The continuing adventures of the Lawtons and their circle, hampered by uneven execution.
Half a dozen romances and other wild adventures enliven Weatherford’s historical sequel.
This follow-up to Blessings from the Four Winds (2021) takes up where that novel left off in 1887, as guests depart and servants clean up after Will Lawton and Niabi’s wedding at Applegate Ranch in Covington, Tennessee; a brief introduction helpfully provides snapshots of the main characters and locations from the previous novel. This sequel follows the newlyweds as they plan to start a family and build a homestead on land near Niabi’s tribal village, where the U.S. government is expected to open parts of what should be Native American territory to settlement by others. It also intertwines the romantic adventures of several other passionate couples: Lorraine Applegate is with Capt. Horton, despite their 10-year age difference; Sam Egglesby Jr. nearly derails his courtship of nursing student Rita Walker; Louisa Ortega is engaged to a handsome, wealthy bachelor, despite her yearning for Nashoba, and Nashoba despairs when he believes he’s lost her. In the meantime, while Mr. Hastings returns to his Texas ranch, Mrs. Hastings decides to travel to New York City; there, her beloved former chef, Oscar, and his grandfather Phillipe have promised to find a new cook for her, and she unexpectedly gains her heart’s desire. In Weatherford’s previous series entry, was Will’s adventurous travels that brought the various characters together—and to his wedding—but in the sequel, their stories diverge, and they feel more like related short stories than a cohesive novel. Although violence does occur, the difficulties that characters face are more often romantic misunderstandings; there are many interludes of passionate kissing, caressing, and lovemaking. Some of the writing is awkward, with abrupt transitions and odd choices, such as the inclusion of nearly two pages on Will’s memory of tasting his first banana, which he connects to his wife: “Every night I can look forward to peeling off the outer coverings of my most precious sweetness.” Nevertheless, readers who enjoyed the first installment of Will and Niabi’s story will undoubtedly enjoy this one.
The continuing adventures of the Lawtons and their circle, hampered by uneven execution.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798218645328
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Lucky Valley Press
Review Posted Online: July 17, 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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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