A fresh, interesting tour through 18th- and 21st-century Europe and elsewhere.
A woman retraces the original route of an ancestor by sailing the Rhine River while carrying the ashes of her dead brother, who loved travel and history.
As a child, Natalie’s sure her big brother, Billy, will soar when he jumps off a corn crib, wearing improvised wings of feed sacks and baling wire. Instead, he breaks an arm. Billy’s later life also sputters; he faces health challenges and personal tragedy. Knowing he would have loved it, Natalie brings Billy’s remains when she and her husband, Hank, fly to Amsterdam and sail the Rhine. Johannes Welde, Natalie and Billy’s ancestor, also made this journey, traveling by sea from Eppingen, Bavaria, and settling in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. While Natalie and Hank enjoy their cruise, Johannes’ voyage differs. A young man in 1750, Johannes is amazed to learn about the wonders of America (skunks, bears, Indigenous peoples) recounted by a recruiter visiting his village. To acquire land in America, Johannes is told, he only needs a “Tomahawk Title,” cutting his initials into a tree wherever he wants to live. Johannes sails in the hold of the Neptune, a ship with “swollen, cracked, and uneven” flooring. Hold passengers get soaked and many contract fatal diseases. Though the two narratives, past and present, initially seem far removed from each other, readers slowly discover surprising links. Bourke’s writing is conversational, but there’s a depth to the characters. For instance, Francine, Billy’s wife, appears uncaring, but we learn she’s mourning the loss of a child. Billy cares deeply for his family, but, craving adventure, long-haul trucking keeps him far from home. Bourke’s book shines as a travelogue. In Amsterdam, she writes of multistory bicycle parking lots, and in the red-light district, girls “reminiscent of wind-up dolls” stand in windows. Natalie vividly recalls truck-stop cafes on a trip from Pennsylvania to Tennessee. The author nimbly switches time periods, contrasting Natalie and Hank’s contemporary, information-laden life with mid-1700s, when much of the world was new and unknown.
A fresh, interesting tour through 18th- and 21st-century Europe and elsewhere.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781592116751
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Histria Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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