An often engaging family saga.
Terry’s historical novel chronicles the lives of an increasingly devout mother, her gay son, and an unexpected father figure.
Pansy Blackwell’s life has been shaped by hardship. She’s just a teenager in the Five Points area of Denver in the late 1950s when her father murders her mother, and she’s sent to live with an unknown uncle in Salt Lake City. Seeking stability, Pansy later mistakes desire for love and attempts to marry a man named Ace Sharkey, only for him to rob her and disappear. Alone and pregnant, she turns to a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who offer her solace and a place to live. But as she raises her son, William Blackwell, she becomes increasingly consumed by religious fervor and overcompensates for her chaotic life by strictly observing religious doctrines. Her son grows up under the influence of his neighbor Steve Bultemeyer, a rancher who teaches him the values of cowboy life and gives him the nickname “Butch.” Steve teaches him resilience and independence, but when William realizes he’s gay, he finds that he’s in a community that won’t accept him for who he is. He decides to keep his identity hidden, due to societal expectations; however, as he goes on to face various struggles in his life, he does his best to live authentically. Terry’s portrayal of William’s relationship with Steve is compelling and a refreshing take on masculinity and parenthood. Steve is a tender man who offers his support to William without forcing him to conform. Although William’s story is one of uplift and survival, Pansy’s is not; readers observe, at length, her transformation from a caring person to a bitter and oppressive one, trapped in a belief within a world that’s ending and driving her son away. The emphasis on her story seems excessive at times, but the novel is otherwise convincing in its portrayal of the ties between religion, family, and identity. Its portraits of rural gay life and fatherhood are particularly refreshing.
An often engaging family saga.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781611535914
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Torchflame Books
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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