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
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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