This story of one woman’s ascent offers a fascinating look at the choices she made to become a Gilded Age titan.
In Abé’s latest Gilded Age historical fiction, the author examines the life of Arabella Huntington, who was born into poverty in Alabama before the Civil War and became the richest woman in the United States.
Arabella Yarrington is helping to support her family in post–Civil War Richmond when Collis Potter Huntington, an industrialist and railroad tycoon, happens to visit the gambling saloon where she serves champagne to patrons. Immediately attracted to the woman 30 years his junior, Collis begins visiting the boardinghouse Belle’s mother owns. Quick to spot an opportunity to help her family escape the grinding struggle to make ends meet, Belle sets about using Collis’ affection to secure financial stability, eventually taking her mother and siblings with her to New York City, where she lives as a kept woman and eventually the mother of Collis’ son. But Collis is married, and his wife is eager to take revenge on the woman she sees stealing away the affection of her husband. Belle must use her wits and cunning not only to maintain some level of control over her life with Collis, but also to secure a more stable financial footing, as she becomes increasingly aware that everything she and her family have is based on the largesse of a man beholden to the demands of his wife. With starter funds from Collis, Belle is able to build her own real estate portfolio, giving herself and her family some protection. But it is her eventual marriage to Collis after his first wife’s death that brings Belle her immense wealth. Though the narrative sometimes drags and shifts in perspective between Belle and her mother don’t add much to the story, this is an interesting examination of a lesser-known figure from the Gilded Age, one whose story extends beyond the confines of late-19th-century New York. The lack of attention to more than the financial difficulties in post–Civil War Richmond may strike some readers as a missed opportunity, but fans of stories set during the period will find much to enjoy.
This story of one woman’s ascent offers a fascinating look at the choices she made to become a Gilded Age titan.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781496739421
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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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