BookPage August 2009

®

America’s BoOK Review

Pat Conroy

August 2009

returns with a stirring Southern saga

South of Broad

best debuts

Seven new novelists you should be reading

baby brains

Alison Gopnik goes inside infant minds

WILDERNESS WARRIOR

America’s first ‘green’ president

back to school Top picks for the college-bound

fiction favorites

Richard Russo, Sarah Dunant, Valerie Martin and more

®

America’s BoOK Review

CONTENTS

5 Pat Conroy An American master returns with his

Editor Lynn L. Green fiction Editor Abby Plesser web Editor Trisha Ping Contributing Editor Sukey Howard Contributor Roger Bishop Children’s books Allison Hammond Advertising Sales Julia Steele Angela J. Bowman Production Manager Penny Childress Production Designer Karen Trotter Elley SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER Elizabeth Grace Herbert Customer Service Alice Fitzgibbon ONLINE SERVICES manager Scott Grissom

R E V I E W S Our editors evaluate and select for review the best new books published each month. Only books we highly recommend are featured. BookPage is editorially independent and never accepts payment for editorial coverage.

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

S U B S C R I B E

2

Public libraries and bookstores may subscribe to BookPage in quantity for distribution to their patrons. For information, please visit www.BookPage.com or call 1-800-726-4242, ext. 34.

first novel in 14 years

INTERVIEWS 18 Teri Coyne A stand-up comic shows her serious side

in a stunning debut novel

25 Alison Gopnik Exploring the minds of children

FEATURES 8 Woodstock Rembering the legendary festival—just

in time for the 40th anniversary

10 Suzanne Brockmann Meet the author of

Hot Pursuit

in a delightful debut

24 Parenting Tricks and tips for raising them right

and dads—ready for college

31 Crafts The most creative do-it-yourself books of

the summer

Children’s Books 26 Mélanie Watt Meet the author-illustrator 26 School Days Perfect picks to get your little ones

ready for the coming school year

27 Young Adult The best end-of-summer teen reads

The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin

8

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

12

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

12 I’m So Happy For You by Lucinda Rosenfeld 13

Once on a Moonless Night by Dai Sijie

14

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

30

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Nonfiction 4 The First Family by Mike Dash

REVIEWS Fiction 4

Big Machine by Victor LaValle

6

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Debut fiction

14

How to Play the Harmonica by Sam Barry

19

K Blows Top by Peter Carlson

20 The Slippery Year by Melanie Gideon 20 Love is a Four-Letter Word

edited by Michael Taeckens

22

American Chinatown by Bonnie Tsui

25 Between Me and the River by Carrie Host

DEPARTMENTS

Rates are available online, or contact Julia Steele at 615-292-8926, ext.15.

B O O K PA GE.COM

6

8 Amigoland by Oscar Casares

A D V E R T I S E

R E A D A L L O U R R E V I E W S AT

page 7

28 Back to School Getting children—and their moms

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Environmental crusader TR at Yosemite, 1903

12 Well Read Tales of old and new Poland come to life

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Notice: Some books mentioned in this issue may be in short supply or not yet available. Prices of books are subject to change without notice.

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Associate publisher Julia Steele

ahead of his time

ON THE COVER

THE BEST IN NEW BOOKS Publisher Michael A. Zibart

August 2009

The best new novelists—and novels—of the season

page 16

3 4 10 11 13 14 20 22 23

Buzz Girl The Author Enablers Book Clubs Whodunit?

Bestseller Watch Audio Science Fiction Cooking Romance

Cover art © Wendell Minor, from South of Broad by Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday).

buzz girl ➥ Our publishing

insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers The main buzz topic this month is Dan Brown’s Da Vinci follow-up—but beyond that sure-tobe blockbuster lie some interesting new reads.

➥ New from Mitchard Trivia question: what was the very first pick for Oprah’s Book Club? Answer: Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean, a critically acclaimed tale of catastrophe: losing—and finding, nine years later—a child. In the intervening years, the book was made into a film jacquelyn (starring Michelle mitchard Pfeiffer and Treat Williams) and Mitchard wrote several bestsellers for adults, young adults, and children.

