A moving and well-written saga of an earlier time in America.
Trubiano’s historical novel tells the story of the Italian immigrants who fought for survival and acceptance in Boston’s North End in the first half of the 20th century.
Domenic Bassini is 16 years old when he sets sail for America from his hardscrabble little village to make a better life for himself and perhaps improve the family fortunes. A shy, quiet kid, he nonetheless meets people on the voyage who will remain in his life (for good or ill), including Cologero Dragotto and his beautiful and shrewd young bride, Francesca, who seduces Domenic even before they land in Boston, and the spunky 10-year-old stowaway, Ermino Lentini. Once in Boston, Domenic, a stoic, steady worker, gets a job and keeps his head down. Domenic becomes Ermino’s protector by default, but the kid is a handful and drifts away, finally going full-bore into a successful life of crime. Early on, Ermino and Domenic have a run-in with young Colin O’Riley, the son of Brendan O’Riley—a very powerful police officer in the BPD; a generation-long enmity between the Bassinis and the O’Rileys will soon develop. Colin becomes a dirty and dangerous cop and the nemesis of Domenic’s son, Dommy, who’s a war hero, a scrupulously honest cop, and a beacon for the future. (As his wife, Martha, later says ruefully, “Dommy didn’t want to just be a cop. He wanted to be a saint.”) The narrative runs from 1914 to the 1950s and through three generations of triumphs and tragedies; the city of Boston is as much a character as the human characters. The author effectively illustrates the ways in which struggles for power in the city often resembled a fight between scorpions trapped in a bottle. The story covers the Brahmins, who lost Boston but controlled the State House; the Irish, who took over the BPD; the Italian Mafia and lesser gangs; and the often hilariously corrupt politicians. In the course of the tale, readers encounter the famous police strike of 1919, the Great Molasses Flood of that same year, the Spanish flu, and several cameo references (including Joseph Kennedy, Sacco and Vanzetti, and James Michael Curley).
A moving and well-written saga of an earlier time in America.Pub Date: June 1, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-963844-04-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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