and Jedermann often spoke of them joining forces to write his memoir (they never quite got around to it, as “a bottle of Mosel wine generally stood in [their] way”); after he died, the author took up the task, structuring the work as a novel in honor of her dear friend and their special bond. Born in the spring of 1922, Heinz grows up watching the emerging influence of Hitler. Although he and his parents are adamantly anti-Nazi, Heinz, under threatening pressure from his schoolmates, eventually joins the Hitler Youth movement, mainly to protect his family from retaliation if he were to refuse. He watches in horror as the business of his best friend’s family is destroyed during Kristallnacht. In riveting, graphic detail, Reiton describes Heinz’s life as an ordinary German foot soldier sent to the Russian front, hoping to survive the relentless slaughter and the frigid Russian winters, followed by his years in a brutal Russian POW camp. Composed from the many notes Reiton took during her time with Jedermann, combined with careful research of historical records, the narrative is an intriguing tale, proficiently written with great tenderness for a man caught in a web of loyalty to his country, abhorrence for its actions, and fear of the consequences of noncompliance. It’s also a cautionary tale of what happens when good people fear standing up to evil.
A compelling, disturbing, and loving tribute to a departed friend.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780998857565
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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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