Fans will be thrilled to learn that Mitchard has finally written a sequel to Deep End. No Time to Wave Goodbye (Random House) is due to hit shelves September 15. For a sneak peek, here is a quote from the publicity material: “Vincent, the oldest Cappadora son, has become a filmmaker. With the help of his brother Ben and sister Kerry, Vincent makes a documentary film about the lifelong trauma of child abduction and receives an Academy Award nomination for his work. On the night of the award ceremony, the Cappadoras’ world turns upside once again as their courage, loyalty and faith are tested as never before.”

➥ demon to angel From vamps and witches to angels, by way of Jesus. That unusual path maps Anne Rice’s fictional journey. The Vampire Chronicles author will publish Angel

Rick Bragg contest Congratulations to the winners of the May Rick Bragg contest. These five winners received autographed copies of three of Bragg’s bestsellers: Tina Hathcock of N. Ridgeville, OH Rhonda Laney of Fairview, UT Lane Smith of Somerville, AL Pat Padden of Franklin, NJ Christine Turland of St. Louis, MO

You will find more great giveaways every month at BookPage.com and our blog, The Book Case—so don’t forget to visit! 

➥

about a boy Time: Songs of the Seraphim (Knopf) on October 29. In Angel Time, the first in Fans of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity a series, a contract killer finds redemption have something to sing about: Juliet, after traveling through time to 13th-cen- Naked, his new novel due from Riverhead tury England to save a Jewish community. at the end of September, will take readers In blending her renewed religious be- back into familiar territory: the music liefs with the supernatural themes that world. According to USA Today, “[The made her famous, Rice may have hit on novel] features a reclusive, Dylan-like, a winning formula—Angel Time has English singer/songwriter who gets already received a starred review from involved, via e-mail, with a woman in Booklist, and Kirkus calls it “devilishly rural Pennsylvania. As for his novel’s clever.” What do we think? You’ll have to title, Hornby says it has nothing to wait until October to find out, do with nudity: “It’s comes but if the opening pages are from the title of the new, any indication, the complicatacoustic version of Juliet, the ed killer-for-hire Toby O’Dare greatest album by his fictional makes for a compelling lead musician, who’s hoping to character; his “guardian” angel stage a comeback.”

Malchia is a powerful presence Following a collection of and the ending will leave readessays, Housekeeping vs. The ers wanting the next book.

Dirt, a novel for young adults, Rice talked with BookPage Slam, and a collection of interviewer Jay MacDonald columns, Shakespeare Wrote about her change in course anne rice for Money, this is Hornby’s first back when Christ the Lord: Out novel since 2005’s A Long Way of Egypt was published in 2005.

Down.

She said she would never return to the “lost souls” who made her famous: “[O] wild thing nce I returned to the Church and began There has been a last-minute addito see the universe as a place that really tion to the McSweeney’s fall list: an adult did incorporate redemption . . . my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as novel based on Where the Wild Things Are, outsiders and lost souls began to totally titled simply, Wild Things (October). The author? Dave Eggers, who adapted the wane.” children’s book into the screenplay for the anticipated movie directed by Spike Jonze. book brother Like the movie, the adult novelization After the success of President Obama’s seems to have followed a rocky road, with books, a family member hopes to follow a delay or two along the way. A 2008 Pubin his footsteps. His Kenyan half broth- lisher’s Weekly article reported that the er, George Obama, will be telling the book would be pubstory of his “fall into crime and poverty lished as a joint venas a teenager and his eventual embrace ture between Harper of community organizing and of ad- and McSweeney’s vocacy for the poor,” in Homeland, but would bear the a book written with Damien Lewis. Ecco imprint (they George Obama reportedly got six happen to publish figures for the book, which Simon & Eggers’ wife, Vendela Schuster will publish in 2010.

Vida). Now it looks like the project is being handled McSwee- dave eggers for the birds ney’s alone—perhaps It has been four years since her Harper wasn’t up for producing the (faux) blockbuster debut, The Historian, but fur-covered special edition?

