A zesty and occasionally touching story of a woman confronting crude realities of a new life.
A woman struggles with challenges on the 19th-century American frontier in Melotte’s debut historical series starter.
Catherine Callaway is poised on the edge of losing both the hope and the naïveté that originally brought her to the wilds of 1879 frontier Idaho to set up a cafe with her husband, Patrick: “Drawn in by the attention, romance, and promise of adventures to come, she hadn't imagined how hot, dirty, dusty, and wild the West really was,” readers are told. “It had frightened her some but, as a new, good Christian wife, she felt bound to abide by her husband’s decisions and hoped everything would work out.” Living in the little town of Eagle Rock has been a disillusioning experience for her; the streets are sometimes full of violence, the sheriff seems useless to prevent it, and the demure cafe of her dreams has become a busy saloon. That saloon is also a disappointment to the town’s mayor—a wonderfully hissable bad guy named Luther Armstrong who wants business to go to the rival drinking establishment he’s bankrolling. His plan: If Patrick should have an “accident” and drown in the Snake River, his “arrogant, aloof” wife will certainly pack her bags. It turns out that tragedy has a markedly different effect on Catherine than he—or Catherine herself—could have predicted. Melotte kicks off this trilogy in zippy, energetic style, filling his story with genuine frontier lingo (helpfully footnoted) and keeping the language of most of his characters eye-openingly salty. The dramatic center of the story—Catherine finding the inner strength to take on a pile of troubles—is handled with an engaging sense of compassion. At one point, when a character assures her that she has more friends in town than she thinks, every reader will truly feel it, and they’ll very much want to stay with the series as it goes forward.
A zesty and occasionally touching story of a woman confronting crude realities of a new life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781039133518
Page Count: 327
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.
This engrossing historical novel focuses on the lives of three Black Americans in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1948, Ozzie Philips is a newly enlisted young soldier from Philadelphia who arrives at his station in occupied Germany just in time for the order by President Harry Truman desegregating the U.S. military. It’s inspiring news, but Ozzie will find it’s a rough transition. In 1950, Ethel Gathers is a journalist and the wife of a U.S. Army officer posted to Mannheim in occupied Germany. Unhappily childless, one day she sees a group of young biracial children tended by nuns and ends up volunteering at their orphanage. When Ethel discovers thousands of these children, born as the result of relationships between American soldiers and German women, she’s fired with purpose. In 1965 in Maryland, Sophia Clark is the ambitious teenage daughter of a hardworking farm family. When she’s unexpectedly selected for a scholarship to a fancy boarding school, she’s eager for the opportunity, if unprepared for what she’ll face as one of the first Black students to attend. The novel traces each character’s life in separate chapters, eventually revealing the connections among them. Their stories are firmly grounded in meticulous research, from the current events of each period down to details of clothing styles. Ozzie copes with the infuriating indignities imposed on “colored” soldiers despite their essential contributions, and Ethel and Sophia each learn to navigate arcane hierarchies—for Ethel, the scorekeeping of military wives and the barriers of bureaucracy, and for Sophia, the perils of boarding school. Their individual experiences are all part of the larger historical force of World War II and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. At some points the dialogue can be stilted in its efforts to convey history, but the characters and rich details are warmly engaging.
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781668069912
Page Count: 464
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
