A well-crafted comedy about the bad side of miracles.
In Pass’ novel, a mysterious whirlpool appears in the small town of Lebanon, Kansas, in 2016, drastically changing the lives of everyone who encounters it.
The first strange thing that the eccentric, 68-year-old rancher and junkyard sculptor Zebedee “Zeb” Stout notices is that all his cattle are asleep at the same time. Even more unusual is the whirlpool that’s now in his pasture. He’s initially convinced that he’s hallucinating the fact that his adult horse, Dan, is somehow a foal again, and that all the cows have transformed into calves. After all, he’s been under a lot of stress while taking care of his sick wife, Nancy, and he has a family history of mental illness. He also notices that his hand, which touched the whirlpool’s water, looks and feels younger. When Nancy suffers a stroke that leaves her in critical condition, Zeb suddenly accepts that the whirlpool is real, and he knows what he must do: bring Nancy to the whirlpool. After he does so, they revert to their late 20s, cured of all ailments. It seems like a miracle, but something else is strange about the water—like it might have a mind of its own. Pass’ story, told from multiple third-person points of view, follows several offbeat citizens in the small, gossip-loving town of Lebanon. (The U.S. Census Bureau put its population at exactly 202, but locals “doubted that the Census folks even knew where Lebanon was.”) As more people learn of the whirlpool, they become determined to use it to solve their own problems. Pass expertly blends humor with moments of darkness, and the pacing stays strong throughout, picking up speed toward the end and racing smoothly along to the finish. Even though the book has a fairly large cast of characters—including Old Mac McGillicuddy, the owner of McGillicuddy’s Do-All general store and restaurant; his “tough and spunky” great-granddaughter, May; and the colorful Brothers Carruthers, among others—the novel never feels overstuffed. Each person is distinct and has a clear motive, and the intertwining storylines all come together nicely in the end.
A well-crafted comedy about the bad side of miracles.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9798989180530
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Thiessen Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 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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