Elizabeth Kostova is rising again on January 21 with a second act, The Swan contributor news Thieves. Instead of literature, this time Kostova’s subject is painting—and This month we are pleased to inpainters who struggle to balance love troduce a new SF and fantasy column, and art. The novel goes from 1870s “Sense of Wonder,” penned by contribuFrance to the modern day as a Wash- tor Sean Melican. Sean is an analytical ington, D.C., psychiatrist tries to dis- chemist by day and has been a SF editor cover why one of his patients attacked a and reviewer for years. He lives in Borpainting in the National Gallery. dentown, New Jersey, with his wife and Kostova told Powell’s she began work five children. Don’t miss his first column on The Swan Thieves before The His- in this issue! 

Promises in Death

Berkley, $7.99, 9780425228944

➥

➥

Foreign Body

Berkley, $9.99, 9780425228951

➥

➥

Dead Time

Signet, $9.99, 9780451223777 SIGNET BERKLEY Members of Penguin Group (USA) penguin.com

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

WINNER’S CIRCLE

torian was even published. “I felt it was important for me to get back to writing right away—to draw that magic, private circle again.”

Your favorite authors are NOW IN PAPERBACK

3

HISTORY

The birth of the American Mafia

By Pete Croatto Thanks mostly to movies and television, the Mafia has been romanticized and glamorized. Historian Mike Dash isn’t interested in adding to that. Instead, his readable, revealing saga, The First Family, chronicles the birth and early days of an American institution.

Dozens of men and women figure prominently in this checkered history, so much so that Dash provides a rogues’ gallery for readers to keep up. (Note: you’ll need it.) Three people play prominent roles: Giuseppe “The Clutch Hand” Morello, a thug from Sicily—the real birthplace of the Mafia—who immigrates to New York City in 1894 and builds “the first family of organized crime in the United States.”

Two lawmen give him perpetual trouble. One is Italian-born detective Joseph Petrosino, whose standing as “New York’s great expert on Italian crime” proves invaluable to the city but ultimately deadly to him. The other is William Flynn, head of the Secret Service’s New York bureau, whose dogged investigation into Morello’s counterfeiting operation marks the beginning of the end for “The Clutch Hand.”

There’s a lot to digest, but Dash (Batavia’s Graveyard) goes beyond offering a timeline with thugs. He describes The First Family the awful conditions in Sicily that created the Mafia, while By Mike Dash examining the harsh lives of Italian immigrants in New Random House York in the 1890s and early 20th century. Crime was a most $27, 416 pages appealing option, and since amateurs could be successful, ISBN 9781400067220 there certainly was room for a professional outfit. Like any good entrepreneur, Morello saw a need and provided a service. He had a good run, but after his imprisonment in 1910, greed, infighting and bloodshed became increasingly common. Let’s just say that lots of people didn’t die from natural causes, including Morello in 1930.

Sexy, macho details aren’t prominent, but by eschewing those, Dash clearly shows the dark side of the plucky immigrant story. For Giuseppe Morello, the American Dream meant bringing the Mafia—his salvation—to America. Morello was a success story, just not the kind you learned about in school. o New Jersey writer Pete Croatto belongs to AAA, but not the Mafia.

FICTION

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

A rollicking adventure ride through life

4

By Stephenie Harrison Ricky Rice is a down-on-his-luck former heroin addict who works as a janitor at a bus depot and focuses on just getting by. But this quickly changes when he receives a one-way bus ticket to Vermont from an unknown source in the mail, along with a note that enigmatically tells him the time has come to honor a secret promise he once made.

Summoning all of his courage and going along for the ride, Ricky finds himself part of a rag-tag band of investigators, tasked with finding and following a divine Voice in modern-day America. Soon, Ricky embarks on a journey that will forever change his life, as he faces the demons from his past and even battles a few new ones along the way—all the while grappling with the big questions of faith, doubt, race, class, sex and all the little ones in between.

To say any more would do a disservice to Big Machine, since half the fun for the reader is being sucked into the whirlpool of Ricky’s awe-inspiring adventure. Hysterical yet heartbreaking, playful yet pensive, bleak yet hopeful, Victor LaValle’s novel masterfully blends these contrasting elements to produce a rich and rewarding literary experience. LaValle shines a light onto the shadowed fringes of society, tackling the gritty and grimy aspects of life with just Big Machine the right mix of brash wit and tender compassion. A mot- By Victor LaValle ley amalgam of sci-fi, mystery, and crime noir, Big Machine Spiegel & Grau transcends the boundaries of standard literary fiction and $25, 384 pages defies readers’ expectations at every turn. Fantasy and real- ISBN 9780385527989 ity constantly mingle, but the core issues—though messy and complicated—are undeniably human.

