A quiet, reflective story that eloquently meanders through questions of life, love, and nature.
In Crawford’s novel, a woman seeking forgiveness for herself at an isolated retreat attempts to help a “wild man” found living in the wilderness.
Thea Firth has retreated from the world, leaving her therapy practice behind in favor of a residency at the Institute for Healing and Transformation. Located “high up in the mountains,” the Institute offers a place for Thea to attempt self-forgiveness for not recognizing that her husband at the time was sexually abusing her daughter. Three days after Thea arrives, a “wild man” who was found living alongside a bear in the nearby wilderness is brought to the Institute for observation and rehabilitation. Despite the man’s refusal to speak, his identity is soon uncovered: He is Lucas “Luke” Lamont, who disappeared into the woods a few days before the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death and has been missing ever since. Thea finds herself fascinated with Luke and begins working alongside fellow resident Moritz Manz to unravel the man’s inner turmoil. In doing so, Thea recognizes similarities between them (“In her desire to heal him, she could feel her own need to be healed”) and is forced to finally confront her own shortcomings. Crawford weaves together beautiful prose, from descriptions of nature to otherworldly musings. As a protagonist, Thea is often hard to root for—especially when she reveals that she sent her daughter to boarding school and her husband to therapy after learning of his abuse. But her work as a therapist, and her eventual understanding of the constraints of that field, together create an interesting tension that offsets her healing journey. The novel’s verbose spiritual descriptions—“She waited for a vibration like the movement of angels from world to world, a stirring that would make her tremble within. Or Luke’s god-intoxicated spirit might be rising”—will most likely appeal to readers who embrace (or are at least open to) a rich spiritual world. Despite the languid pacing, Crawford eloquently explores themes of forgiveness and healing.
A quiet, reflective story that eloquently meanders through questions of life, love, and nature.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781648211126
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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