A family oriented tale that's heartfelt and funny, by turns.
In Boerner’s novel, an older man and a child become friends during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
Theo Gruene is a retired botanist who lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and does volunteer work for the University of Arkansas. His idea of a perfect day is one he spends gluing plant specimens, such as a 1930s columbine, onto mounting paper. He loves order and solitude, but he’s still grieving the death of his beloved wife, Annie, 20 years before. Theo’s life is thrown into upheaval with the sudden arrival on his doorstep of an 8-1/2-year-old girl in a green raincoat that’s too big for her. Penelope Pie Palmer just missed her school bus and forgot her house key, so she asks if she can stay in his house until the current rainstorm passes and her mom returns home in a few hours. He initially sees the girl as a nuisance, but their interactions slowly cause Theo to venture out of his self-contained world. He adopts a stray dog; meets Penelope’s determined single mom, Ivy; and discovers good qualities about Nita Johnson, a neighbor whom he formerly considered a nosy gossip. However, difficulties arise when the Covid-19 pandemic shuts down Penelope’s school and Theo reluctantly tutors her so that her mom, a nurse’s aide, can still work. Then Ivy lands in the intensive-care unit, requiring a ventilator. After Theo temporarily accepts responsibility for Penelope’s welfare, new information about the girl, her mom, and Theo comes to light. Boerner’s story revolves around a likable cast: Theo, at first a self-centered hermit, becomes a caring member of society, upset about injustice. Ivy takes responsibility for a bad choice, and Nita wins over Theo by remaining herself. However, bright, chatty Penelope is the book’s star, providing abundant humor (such as calling her raincoat a “protectability cloak”), as well as emotional depth—accepting Theo, and others, despite their many flaws. The northwest Arkansas setting, with lovingly described wilderness areas, such as Devil’s Den and Yellow Rock Trail, enhances the story’s messages about grounding one’s life in the natural world and practicing simple values.
A family oriented tale that's heartfelt and funny, by turns.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781951418106
Page Count: 308
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
