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
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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