An intriguing, if uneven, novel of becoming a woman in the modern American West.
Janssen presents a coming-of-age tale based on true events, set in the early 20th-century American Southwest.
Josie Belle Gore isn’t the oldest but she’s clearly the boldest child in her family. At the age of 6, for example, she uses a rope to retrieve the corpse of a jackrabbit that’s spoiling their well water. She takes in stride the family’s many moves—from New Mexico to Arizona, Texas, “Old Mexico,” and back to Arizona. When her mother dies, she’s left, at 14, to care for four younger siblings, including an infant. When her father becomes determined to marry her off, however, she runs away, first seeking shelter with an older sister but then striking out on her own, eventually finding a career with Western Union. Once she’s settled in California, though, she realizes it’s time to reunite with her family. Janssen weaves together aspects of her grandmother’s life with historical events; as such, Josie experiences boom-and-bust mining towns, Halley’s Comet, revolution in Mexico, homesteading in the desert, World War I, the influenza epidemic of 1918, and Prohibition in the ’20s. The modernizing West has horses and cowboys but also cars and flappers. Janssen weaves into the narrative stories about water—an important resource of the arid region, which explains the book’s title. However, her repeated metaphor that Josie’s life is like a river (“Life, like a river, can take some sharp twists and turns”) does not quite work, as our hero definitely and repeatedly takes initiative, rather than just flowing with the tide. Janssen writes in Josie’s voice, which allows readers to get to know her as a brave, complicated woman, and witnessing her growth as a confident person is an engaging experience. Other characters, however, are rather flat and their motivations vague. Also, some plot points seem unlikely, as when Josie, who lacks fashion sense, easily gets a job working the counter of a fancy hotel. Overall, though, Janssen creates a believable West that holds both opportunities and obstacles for her protagonist.
An intriguing, if uneven, novel of becoming a woman in the modern American West.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425838
Page Count: 440
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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
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