A dramatic, rewarding story about a woman reconnecting with family, nature, and herself.
In Cole-Misch’s debut novel, an old land dispute reemerges after a young girl discovers Native artifacts.
Welsh immigrant Taid Llyndee purchased an island off the Canada coast from the Ojibwe people in the 1940s, establishing a family retreat there until 1990. In 2004, Beth Llyndee, Taid’s granddaughter, returns to this place, which she remembers well. Taid is still alive, but he’s drafted two wills—one granting the land to Beth, and the other to the Akeenes, an Ojibwe family, and Beth is to decide who gets it. The next chapter unfolds in 1987, when Beth is 11; she has a teenage brother, Dylan, and sister, Maegan. Her mother is wary of Maegan’s boyfriend; Beth’s father is the family peacemaker; and her grandparents are set in their Welsh traditions. The girl feels at home on the island, where she cares for a one-legged seagull and enjoys viewing her “favorite constellations.” The following summer, she discovers unusual wooden bowls on the island. Dylan suggests showing them to a nearby Ojibwe family, but Taid recalls the aftermath of a similar discovery: “Just because they [another family, the McGintys] found a few silly relics, the family had to give up five acres of their land to keep the community peace.” The Llyndees decide to research the items privately, but in 1990, chaos erupts as Maegan is injured, Dylan goes missing, and the family is evicted from the island. In 2004, Beth is unprepared for what lies ahead. The slow pace of this novel, which effectively offers readers a cautionary tale against secrecy, makes its twists even more rewarding. Cole-Misch manages to capture tender moments as skillfully as she does petty arguments between the siblings. Young Beth is shown to have all the characteristics that one expects of a family’s youngest child—sometimes excluded and often whining, but also the family favorite. The novel is informed by both Ojibwe and Welsh traditions and shows sensitivity regarding cultural differences. It also honors the natural world with dazzling imagery: “So many stars, as if the galaxies were holding a grand, illicit celebration after they thought the humans had gone to bed.”
A dramatic, rewarding story about a woman reconnecting with family, nature, and herself.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-741-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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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