A stirring fictional account of a remarkable figure that’s occasionally hampered by wooden prose.
Watson chronicles more than 50 years in the extraordinary life of Maggie Lena Walker, the first Black woman to charter an American bank.
When she’s 12, narrator Maggie Mitchell finds her life upended when her father is found floating facedown in the James River in Richmond, Virginia. Forced to grow up fast, Maggie helps her grief-stricken mother in her laundry service and soon begins attending meetings of the Independent Order of St. Luke, a humanitarian group for Black people in the community. Here, Maggie eventually meets and marries Armstead Walker, a man who admires her self-sufficiency, and they go on to have three children. Over the span of five decades, Maggie’s unwavering dedication to improving the lives of Black people is depicted in meticulous detail. Her efforts to expand the Order, eventually taking over its leadership, and her triumphs in establishing both a newspaper and the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank are challenged at every turn. Maggie weathers physical assaults, intimidation by White businessmen, and colorism from her darker-skinned peers, yet she remains dedicated to her causes even amid personal tragedies. Historically minded readers will enjoy the accurate details here; Maggie’s life is anchored around concrete dates that add context. Others may be disappointed by the expositional prose and dialogue. There are conversations between close friends that feel more like public speeches, as do parts of Maggie’s narration: “Negro women, hemmed in and circumscribed with every imaginable obstacle in our way, blocked and held down by the fears and prejudices of whites—ridiculed and sneered at by the intelligent Blacks. Let us all advance.” In addition, the time span means some milestones are given only glancing treatment—Watson shines when conveying Black patrons’ joy at finally having an emporium that caters to their needs, yet the passage is all too fleeting. At the same time, repetition takes up precious space. Armstead’s vacillation between approval and dismay at Maggie’s not being a typical housewife grows tiresome after the umpteenth mention. Still, Watson’s love for Maggie shines through.
A stirring fictional account of a remarkable figure that’s occasionally hampered by wooden prose.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781668003022
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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