Wildly creative but always believable, it’s little wonder LaValle has developed a diverse following, ranging from Pulitzer-winning author Michael Cunningham to rap artist Mos Def. With Big Machine, LaValle has created a novel that makes you feel as much as it makes you think, proving that he is not just a writer to watch, but a writer to read. o Stephenie Harrison lives and writes in Nashville.

THE AUTHOR ENABLERS Literature from the City of Lights Dateline: Paris, where your intrepid Author Enablers almost forgot we had a column due because we are enjoying our honeymoon in this most civilized of cities. We would have loved to bring you with us, but you would have had to sleep in the bathtub. But wait! Maybe there is a way. . . .

There is not only a grand literary history here, but a lot of actual living writers roaming around, and we met quite a few. We invite you to come along to Paris by popping down to your local library or bookstore for some late summer reading by these illustrious authors.

Upon our arrival we landed on a bed in David Sedaris’ apartment in the sixth arrondissement. How often does that happen? David wasn’t there, but his delightful partner Hugh stayed around long enough

BY SAM BARRY & to show us how the washing machine worked. The reason we were in this parKATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK ticular apartment, and not, say, President Sarkozy’s pad, is that our pals Amy Tan and Lou DeMattei invited us to stay there with them. This brings us to our first recommendation: Amy’s Saving Fish from Drowning, a witty and delightful novel in which San Francisco socialite Bibi Chen has planned a vacation along the Burma Road for a group of friends, only to die days before the trip begins. Bibi narrates the tale of the disastrous journey from beyond the grave.

The apartment building is the site of the original Shakespeare & Company, the first English-language bookstore on the continent. Owner Sylvia Beach published James Joyce’s seminal work Ulysses when no other publisher was willing to do so. Joyce also lived here, so you can add Ulysses to your Paris reading itinerary, though he will transport you to Dublin. And while we are at it, you can add the groundbreaking Native Son by Richard Wright, who once lived just around the corner.

But back to the present and David and Hugh’s lovely apartment. As big fans of Sedaris’ work, we were delighted to encounter his socks and underwear in the closet, not to mention his macabre interests tastefully represented by the art on the wall. We recommend When You Are Engulfed in Flames, his brilliant collection of essays.

At the wonderful restaurant Les Deux Magots, we ran into conceptual artist and author Jonathon Keats, whose The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six reimagines Jewish folklore in stories about the Talmudic idea of 36 righteous souls who must always exist in order for the world to sustain itself. That evening Harvard professor and string-theorist physicist Lisa Randall stopped by, here for the premier of an opera based on her work, Hypermusic Prologue. Her latest book is Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions.

Each month a group of fiction writers meets for lunch at Le Rotunde (aka “home of the scum of Greenwich Village,” according to Jake in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, another good Paris read). An ordering fiasco resulted in Kathi getting a huge plate of salty smoked salmon, but the company was delicious: Le Grand Prix de Cognac literary prize-winner Jake Lamar, author Readings from a Parisian honeymoon of Ghosts of Saint-Michel; Diane Johnson, author of Lulu in Marrakech; Polly Devlin, author of All of Us There; and Barbara Chase-Riboud, author of Sally Hemings. Later, we attended a reading at The Village Voice, an English-language bookstore (today’s Shakespeare & Company and home to a terrific reading series). Tarun Tejpal, author of The Alchemy of Desire, was interviewed by his French editor, Marc Parent. Also present was Susan Griffin, author of Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy, and afterward we all went out for dinner at a bistro near rue St. Germaine.

We also saw our dear friend Rabih Alemeddine, author of The Hakawati (Kathi’s favorite novel of 2008) and Pierre Haski, author of The Diary of Ma Yan (a forthcoming HarperCollins title), and had the true pleasure of meeting Duncan Clark, a Twitter tweeter of epic proportions.

