A loving tribute to a previously unsung heroine.
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield is a diva because she has a voice for the ages. She’s unexpected because she’s a Black woman in 1850s America.
A contemporary of Jenny Lind—with a greater vocal range—the real Greenfield became known as the Black Swan and was met with remarkable success, given the landscape of her times. Author Warren follows the trajectory of Greenfield’s life, filling in many gaps in the historical record with well-researched fiction. Eliza has been lucky in many ways: She is educated, financially supported, and free, though two of those things could be taken away at any time. In the wake of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, any Black person is at risk of being kidnapped and sold into bondage. From the age of 7, Eliza was raised in Philadelphia by Elizabeth Greenfield, an elderly white Quaker she calls Miss Lizbeth. After Miss Lizbeth dies when Eliza is 26, Eliza’s inheritance is contested by her benefactor’s niece and held up in legal limbo. She’s undaunted, however, and with the support of some wonderful friends, she soon finds patrons, as well as a manager to advance her singing career. Eliza is constantly threatened by racism, precarity, and sometimes violence, and while these stakes are frequently stated, they are not always felt in the book. Eliza’s love interest, Charles Monroe, insists she can and should do more to uplift other Black people, but she thinks she must look after her own success and safety first. This and many other potentially painful themes around privilege, race, and access to power recur, but Eliza is so steadfast in her determination that they don’t have the weight they might. Still, it’s always a pleasure to have a protagonist confident in her own self-worth, and the historical details, especially around the thriving, pre-Civil War communities of free Blacks in the North, are excellent.
A loving tribute to a previously unsung heroine.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063322134
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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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