By Virginia Evans – Crown, 2025
Sybil Van Antwerp is a woman in her 70s who writes letters at 10:30 most mornings to help her make sense of the world. She writes to her brother, her best friend and even to authors like Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. And there’s one person she writes to over and over again—but those letters never leave her desk.
Sybil’s been a lawyer, a mother, a wife, a divorcee and now a grandmother, and she carries all those lives with her in a way that feels real and lived-in. She’s the kind of woman who still wants to learn new things (even if it means pushing back against a university that won’t let her audit a class) and who doesn’t mind speaking her mind—though she usually does it on the page, in her letters. When Sybil starts receiving letters from someone in her past, she’s forced to revisit a painful chapter of her life that she’s tried to set aside. At the heart of this novel is forgiveness—not in a sweeping or sentimental way, but the kind that happens slowly, through reflection, honesty and, eventually, by choice.
