An intimate look at the nation’s racist history.
Unfair in love and war.
Huf, drawing on her own family’s history, sets her latest novel in 1940s Florida, where Black people face the indignity of Jim Crow laws and a vicious old-boy culture. Restricted in where they can live and work, buy gasoline, or find a water fountain labeled for their use, still, after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, three friends—Benny North, Lee Peters, and Roscoe Crane—feel the call of duty, eager to stand up and prove their courage. Defying the vehement objections of the women who love them, they enlist. As Roscoe and Lee are dismayed to discover, the Army is strictly segregated, with Black recruits shunted to service postings and given “careless, lazy training.” For Benny, though, the Army proves life-changing: He’s assigned to a white troop by a sergeant who doesn’t want to be accused of trying to integrate the military by sending a light-skinned, blue-eyed soldier to a black battalion. From then on, Benny passes as white. Although as the war intensifies, Roscoe and Lee get a chance to participate bravely, they emerge from the trauma of battle into the same racist society they’d left. They can’t find jobs, and inequitable rules cut them out of the GI benefits that Benny gets as a “white” veteran. But his comfort and opportunity come at a cost. “I learned to take up space in the world and own my manhood,” Benny tells his distraught mother. “I can’t go back to boy and coon and the back of the bus.” Yet separation from his family and community are wrenching. Huf’s sympathetic, well-defined characters struggle with anger and frustration, desire and longing—and the betrayal of American democracy.
An intimate look at the nation’s racist history.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798874868376
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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