A nuanced and edifying angle on the fragility of early colonial life.
Freels offers a novel about a determined, widowed Dutch mother making her way in the North American colonies against the odds.
In 1630, Dutch colonists Anneke and Roelof arrive in New Amsterdam from the Netherlands. “We’re going to have to make our own rules and be very quick-witted and careful if we mean to survive,” Anneke says to her children. The family soon heads north to Fort Orange, where Roelof will work as a tenant farmer for Heer Van Rensselaer. There’s money to be made there, even if it will require years of hard work. All goes according to plan, more or less, until 1637, when Roelof dies suddenly of a snake bite. Anneke goes on to marry a local minister named Evert, who, due to his profession, is much more involved in Dutch colonial affairs than Roelof had been. As tensions rise in the rapidly growing community, both with the “Wilden” (as the Dutch referred to the land’s Indigenous inhabitants) and among the colonists, Anneke becomes better acquainted with the complex local disputes and struggles. Freels’ work tackles an oft-overlooked era of North American history, when the Dutch controlled modern-day Manhattan and Albany, among other areas. The story explores some aspects of this period that may be new to many readers, as when Heer Van Rensselaer insists on a Dutch form of government for his lands in which “a proper burgher council headed by a schout who would prosecute evildoing and five schepenen who would advise the director.” Anneke meets a wide range of people in this fledgling society, many of them trouble her in one way or another; one man she judges to be “annoying in the extreme,” while another is “arrogant and unpredictable.” Indeed, Anneke becomes bolder as the years go by, and many readers will enjoy seeing how she and those around her adjust and adapt to their transforming world.
A nuanced and edifying angle on the fragility of early colonial life.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798896360322
Page Count: 208
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
