A richly detailed account of an under-heralded American tragedy.
In Gordon’s historical novel, a newly married couple move to Peshtigo, Wisconsin, shortly before the town is consumed by the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.
On the night of October 8, 1871, the Peshtigo blaze killed more people than any other recorded wildfire. A year before the disaster, Jennie Lenerville of Manitowoc Rapids, Wisconsin, marries “Big John” Mulligan. Very much in love, the couple leave for Peshtigo, where John has secured a job as foreman of a logging camp. Jennie, however, is haunted by prophetic dreams in which she finds herself underwater while a red glow hovers above. Despite these dreams, the couple settle into life in Peshtigo and form relationships with a broad cast of characters, including Reinhard Bruener, a widower with six daughters; Annabelle Kroessle, who tragically loses her husband in an accident shortly before the birth of their baby; and a Menominee woman named Elizabeth Place, who gifts Jennie a dreamcatcher after she defends her against racist rhetoric, among many others. When the fire inevitably comes, it brings unprecedented devastation. The Peshtigo tragedy is largely overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; Gordon’s novel brings attention to one of the deadliest yet most often-overlooked events in American history with great detail and well-crafted prose: “Old hands and the Menominee people read the signs—horses spooking at nothing, hot veering winds at dusk, the western horizon keeping a low red bruise—as small fires common to such seasons began knitting into something larger just beyond sight.” The author acknowledges and sensitively portrays the racism experienced by Elizabeth and the other members of the Indigenous population as they take note of the early warning signs of imminent disaster ignored by most of the white settlers. While the narrative sometimes gets bogged down in the details, introducing so many characters and plot threads that the pacing prior to the fire is slowed, history buffs and those interested in a slice-of-life representation of frontier America will find much to enjoy here.
A richly detailed account of an under-heralded American tragedy.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798994560501
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2026
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
A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.
See’s latest novel exposes a forgotten, ugly chapter in LA history—the brutal 1871 massacre of 18 Chinese immigrant men and boys.
In July 1870, two Chinese women arrive in Lo Sang, a dusty frontier town known by its white and Hispanic residents as Los Angeles. Seventeen-year-old Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar fallen on hard times, is the new second wife of Old Man Sing, a merchant in the tiny Chinese community on Calle de los Negros. Barefoot, dark-skinned Petal, sold into servitude to a Gold Mountain tong by her desperately poor peasant father, is destined for the Midnight Garden, a bawdy house owned by Headman Sam. Witnessing the newcomers’ arrival is Moon, the wife of a successful doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. Unlike Petal and Dove, she speaks English, and she assists her husband in his clinic. The three alternating narratives—Petal tells her story as she lives it in 1870; an elderly Moon recalls past events from 1926; and Dove’s tale is recounted in a distant third-person voice—create a portrait of a tiny immigrant community surrounded by a hostile culture and ruled by rival tongs. It’s a shootout between these disputing factions that sets off the horrifying events of Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob of about 500 white and Latine residents torture and lynch their Chinese victims. Although meticulously researched, See’s novel feels curiously flat. Despite continual descriptions of gunfights breaking out, Los Angeles never fully comes to life as a rough-and-tumble Wild West town. While the author’s female protagonists, inspired by historical figures, are well drawn (kudos to the feisty and determined Petal), most of her male characters—Chinese, Anglo, and Mexican—are as flat and indistinguishable as cardboard. Another drawback is See’s stilted and stylized dialogue, typical of historical fiction but wearying to the modern reader.
A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781982117054
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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