Publishers Weekly
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Hubbard (The Talented Ribkins) delves into issues of race, vengeance, redemption, and rage in this inventive historical. Beginning in 1914, the narrative follows groundskeeper August Sitwell and the other Black servants working for the Barclays, a once affluent Southern white family whose fortune is rapidly dwindling. As labor strikes and racial violence grow in their unnamed city, Sitwell begins to take an interest in the three orphans who have been hired to work as kitchen apprentices for Miss Mamie Price, the house cook. But his relationship to the boys and to the rest of the staff is put to the test when Mr. Barclay agrees to sell the recipe for Mamie’s meat sauce to one of his associates, who plans to market it locally and and use Sitwell’s likeness as the brand’s image—all without Sitwell’s or Mamie’s approval. Haunted by a brutal episode of violence instigated by Sitwell’s mother’s employer in Florida when he was a boy, Sitwell commits a startling act that alters the lives of everyone who works in the Barclay household. Hubbard’s prose brims with unspoken tensions and a prevailing sense of dread as she skillfully explores how the characters are impacted by trauma. Shocking and thought-provoking, Hubbard’s latest cements her status as an American original. Agent: Ayesha Pande, Ayesha Pande Literary Agency. (Jan.)

Library Journal
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Hubbard follows up The Talented Ribkins, winner of the Ernest J. Gaines and Hurston/Wright honors, with a story set in late 19th-century Chicago. The wealthy white Barclays, who have taken in much of their all-Black staff from the local orphanage, are on hard times and plan to earn cash by marketing their cook's scrumptious rib sauce with a caricature of groundskeeper August on the label. Trapped by a ten-year contract, August seethes—and tragedy is inevitable. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A historical thriller delves into the raw, knotty roots of racial uplift and upheaval that have been transforming America up to the present moment. In her debut, The Talented Ribkins, (2017), Hubbard ingeniously blended the motifs of superhero comic books into a bittersweet road novel tracing the scattered destinies of Black civil rights crusaders. Her follow-up departs from the fantastic but is no less inventive. It begins in 1914 New Orleans with August Sitwell, an enigmatic, circumspect Black man working as groundskeeper for an estate belonging to the Barclays, an upper-class White family no longer as wealthy as it once was. Sitwell became part of the familys all-Black domestic staff when he was orphaned as a child and has grown to manhood working with Miss Mamie, the familys prodigious cook, and, more recently, with Jennie Williams, a one-time cakewalk dancerturned-maid, and three rambunctious young apprentices, also orphans, whom the family patriarch seeks to civilize. As the staff struggles to negotiate their lives among Southern Whites in the depths of the Jim Crow era, the Barclays, desperately seeking a way out of the financial doldrums, make a bargain with an ambitious food entrepreneur to sell Miss Mamies vaunted rib sauce to local markets under the brand The Rib King with Sitwells caricatured image on the label. Neither Mamie nor Sitwell are getting a cent from this transaction, and Sitwell reacts to this exploitation with an act of retribution that reverberates into the next decade as Jennie, by 1924 an entrepreneur with her own brand of beauty products to sell, has to make her perilous way through economic and political intrigue brought about in part by the decades surge of African American achievement. The two halves of Hubbards chronicle have distinct tones. And even if one prefers the deadpan gothic tactics of the first part to the pell-mell momentum of the second, one will be impressed at all times with Hubbards control over her historical milieu as well as her complicated, intriguing characterizations. An imaginative work craftily depicting the failure of imagination that is American racism. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In 1914, in an unnamed city that looks like Chicago in the years following the 1893 World’s Fair, the all-Black residential staff of the Barclay house is navigating the touchy politics of serving an affluent white family whose prosperity has diminished. There’s Mr. Sitwell, the groundskeeper turned butler; Mamie, the cook; Jennie, a maid; and three orphaned teenagers who work as Sitwell’s apprentices. Each hails from a different region of the nation, each with different experience of racism in turn-of-the-century America. Conflict is inevitable when guests of the Barclays propose a business opportunity for their friends: start selling Mamie’s meat sauce with a caricature image of Sitwell on the label, then assume all profits for themselves. The deal is incendiary for the staff, and tragic in myriad ways. Ten years later, Sitwell has become “The Rib King” full-time, performing exploitative “cooking” shows for white audiences across the country. The former house staff must reckon with their ties to the Rib King, and the icon’s violent implications, before that history claims their chance at a freer future. The inimitable Hubbard (The Talented Ribkins, 2018) delivers a dazzling tour-de-force in this richly painted, perfectly timed meditation on privilege and fury.

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

"Push back" is the common cry of the streetcar operator in Hubbard's second novel (after The Talented Ribkins), and main characters Sitwell, Mamie, and Jennie must overcome this command in very different ways. In 1914 New Orleans, the once wealthy white Barclays now struggle to pay every bill. They have only Black servants and take in three Black orphan boys from a nearby asylum. Many years ago, Sitwell was one such orphan and recognizes his present situation for what it really is, working for little reward as a stereotypical Black butler doing parlor tricks to entertain guests. When he and the cook, Mamie, collaborate to create a sauce to cover meager offerings at an important dinner for a favorable business prospect, it is a big hit. The Rib King sauce goes into production, with a mocking caricature of Sitwell on the bottle, and is soon hugely successful—but not to the benefit of its creators. With a shocking tragedy, the story truly takes off, as stereotypes crash down and Mamie and Jennie leave to find something valuable of their own. VERDICT Finely written and worth a second read, this novel would be a fantastic choice for book discussion groups. With complete faithfulness to the text, it could also make an excellent movie.—Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A historical thriller delves into the raw, knotty roots of racial uplift and upheaval that have been transforming America up to the present moment. In her debut, The Talented Ribkins, (2017), Hubbard ingeniously blended the motifs of superhero comic books into a bittersweet road novel tracing the scattered destinies of Black civil rights crusaders. Her follow-up departs from the fantastic but is no less inventive. It begins in 1914 New Orleans with August Sitwell, an enigmatic, circumspect Black man working as groundskeeper for an estate belonging to the Barclays, an upper-class White family no longer as wealthy as it once was. Sitwell became part of the family’s all-Black domestic staff when he was orphaned as a child and has grown to manhood working with “Miss Mamie,” the family’s prodigious cook, and, more recently, with Jennie Williams, a one-time “cakewalk dancer”–turned-maid, and three rambunctious young apprentices, also orphans, whom the family patriarch seeks to “civilize.” As the staff struggles to negotiate their lives among Southern Whites in the depths of the Jim Crow era, the Barclays, desperately seeking a way out of the financial doldrums, make a bargain with an ambitious food entrepreneur to sell Miss Mamie’s vaunted rib sauce to local markets under the brand “The Rib King” with Sitwell’s caricatured image on the label. Neither Mamie nor Sitwell are getting a cent from this transaction, and Sitwell reacts to this exploitation with an act of retribution that reverberates into the next decade as Jennie, by 1924 an entrepreneur with her own brand of beauty products to sell, has to make her perilous way through economic and political intrigue brought about in part by the decade’s surge of African American achievement. The two halves of Hubbard’s chronicle have distinct tones. And even if one prefers the deadpan gothic tactics of the first part to the pell-mell momentum of the second, one will be impressed at all times with Hubbard’s control over her historical milieu as well as her complicated, intriguing characterizations. An imaginative work craftily depicting the failure of imagination that is American racism. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.