A beautifully written saga of love, loss, and belonging that turns trauma and grief into hard-won wisdom.
An orphaned girl finds a home in the Ozarks, then loses it to war and an epidemic in Cathey’s heart-wrenching coming-of-age novel.
Cora Lee McMillan is a 9-year-old orphan who comes to live with her grandmother Mae in a one-room cabin in Bennett’s Ridge, Missouri, in 1912. She takes to the poor but close-knit Ozarks community and makes many friends, including blithe, talkative, boy-crazy Alice Campbell; Ruby Douglas, the town rebel; and Ruby’s brother, Walter, a good-hearted lad eager to see the world who edges toward a romance with Cora Lee in adolescence. The fly in the ointment is Lucas McDaniel, a handsome, cruel boy whose bullying has a sinister sexual tinge. Cora Lee’s days are full of chores, prayer meetings, dances, and Mae’s reminiscences about the old days, but her world is disrupted in 1917 by America’s entry into World War I. Walter joins the army after Cora Lee promises to wait for him. Cora Lee follows Ruby to Little Rock, where they work as dance-hall girls selling dances, drinks, and conversation to lonely men—and sometimes more. (“Mavis makes plenty ‘cause she’s easy,” observes Ruby. “They give her extra tickets to let ‘em dance real close, if ya know what I mean.”) Country girl Cora Lee struggles to avoid being corrupted by the seamy, hard-edged city, but when Lucas tells her that Walter has taken up with another woman, she feels she has lost her past and maybe her soul. Cathey’s yarn steeps readers in a richly textured panorama of Ozarks culture and folkways. The author explores this world with a homespun lyricism, but also gives her characters a grit that she brings out in evocative, sinewy prose: “Ya just square yer shoulders, look ‘em right in the eye, and then spit,” Ruby explains on the subject of bullies. “Once ya see ya can take a punch or two and live, you’ll find out it ain’t so bad to be beat on.”
A beautifully written saga of love, loss, and belonging that turns trauma and grief into hard-won wisdom.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2025
ISBN: 9798999844439
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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