A historically authentic and dramatically engrossing work.
In Haynes’ 1850s-set historical novel, three men—two abolitionists and a pro-slavery Southerner—become embroiled in a murderous conspiracy.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 makes a massive swath of territory to the west of Iowa and Missouri open to slavery, as determined by popular vote. As a result, Northerners and Southerners alike rush to settle there in a bid to tip the electoral scale, a situation that quickly becomes violent: “Kansas was a tinderbox. All awaited the spark that would ignite a blaze.” Monty Tolliver, a former Whig congressman in Ohio and an ardent abolitionist, decides to move his family to Kansas to do his part and discovers an all-out war being waged there by pro-slavery agitators. He joins the local militia and becomes a key player in the effort to organize a constitutional convention that will establish Kansas as a free state. He’s aided by Robert Geddis, who comes to Kansas from Rhode Island to work for the Herald of Freedom newspaper. Violence is committed by both sides of the conflict, a grim scenario rigorously depicted by the author. A series of grisly murders is undertaken by devoted abolitionists, followed by equally grotesque killings by pro-slavers in retaliation—some of which are pinned on Billy Rutledge, a young man from Mississippi. But Geddis knows Billy, and despite Billy’s support of slavery, he considers him incapable of murder. This complex narrative at times becomes convoluted—there are simply too many plot twists and subplots, and they become a tedious distraction. However, the author’s portrayal of this chapter in the history of the nation is impressively astute, and he brings the clash of ideologies that sparked it to electrifying life. The novel is unflinchingly honest and evenhanded—while slavery was a vile institution, Haynes acknowledges that people who opposed it were fully capable of gross moral failings of their own. Ultimately, this is a worthwhile work of historical drama, simultaneously edifying and entertaining.
A historically authentic and dramatically engrossing work.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781737766926
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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