A disturbing tale of love, ambition, despair, and redemption.
Rosenberg’s historical novel fictionalizes the struggles of the real-life Silver Dollar Tabor, the troubled daughter of Colorado “Silver King” Horace Tabor and his wife, Baby Doe.
The Tabor family, who once dominated the Colorado silver market while garnering riches, fame, and political power, has suffered drastic reversals of fortune. First, there was the scandal of United States senator Horace Tabor leaving his first wife to marry the controversial Baby Doe. Then came the silver crash, and Horace, who had all of his money invested in their Matchless Mine, lost everything. They moved from the splendor of Denver to the isolation of a shack next to the mine in Leadville. Horace died when his daughter Silver Dollar was still a child; a month later, her older sister Lily, whom she adored, left home. Silver was devasted—enter her imaginary playmate, Echo LaVode. When Silver finally leaves home, determined to become a movie star, Echo travels with her, packed comfortably in the further recesses of her mind. Silver, a talented singer and dancer, becomes a big player in movies. Down on her luck, she attempts the Slide for Life Challenge, a daring high-wire stunt spanning Denver’s Lake Rhoda. Attached to the wire only by a metal mouthpiece, she steps off the platform and begins sailing through the air…until she hits a snag in the wire. This darkly complex, twisty novel toggles between narratives occurring during two different time periods: Silver Dollar’s struggles from 1915 through 1925, and the ordeals of Baby Doe, still laboring at the Matchless Mine in 1932. Setting her tale against the evocative backdrop of Mob-controlled 1920s Chicago speakeasies, Rosenberg vividly brings to life the gradual, angry, and violent emergence of Echo as Silver’s increasingly dominant alter ego, a persona who exacts vengeance and precipitates mayhem while Silver “sleeps.” The author’s prose is riveting and meticulously detailed in scenes like Silver’s aerial stunt; she also composes lyrically magical passages, as when Silver becomes a tiger tamer (“The tigers emerged from the shadows, their massive forms filling the cage, magnificent stripes swirling like molten lava in the dappled sunlight”) and develops a mesmerizing relationship with the powerful wild cats.
A disturbing tale of love, ambition, despair, and redemption.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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