A warm, reflective novel with unforgettable characters.
Wheeler’s historical novel, set in the pro-golfing world, weaves a tale about integrity, second chances, and the cost of doing the right thing.
“Honest” John Pine is a golfer whose story is the stuff legends are made of. Pine is a teaching professional in Iowa who, as the novel opens, finds that his wife, Evie, has left him and their 11-year-old foster child, Cora. Her departure transpires as Pine plans to drive to the Chicago area to compete in the 1941 U.S. Open golf championship—which he does, with Cora in tow, after stealing a set of golf clubs and writing a bad check. The bulk of the book is a detailed account of the golf tournament, where Pine, literally down to his last penny in his bank account, looks to pull off a miracle with the support of Cora and the help of his caddie, his longtime friend Dollar Bill Doolin. His first round is record-breaking, and he becomes a phenomenon, but his love for the game and his honesty complicate his efforts to take home the ultimate prize. Everything plays out with a bit of mysticism, including a lucky coin that keeps showing up at opportune times (“to look at it, it was nothing special”) and Pine believing that Cora has seen his golf mentor, Arliss Peters, at the Open, only to find out later that Peters had died before the tournament. Wheeler’s strength is creating memorable characters, starting with the precocious Cora and Pine, and including Doolin, Peters, and others who influenced Pine along the way. Some could be just throwaway supporting figures, but all are fully drawn and memorable. Golf is the focus here, with Wheeler deftly mixing real-life legends (Ben Hogan and Sam Snead among them) with Pine’s fictional narrative. Golfers will revel in these moments—and they and non-golfers alike will be swept up in Wheeler’s charming story, one filled with grit, heart, and a little bit of magic.
A warm, reflective novel with unforgettable characters.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9798988319030
Page Count: 288
Publisher: The Marion/Manville Press
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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