A slow-burn novel that quietly elevates the fragile codes of honorable men.
Forty years after three boys went missing in a small Wisconsin town, a nomadic carpenter becomes the unwitting catalyst for discoveries old and new.
Sean Courtland’s truck breaks down on the outskirts of town, so he decides to stay a while and accept a building job to make up for cash spent on repairs. His quiet presence in the community stirs up violence when he intercedes in a domestic dispute and accidentally ends up hitting Denise Givens, the woman he’s seeking to protect. This incident brings him to the notice of local detective Corrine Viegas and, somewhat surprisingly, also brings him closer to Denise and her father. As this gentle courtship unfolds, Sean is also getting to know Dan Young, another down-on-his-luck outsider who happens to have plumbing skills, and he hires him to help him finish the building job at Marion Devereaux’s house up on the bluff. There are still whispered rumors that Devereaux might have been involved in the disappearances of three boys in the 1970s, or maybe it was Devereaux’s war-haunted uncle. There’s no denying that there's something strange about the house and its basement, but Sean’s not one for gossip and he just wants to finish the job. All these characters are heading to a reckoning of sorts, but the novel is such a slow-burn that the mysteries at hand, dramatic as they are, are rendered secondary to the people living through them. Johnston writes with such care, understanding, even love for the flawed humans in his story that it’s almost too much. Readers may wish to look away from the damage these characters inevitably do to themselves and each other, but if we persist, we will bear witness to their moments of pain and tragedy. The reward: We are treated to occasions of such care that it’s almost redemptive.
A slow-burn novel that quietly elevates the fragile codes of honorable men.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781643753591
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
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
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