A well-wrought origin to a historical family saga with forward-thinking heroes.
Lackey’s prequel tells the early story of the main characters of his 10-part historical series.
In 1825, Ben and Sonja Pulaski have just arrived in the port town of Havre de Grace, Maryland. Rather than taking an expected job as a ship’s second mate, Ben gets the opportunity to captain his own cargo boat. He turns this good luck into a steady, well-paying career, taking advantage of demand for reliable transport in the quickly growing area. After the ship’s owner dies, Ben is tricked into signing an unfavorable contract, which he’s unable to read; however, his hard work allows him to prosper anyway. He and Sonja start a family, hire loyal employees, and gather friends around them. Notable characters include the formerly enslaved Simon Bond, widowed seamstress Nancy Perry, and Scottish housekeeper Sallie MacGregor. Benjamin also makes enemies in his hometown, as well as in Baltimore; these people, including sex worker Delilah Grudder whose brother Ben shot dead in self-defense, conspire to destroy him. Ben doesn’t always make the right decision and clearly breaks the law at times, but the Pulaskis also heroically protect the weak and bring a sense of justice to an unjust world; for example, they pay fair wages to all their workers and protect Nancy from domestic violence when the local sheriff won’t. The unpredictability of the times feels authentic, as does the notion of the characters’ being the masters of their own fates. Fans of the Pulaski series will likely enjoy learning the backstories of these characters, and after Lackey has made introductions, he quickly provides tension and conflict. In addition to detailing the family drama, he includes engaging historical elements of 19th century life, including aspects of canal building, cooking, and, of course, cargo shipping.
A well-wrought origin to a historical family saga with forward-thinking heroes.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985578102
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Heron Oaks
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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