We want Lynn, our editor at BookPage, to know that we are available to serve as regular correspondents from the City of Literary Lights. [Ed.: Thanks! Can I join you?]

Meanwhile, with this list of great books by wonderful authors, we’ll always have Paris . . . now please get out of the bathtub. o In a first for BookPage columnists, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry got married (to each other) in June. After a fabulous honeymoon trip, they are back on the job, answering questions for aspiring writers at authorenabler@aol.com. Don’t miss their new blog at BookPage.com.

COVER STORY

Pat Conroy’s unforgettable epic “Nothing happens by accident. I learned this the hard way, long before I knew that the hard way was the only path to true, certain knowledge. Early in my life, I came to fear the power of strange conveyances. Though I thought I always chose the safest path, I found myself powerless to avoid the small treacheries of fate. Because I was a timid boy, I grew up fearful and knew deep in my heart the world was out to get me. Before the summer of my senior year in high school, the real life I was always meant to lead lay coiled and ready to spring in the hot Charleston days that followed.”

Heather Gudenkauf’s debut is a stunning novel of family devotion, honesty and regret that will linger long after the last page is turned.

S

© DAVID G. SPIELMAN

o begins the first chapter of South of Broad, Pat Conroy’s lush, remarkable new novel set in Charleston, South Carolina, and spanning some 20 years from the late 1960s to the 1980s. Following a memoir (My Losing Season) and a homespun recipe collection (The Pat Conroy Cookbook), South of Broad is Conroy’s first novel in 14 years. And lucky for us, it’s another big, sprawling, heartbreaking novel, sure to please seasoned Conroy fans and new readers alike.

It’s said that great writers write what they know—and that’s certainly true of Conroy. As the son of a Marine colonel, Conroy channeled his experiences into his first novel, The Great Santini. Perhaps his most autobiographical work, it depicted a teenage son brutalized by a violent fighter pilot father. Childhood abuse and tragedy also haunt the Wingo children in the 1986 novel The Prince of Tides, most notably Savannah Wingo, who repeatedly tries to take her own life. Conroy’s own sister reportedly battled mental illness, and one of his brothers committed suicide. Though every Conroy novel is different, the themes of parental abuse, mental illness, forbidden love, Catholic guilt, reconciling one’s past with the present and, of course, the nature and meaning of Southern identity, come back over and over. And in South of Broad, Conroy artfully handles these seemingly unpalatable subjects once again.

PAT CONROY Eighteen-year-old Leopold Bloom King, the son of Jasper and Lindsay King, is a deeply misunderstood teenager. Named after a character in Ulysses by his James Joyce-loving mother (who also happens to be the school principal and an ex-nun), Leo has spent much of his childhood trying to make sense of the suicide of the older brother he “idol-worshipped,” Steve, and his strained relationship with his icy, overbearing mother (who insists her own son call her “Dr. King”). Steve’s suicide shocked and devastated the King family, throwing Leo into a tailspin of anger, panic and depression.

After years of therapy and self-imposed exile, Leo vows that the summer of 1969 will be his fresh start. Over the course of the next few months, the once friendless Leo King meets and befriends an eccentric cast of characters. There is Ike Jefferson, the black son of the high school’s new football coach who is wary of getting close to whites in a time of racial tension; the orphaned siblings Niles and Starla Whitehead, assigned to Leo’s charge as they are begrudgingly integrated into the local high school; the beautiful Molly Huger, her entitled boyfriend Chad Rutledge and Chad’s tomboy sister, Fraser—members of the blue-blood Charleston elite, who seem almost untouchable to someone like Leo. And then there are the glamorous, flamboyant Poe twins—Sheba and South of Broad Trevor—running from the demons of their family’s past

By Pat Conroy and landing in the house across the street from the Kings.

A. Talese/Doubleday It is the Poe twins, with their mysterious, terrifying legacy, Nan $29.95, 528 pages who will change Leo’s life—and the lives of those around ISBN 9780385413053 them—forever.

Also available on audio It’s an impressive lineup of characters, and an ambitious, multi-faceted story of prejudice, privilege and love that moves from the heady days of a teenage Charleston summer to the bleak realities of AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Conroy uses his many gifts as a storyteller and cultural observer to make South of Broad at once a complete portrait of a specific time and place, and also a classic, timeless coming-of-age story.

