An informative tale about a once-famous musician and activist that will appeal to history buffs.
A fictional retelling of the life of famous jazz musician Hazel Scott, tracing the trajectory of her career, family life, and political activism.
The novel opens in 1943, as Hazel Scott performs at Café Society, a famous New York City night club where seating was integrated and customers of all races were treated equally. Sitting in the crowd is Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a well-known pastor and up-and-coming politician. He can’t take his eyes off Hazel, and it’s obvious he’s smitten. The only problem is he’s married to someone else. As Adam begins to pursue Hazel, she wonders if she can stomach being the other woman and whether a more serious relationship might derail her career. The book follows Hazel and Adam as their relationship deepens, chronicling Hazel’s meteoric rise as well as Adam’s ascent to political power. Not all members of Adam’s church community are as taken with Hazel as he is, concerned about the perceived morals of a nightclub performer. Hazel, meanwhile, worries that getting too close to Adam will jeopardize her hard-earned momentum. As an activist for racial equality who refuses to play at segregated venues, Hazel knows her career is about far more than earning a living. The question, however, is whether turmoil in her personal life will undermine everything she’s worked for. With appearances from cultural figures including Billie Holiday and Langston Hughes, the book is full of historical detail from the era. Unfortunately, at times it feels more like a history lesson than a gripping story. The conflicts experienced by the main characters don’t surface until late in the novel, leaving the early portions feeling slow and diffuse. Even so, the novel offers a vivid portrait of a significant figure in American history while exploring deeper personal issues like infidelity, ambition, and self-doubt.
An informative tale about a once-famous musician and activist that will appeal to history buffs.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780063421189
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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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