A thoughtful portrait of one revolutionary’s remarkable resilience, far from home.
One of Mexico’s greatest political leaders enters his wilderness years in the rough streets of New Orleans just before the U.S. Civil War.
In an abbreviated but essential preface, Herrera explains how future president of Mexico Benito Juárez came to live in New Orleans for two years beginning in 1853. Having already served as governor of his home state of Oaxaca but long before he will hold off an invasion by France, he’s been sent into exile by political rival General Santa Anna, along with his brother-in-law Pepe Maza. No one living knows what happened to Juárez in the Big Easy, so Herrera’s suppositions are well grounded between history and creative license. Asked by a new friend what brings him to town, Juárez replies drily, “A slight diversion, a delta, you might say.” Even though Juárez is intimately familiar with Mexico’s brand of corruption, he’s unprepared to be beaten and robbed by the police upon arrival. He’s even less prepared for the realities of an American slave trade at its height. “These people farm people, they breed humans captured at birth,” Herrera writes. “These people fatten up their children, their own children, and then sell them.” The narrative is populated with real historical figures like fellow reformers Melchor Ocampo and Ponciano Arriaga, with one memorable scene featuring a concert on 10 pianos by American composer Louis Gottschalk. In fact, there’s a surprising richness to the milieu of a story mostly about meetings and letter writing. The New Orleans depicted here is carnivalesque, and the surreal spectacle of bear fights, spontaneous parades, and clandestine meetings, added to Benito’s colorful dreams about liberation and justice, give the story a vibrant, almost hallucinatory feel. Meanwhile, Herrera’s portrait of a leader in exile—rolling cigars, printing pamphlets, and plotting a revolution from the sidelines—depicts the frustrating dichotomy Juárez experiences between his lowly circumstances and his dreams of a better nation.
A thoughtful portrait of one revolutionary’s remarkable resilience, far from home.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781644453070
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