This is a novel for anyone who has had real, imperfect friendships, who has questioned themselves and their choices, and who has gone the distance (both metaphorically and literally) for someone they loved. Conroy is a master of American fiction and he has proved it once again in this magnificent love letter to his beloved Charleston, and to friendships that will stand the test of time. o

Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children.

And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

On sale July 28, 2009.

www.MIRABooks.com

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

—ABBY PLESSER

It happens quietly one August morning.

Two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.

5

FICTION

FICTION

Critic’s novel has a magic touch

The play’s the thing

By Jillian Quint In his third novel, Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman deftly and unabashedly walks the line between literary and genre fiction, creating a world of both fantasy and gritty psychological realism. Think J.K. Rowling meets C.S. Lewis meets Donna Tartt.

At the book’s start, high school senior Quentin Coldwater—brilliant, misunderstood and obsessed with a series of children’s books set in a magical land—is trying his hardest to escape his predictable Brooklyn adolescence. That is, until he is unexpectedly admitted to a prestigious college in upstate New York: Brakebills, the pre-eminent American institute for budding magicians. There, students slave away over potions and spells and are occasionally transformed into flocks of geese. For Quentin, this is eye-opening. His talents are nurtured, his limits pushed.

But it’s not all rainbows and broomsticks. There are also the tiny triumphs and trials of any college experience: competition, stress, sex, drugs, heartbreak and the looming uncertainty of graduation and the world beyond. Quentin and his friends move to Manhattan after finishing wizard school, where they live in a cramped apartment, get drunk, sleep The Magicians with one another and wonder what good their prestigious By Lev Grossman magic education is actually doing them—and why their Viking $26.95, 416 pages childhood fantasies were so off-base.

And it’s here that Grossman’s true cleverness comes into ISBN 9780670020553 play. For, as much as The Magicians is an allegorical romp Also available on audio about “growing up” in a Harry Potter world (though, admittedly, with a bit more R-rated language), it is also an astute piece of criticism of the way in which literature sets up expectations that no real—or magical—world can ever live up to. Eventually, Quentin learns that the land from his books does, in fact, exist. But, like much in life, it’s not at all as he’d imagined it.

Grossman’s highly acclaimed previous novel, Codex, also asked readers to put aside preconceptions and give themselves over to a fictional world. It’s a testament to the author’s astounding creativity and delicate sensitivity that we are once again so willing to do so. o Jillian Quint is an editor at a publishing house in New York. She lives in Brooklyn.

By Lauren Bufferd As a novelist, the gifted Valerie Martin rarely repeats herself. From Victorian London (Mary Reilly) to antebellum New Orleans (Property), Martin has an uncanny ability to hit the mark in whatever era she chooses to explore. Her new novel, The Confessions of Edward Day, is set in 1970s New York and focuses on the tightly knit theater community where the day jobs are mindless, the competition fierce and on-stage nudity is the latest thing.

Confessions follows aspiring actor Edward Day and his colleagues as they make their way through cheap apartments, summer stock and the ever-elusive search for an Equity card.

But after Day joins friends for a weekend at the Jersey shore, his life and career take a radical turn. He meets and becomes involved with Madeleine, a beautiful but unstable actress. He also encounters the mysterious Guy Margate, to whom he has almost an instant aversion. Guy bears a marked physical resemblance to Edward, but it is after he saves Edward from drowning that their lives become intertwined. The two struggle through a decade of prickly encounters, each man seething with jealousy and commonplace dislike.

Edward’s career takes off after a well-reviewed production The Confessions of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, but he is never of Edward Day quite able to shake Guy—who grows more and more de- By Valerie Martin manding as the years pass. After Guy and Madeleine marry, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday the tale becomes as suspenseful as a thriller. The story culmi- $25, 304 pages nates in Madeleine and Edward getting cast as the lovers in a ISBN 9780385525848 production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya where their respective roles painfully reflect the reality of their personal situations.

