A captivating epic, full of colorful detail, vigorous writing, and strong characters.
Two Hawaiian queens challenge their sexist religion and turn to Christianity in Draeger’s sweeping historical novel.
The story unfolds in the 18th and 19th centuries on the Hawaiian islands, whose residents belong to a polytheistic religion that features human sacrifices to the war god Ku and includes kapu taboos that ban women from eating with men and consuming pork, bananas, or coconuts. (Punishments for female banana-eaters could include being fed to sharks.) Manu and Lani are two wives of King Kamehameha the Great. Manu, over six feet tall and fetchingly corpulent, dominates men, visits European ships to learn English and play checkers, loves to surf, and disapproves of human sacrifice and kapu restrictions. She is opposed by Ano, the high priest of Ku, who has a prophetic vision that she will destroy the old gods. Ano’s plots to drown and poison Manu fail, but his plan to lure her into an extramarital affair with his acolyte succeeds spectacularly. (Kamehameha forgives her and she emerges stronger than ever.) Lani’s royal bloodlines make her the most sacred person in Hawaii, but she hates the kapu regulations that prevent her from having any contact with her own children, who might sully her purity. When American missionaries arrive, Lani takes instruction in Christianity while Manu remains skeptical and flummoxes the ministers and their wives by lounging around the mission house stark naked. Enter Betsey Stockton, a missionary and former enslaved person whose warmth and eloquence start winning Manu over to Christ, which drives Ano to scheme on a grander scale.
Based on historical figures and events, Draeger’s narrative paints a rich panorama of Hawaiian culture, with its cliff diving, bird-feather cloaks, hallucinogens, and kapu restrictions. (Lani is considered so exalted that anyone whose shadow touches her must be executed—which really inhibits her socializing.) There’s also an element of Christian apologetics in the novel: The missionaries and converts are kind and earnest, while the Ku priests are not. (“Ano enjoyed binding the dogs in such a way that he could extract their teeth while they still lived, while they still whimpered, and snarled and suffered. He felt it gave the god additional power.”) Draeger makes the ideological tensions roiling Hawaii human and personal, her vivid prose probing the fraught psychological reality of a life governed by dogma. (On their wedding night, “Kameha’s head is never to be higher than Lani’s and he too is not allowed to stand in her presence. Kameha crawls on his stomach toward the mats where Lani waits in dread.”) Manu is a vibrantly drawn force of nature (“She feels the same exhilaration she always feels at such moments, surging forward on the crest of a majestic wave, the cool sea below, the warm sun overhead, and the challenge of conquering a mighty wave. She speaks aloud to the sky. ‘I’m one with the vast sea. This Jesus is said to have walked on water, but could he ride the waves as I do?’”); readers will cheer on her cosmic confidence.
A captivating epic, full of colorful detail, vigorous writing, and strong characters.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2017
ISBN: 9781973236078
Page Count: 510
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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