An intriguing portrayal of an underdiscussed event in American history, let down by lackluster execution.
In Arab’s novel, set in the early 1900s, an Indian man takes a job in Washington state after his anticolonial writings make him a target of violence.
After teacher Vasant Dashpande published a “revolutionary newsletter that railed against the injustices of the British occupiers,” he was nearly beaten to death by soldiers in British India. He heads to Bellingham, Washington, to escape the authorities and earn money working in a lumber mill. Upon arrival, he and his younger sister, Vinita (who joined him in order to escape their stifling village), along with other Indian workers, are met with suspicion due to racist stereotypes and long-simmering local political tensions. Henry Terwilliger, the managing editor of a failing local newspaper, conjures the idea of a “Hindoo invasion” to bolster his readership, deriding “the Hindoo of the subtropical Indian jungles, a most despicable creature indeed.” These reports and the mill’s dismal, unequal working conditions set the stage for violence: Patel, the siblings’ friend, loses his hand to a saw because of the actions of a white worker, and Vinita herself becomes the victim of an assault. The only bright spot in Vasant’s life is Li, a Chinese maidservant, whom he’s teaching to read English. The press continues to demonize South Asian laborers as the months pass, but it’s the anti-Asian Labor Day rally, headed by the Asiatic Exclusion League, that pushes the town over the tipping point. Riots, arson, kidnapping, and racist violence soon erupt. Arab’s historical novel about the 1907 Bellingham race riot effectively and starkly portrays what one character calls the “caste system based on race” in pre–World War I America, using straightforward prose and bare-bones worldbuilding. Overall, the story packs a significant emotional punch with its matter-of-fact depiction of brutal bigotry, poverty, and violence. That said, many of the characters feel underdeveloped, and there’s little detail to make any of the players stand out. Some of them veer close to caricature, such as Terwilliger, whose manner is that of a mustache-twirling silent-movie villain.
An intriguing portrayal of an underdiscussed event in American history, let down by lackluster execution.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2026
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 18, 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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