A gorgeous meditation on the forces that create and destroy communities, families, and lives.
Soileau’s debut novel explores the effects of time and tides on generations of Acadian residents of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.
Launched from a propulsive first chapter recounting the experiences of Noé Terrebonne and others—mostly descendants of Acadians exiled from New France to the bayous of the Gulf Coast—during a deadly storm in 1893 which annihilated life and property on Chenière Disparue, the sliver of land they inhabit, Soileau’s tale traces the history of the Terrebonnes and other Acadian families through generations and across oceans and continents. More recent descendants of the clan face equally chilling consequences when confronted with the environmental and social disasters presented by an explosion on an offshore oil rig and subsequent uncontrolled oil spill. An evocative sense of place is created by the author’s keen descriptions of the bayous, lakes, and marshes—inhabited by generations of Acadians such as the Terrebonnes and their in-laws as well as later-arriving Asian immigrants—which provide ghostly glimpses of the characters’ ancestors. Equally compelling, her characters are set in motion against a backdrop of environmental uncertainty, family disharmony, and economic stress. (Everyone’s nerves are frayed post-Katrina but nothing stops the weather.) The predatory forces of oil companies and their unscrupulous “landmen” present another issue altogether, and complicity and resentment are two ways that Soileau’s flawed, striving characters experience those forces. The menacing potential of water recurs as a motif throughout the novel and unites the experiences of the earliest settlers of New France with their Acadian descendants. Water can provide you with a living as a fisherman or oilman; offer secluded byways for romance or recreation; drown you or carry your already dead body away. In lyrical prose, Soileau illustrates each possibility unfolding as character after character struggles for survival in a world where “God’s thumb [is] pressing down.”
A gorgeous meditation on the forces that create and destroy communities, families, and lives.Pub Date: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780385551786
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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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