A disturbing, occasionally overwrought period piece with moments of grace and a sturdy hero.
A resilient young girl faces extreme poverty and violence during the 1930s and 1940s in Field’s historical novel.
The story begins in December of 1927 with a devastating automobile accident. Nineteen-year-old Margarete Bowerman Owens is en route to the Seattle train depot, fleeing her abusive husband and attempting to bring her 3-month-old daughter to her own mother’s farm in eastern Oregon. But Margarete’s car is brutally pushed off the road, and only baby Eleanor survives. Five years later, the musically inclined Eleanor is being raised by her maternal grandmother, Delores Bowerman. Although Delores, whose husband abandoned her, was already caring for her own five children at the time of the accident, she took her infant granddaughter when Eleanor’s father said he couldn’t care for her. It is a hardscrabble life, and little Eleanor feels bereft of a parent’s love. Still, in 1935, when the father she has not seen for seven years sues to regain custody of her, she elects to remain with her grandmother, despite his bribes of fine clothes and toys. This was a wise choice; several years later, when she travels to Seattle to help care for her aunt’s young children, her father sexually assaults her. Further trauma awaits her: The following years are filled with hopes, disappointments, and an impulsive, abusive marriage that she regrets immediately. The author effectively portrays the difficulties and desperation of poverty-level farm life through the years of the Great Depression: “Bread, milk from their Jersey cow Babe, last summer’s canned spinach, and a few eggs were all the family had for their dinners.” But there is also a throughline acknowledging the strength Eleanor gains from family ties and her young uncles’ loving support. Although the storyline frequently lapses into melodrama, complete with bad guys who are exceptionally evil, the evocative prose and several scenes of intense action make the narrative addictive. Vividly graphic scenes of violence animate the second half of the novel, culminating in a thrillingly explosive life-and-death battle.
A disturbing, occasionally overwrought period piece with moments of grace and a sturdy hero.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8988291107
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forsythia Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2023
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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