An engrossing collection grounded by the complex emotional dynamics between soldiers and their families.
Kelly presents an anthology of stories reflecting the effects of war on home and family.
Drawing on her experiences as the wife of a fighter pilot during her husband’s three wartime deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the author, a novelist and poet, collects here 14 tales inspired by the lives of women affected by military service and war. Kelly observes that the stress and sadness that come with the death of a loved one can often become catalysts for personal change, as evidenced in the opening story, “Finding the Good Light,” in which Diane, emotionally exhausted after attending eight military funerals and divorcing her Navy husband, finds renewal by becoming a Hollywood actress. One of the author’s most obvious storytelling strengths is her credible, acute portrayal of interpersonal tensions, as demonstrated in the memorable “Prayers of an American Wife,” when one Navy wife discovers another, who happens to be her neighbor, enjoying an illicit extramarital affair. While noticing a strange male visitor entering her neighbor’s house through the side door one day, the faithful observing wife finds herself “savagely heartbroken,” nervously clutching her Pomeranian, who’s blissfully “unaware of the betrayal happening just across the lawn.” This knack is evident even in the collection’s shortest tale, “The Strangers of Dubai,” in which a soldier on leave with his wife visits an Afghan gold market with questionable bargaining tactics. The affecting coming-of-age evolution of a military brat in “Rachel’s Story” profiles a girl as she rapidly learns about big-city life, friendship, love, and the precious commodity of time. Kelly clearly channeled her own emotions, confusion, loneliness, sacrifice, and love into these stories illuminating the struggle of family members who may not be fighting wars on the battlefield but are keeping the home fires burning. These themes provide richly resonant material for these well-written short stories about the wartime experience told from the perspectives of those waiting patiently (and impatiently) at home.
An engrossing collection grounded by the complex emotional dynamics between soldiers and their families.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781647791445
Page Count: 172
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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