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A Powerful, Unforgettable Memoir

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Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward is a very powerful memoir. She called it the hardest thing she’d ever written. It’s not a book you read, and then a few weeks later, can barely remember what it was about. The American Dream was hard won by many amidst the racism rampant in every state and institution, while others’ dreams were crushed by their sheer struggle to survive in a world where opportunity didn’t come easily, depending on the color of your skin. Jesmyn Ward and her siblings were raised in Mississippi during the 70s and 80s. Few who never saw a drinking fountain or bathroom labeled “colored” can understand there was a time when the income tax rules were the same for all races, the military cemeteries were filled with all races, but the benefits derived from freedom and tax revenues were not allocated equally because racism existed. The expression separate but equal, was, in reality, separate and unequal. It was a social crucible that burned hot, and those who came through it to reac...
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A Coming of Age in the Early Years of the 20th Century

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Everything My Mother Taught Me by Alice Hoffman is a wonderful short story. Hoffman has such a gift for conveying the emotional map of a character in subtle but powerful ways. The book is primarily about a daughter, Adeline, and her acutely self absorbed young mother in the early 1900s. The author starts the book out with this passage, “There are those who insist that mothers are born with love for their children and place them before all other things, including their own needs and desires. This was not the case with us.” Adeline remembers, “She had told me often enough to keep my mouth shut, and now I did exactly that. I abolished all language on the day of my father’s funeral.”   After her father dies Adeline and her mother mother move to Thatcher Island on the tip of Cape Ann in Essex County, Massachusetts to work in a lighthouse alongside two couples. Adeline never speaks on the island, and when asked at one point whether she ever could speak, she writes an answer about not spe...
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A Book that Proves Truth is Stranger than Fiction!

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If Upton Sinclair’s purpose in writing his exposé of the meat packing industry was to “set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profit,” No More Tears, Gardiner Harris’ staggering revelatory book, shines a bright light on Big Pharma, focusing on Johnson & Johnson’s and their competitors’ hunger for industry dominance, power, and profits with barely an afterthought for the health and lives of men, women, children, and the elderly who were prescribed their products, and if the almost unbelievable story doesn’t just break readers’ hearts, it will ensure skepticism for feckless government regulatory agencies and their problematic revolving door of appointments with those they have been charged with regulating.   Reading No More Tears may well create outrage at the legacy of powerful “careless people” that makes this F. Scott Fitzgerald Gatsby passage shimmer with the shared theme of zero accountability: “They were careless peo...
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The Wager is a Safe Bet As A Gripping Book About Life, Death, and Adventure on an 18th Century British Warship

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The Wager by David Grann is the poster book for “Truth is stranger than fiction;” this  narrative nonfiction book is a story about a crew of men and boys with ages spanning from 80 years (a cook) to adolescence, who work on the British 18th century ship HMS Wager in 1741. They are sent on a secret Naval mission with a squadron of other ships to destroy any Spanish vessels along the way toward South America and the Pacific Ocean (they were at war with Spain), and also try to locate and commandeer a legendary Spanish treasure ship. Author David Grann had access to “archival debris: the washed-out logbooks, the moldering correspondence, the half-truthful journals, and the surviving records from the troubling court-martial”(Kindle book blurb). This book is like a runaway train I didn’t want to leave. It is gripping and not easily put down.  I posted several passages from this book on social media, prompting a friend to ask if it was similar to William Golding’s book Lord of the Fl...
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It’s One Heck of a Ride!

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Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall may not be the book you expected it to be, because it’s so much better than what you could ever have envisioned. It is so riveting a story, I barely took any time to highlight passages. The narrative pulls readers along, why stop for any reason and delay finding out what the next development will be? During the trial portion of the book in Chapter 54, I literally silenced the Audible narration of my Kindle edition to turn each page myself, desperate to see how the story would end, and just when you think it’s over, new developments arise.  This is an immersive story, the kind that might pull a reader out of a months long reading slump, and all the details are best left for their own discovery. Suffice it to say this story hits on soulmate love, passion, betrayal, loss, grief, love for children and family, wealth, farming, and substance abuse. No stone is left unturned, and all the loose ends get tied up before the story ends. At the time I starte...
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This Book is Written with Humor, Beauty, and Finesse

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I thoroughly enjoyed Sea Wife by Amity Gage. I love to sail, and as a child we spent summers at a large area lake. I had one of those Kool cigarette sailboats which actually had a styrafoam hull, which we fiberglassed. Admittedly I do have a soft spot for books that involve sea voyages and sailing. In this book husband Michael talks his wife Juliet into buying a sailboat and taking their 7 and 3 yr old children on an extended sea voyage.  The wife has experienced some kind of trauma stemming from her childhood, and her PTSD has gotten worse after the births of their two children. The couple is also having problems in their marriage, as couples sometimes do when redefining their roles and responsibilities once children arrive. Michael hopes the time together on the sailing adventure could be healing for both of them. After much discussion Juliet finally gives her husband the green light for their yearlong family sailboat cruise. Later, post voyage, a therapist she works with observe...
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Spend a Year Walkng in Stanley Tucci’s Shoes

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What I Ate In One Year by Stanley Tucci is an interesting, light, humorous, and witty read for anyone interested in cooking, good food, restaurants, acting and actors, what Tucci’s daily business and family life is like, and what the heck is going on with his wife Felicity Blunt who Tucci portrays constantly throughout the book as potentially engaging in affairs, which I’m sure is just a humorous device of some kind. You couldn’t help noticing everytime he mentions where she’s off to, there is a tongue in cheek sarcastic suggestion that other men may be involved, throughout the entire book, yet they pair beautifully in the kitchen, and he makes the point, “Time cooking with someone you love is time well spent.” Before this book I was reading Richard Osman’s latest, We Solve Murders, and struggling to get through which I didn’t expect as I’ve loved previous books he’d written. I found it very different from his books in the Thursday Murder Club series. Tucci’s book by comparison was a v...
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