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GALAHAD CRIED

Name: GALAHAD CRIED
Author: Roy Mayer
ISBN: 978-1479306107

by Roy Mayer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2012

An intriguing novel about how one man left his mark on Canadian history.

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In his debut historical novel, Mayer tells the story of a real-life 19th-century journalist, activist and hero.

Henry Albert “Bertie” Harper was born in Ontario in 1873 and began working in a newspaper office when he was still a child. As a young adult, he became interested in politics and free-speech issues and helped bring about big changes at the University of Toronto by organizing petitions and student strikes; there he roomed with future Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Harper later quit his newspaper job and helped establish the Canadian Department of Labour’s Labour Gazette. However, Harper’s story inexorably and tragically leads to one defining event: a skating party where he died, at age 28, in an unsuccessful attempt to save a drowning girl. Although the novel starts slowly and meanders a bit at times, Mayer ably brings the relatively obscure Harper and his world to life. Harper, as portrayed here, was not without his faults; for example, he pledges his love to a woman but has difficulty remaining loyal to her. That said, Harper’s innate sense of decency and justice shines throughout the novel. In his last moments, Harper is depicted remembering lines from a Tennyson poem: “Galahad cried, I thought. If I lose myself, I save myself.” His good friend King later arranged for an impressive statue of the Arthurian knight Sir Galahad to be erected in Ottawa in tribute to the heroic deed.

An intriguing novel about how one man left his mark on Canadian history.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2012

ISBN: 978-1479306107

Page Count: 284

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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New York Times Bestseller

THE CALAMITY CLUB

by Kathryn Stockett ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2026

Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.

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New York Times Bestseller

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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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DAUGHTERS OF THE SUN AND MOON

by Lisa See ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2026

A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.

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See’s latest novel exposes a forgotten, ugly chapter in LA history—the brutal 1871 massacre of 18 Chinese immigrant men and boys.

In July 1870, two Chinese women arrive in Lo Sang, a dusty frontier town known by its white and Hispanic residents as Los Angeles. Seventeen-year-old Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar fallen on hard times, is the new second wife of Old Man Sing, a merchant in the tiny Chinese community on Calle de los Negros. Barefoot, dark-skinned Petal, sold into servitude to a Gold Mountain tong by her desperately poor peasant father, is destined for the Midnight Garden, a bawdy house owned by Headman Sam. Witnessing the newcomers’ arrival is Moon, the wife of a successful doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. Unlike Petal and Dove, she speaks English, and she assists her husband in his clinic. The three alternating narratives—Petal tells her story as she lives it in 1870; an elderly Moon recalls past events from 1926; and Dove’s tale is recounted in a distant third-person voice—create a portrait of a tiny immigrant community surrounded by a hostile culture and ruled by rival tongs. It’s a shootout between these disputing factions that sets off the horrifying events of Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob of about 500 white and Latine residents torture and lynch their Chinese victims. Although meticulously researched, See’s novel feels curiously flat. Despite continual descriptions of gunfights breaking out, Los Angeles never fully comes to life as a rough-and-tumble Wild West town. While the author’s female protagonists, inspired by historical figures, are well drawn (kudos to the feisty and determined Petal), most of her male characters—Chinese, Anglo, and Mexican—are as flat and indistinguishable as cardboard. Another drawback is See’s stilted and stylized dialogue, typical of historical fiction but wearying to the modern reader.

A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.