A tale that is as evocative as it is informative.
Quintero’s historical novel explores the world of the Aztecs through the story of one man’s life and loves in 1400s Mexico.
In Tenochtitlan, a young boy named Huitzilin comes of age at the height of the Aztec Empire. As a child, Huitzilin learns much of what he knows through the practice of oral tradition, in which his family members pass down their personal histories in addition to Aztec beliefs and mythology. Speaking of his father, Cuauhtli, Huitzilin says, “His story was not written—it was lived, and I carry it now, as he carried the flame.” When Huitzilin finishes school at Calmecac, “where the empire’s noblest sons [are] trained in wisdom and war,” the 18-year-old marries the lovely Teoxochitl. The couple have two children, and Huitzilin becomes a revered Aztec warrior. Later, when Huitzilin is in his 50s and has experienced success and loss in equal measure, he expands his family, builds beautiful temples, and eventually achieves noble status. Supplemented with historical images from codices, this tale operates primarily as a vehicle for enlightening readers about Aztec history and culture (one of the more fascinating cultural aspects is the nagual, “a Shadow Spirit that walks beside us”). Through Huitzilin’s eyes, the author compellingly depicts various details of Aztec life—for example, when Huitzilin steals feathers from his sister, his father administers the traditional punishment of wafting chili smoke into the child’s eyes. Quintero’s prose is lyrical: “If you would know the truth of this world, listen to the blood in the stone, the silence between names, the pulse beneath the dust.” Sometimes, however, the writing grows overwrought, as when Huitzilin talks about a cave he found: “It will hold more than men, if allowed…It holds the breath of the mountain, the attention of the gods. It will hold what men become there.” Still, Quintero’s story manages to be educational in a way that will hold readers’ attention.
A tale that is as evocative as it is informative.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2026
ISBN: 9798993795430
Page Count: 276
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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