The ever-shifting relationship between emotion and action is an actor’s stock in trade, but how we muddle though life with our feelings, sensations and memories to guide us is a keen part of the human experience. In writing a novel about theater, Martin has also written a novel about life and the issues raised by Edward and Guy’s dilemma—what do we owe one another, when is it necessary to put another person’s needs before our own, can a debt ever be repaid?—are universal. o Lauren Bufferd writes from Nashville.

down South!

Spend your summer Dixie cash

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

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INTERVIEW

Teddy’s crusade

Historian captures TR’s role as environmental warrior

By Edward Morris heodore Roosevelt’s passion for the rugged outdoor life mated 150,000 letters that capsulated his thoughts and travels. is widely known. But it remained for historian Douglas His journeys and utterances were also “good copy” at the time for Brinkley to document—virtually on a week-by-week America’s increasingly influential daily newspapers. basis—the extent to which TR transformed his enthusiasm for “Roosevelt’s great talent was not manipulating Congress, which nature into America’s gain and glory. The results of Brinkley’s he looked on with a fair amount of disdain,” Brinkley says. “He exhaustive research reverberate through The Wilderness Warrior: was a genius at manipulating the media. He loved reporters. He Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for was a writer himself and a voracious America, a whopping (almost 1,000reader. So any new book by a journalpage) examination of Roosevelt’s fight ist that came out, he read it. He also to save America’s unique natural spaces. read all the newspapers and periodicals Elevated to the presidency in 1901 of his day and knew the reporters by after the assassination of William name. He won over a number of [news] McKinley, Roosevelt used the power people to the conservation movement.” of his office not simply to advocate the Politically, Roosevelt was hard to pin conservation of natural resources but down. He was a rabid America-firster, a also to impose sweeping environmenbeliever in westward expansion and in tal measures by fiat. “In seven years and the “civilizing” or displacement of Indisixty-nine days [as president],” Brinans. Yet he steadfastly thwarted the capkley writes, “Roosevelt . . . saved more italists who sought to exploit the nathan 240 million acres of American tion’s resources for private advantage. wilderness.”

He gleefully slaughtered game animals, In one sense, Brinkley has been preeven as he fought to protect them and paring to write this book for most of his their habitats for posterity. life. “My mother and father were high “The truth is that hunters and fishschool teachers” in Perrysburg, Ohio, he ermen were the first environmentalists tells BookPage from his office in Housin the United States,” Brinkley asserts, ton, where he is professor of history noting that Roosevelt shipped many DOUGLAS BRINKLEY at Rice University. “We had a 24-foot of his kills to scientists to study and to Coachman trailer, and we would visit taxidermists to mount. “Before DNA presidential sites and national parks. I testing or banding of animals,” Brinhad been to Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt’s kley continues, “taxidermy was the way home, when I was a boy, and I was enwe learned about the natural world.” amored by the study and the library and As Brinkley sees it, Roosevelt “sold the big-game trophies. Then we would environmentalism by being a cowboy/ visit a lot of these parks—Yellowstone, hunter. That was his great contribuYosemite, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, tion. Without the persona of, ‘Look, the Petrified Forest and other places—I I’m a cowboy, I ride on a horse, and I’ve write about [here]. hunted grizzly bear and black bear and “But what really galvanized this elk and buffalo’ then he wouldn’t have book for me was in 1992 I brought a had the credibility to say, ‘You know lot of students [from Hofstra University] on a program I called what? We should create a buffalo commons to save the buffalo.’

The Majic Bus. They earned college credits living on the road, He was able to sell enough people on that because he wasn’t seen visiting presidential sites and national parks like my family vaas an effete intellectual talking about biology. . . . He was one part cation. I came upon the town of Medora, North Dakota, where Darwin and one part James Fenimore Cooper.”

TR spent his Badlands days, and I was transfixed by this quaint, In the course of his environmental campaigns, Roosevelt cowboy-like hamlet. I started at that point micro-looking at TR crossed paths—and sometimes swords—with such luminaries and conservation as a topic.” as novelist Owen Wister (who dedicated The Virginian to him), Brinkley says he thinks the subject of land use—the question painter Frederic Remington (then a relative unknown whom TR of what to do with the West—was the “big issue” between the end would tap to illustrate some of his magazine articles), Tuskegee of the Civil War and the start of World War I. He plans to follow Institute founder Booker T. Washington (with whom Roosevelt The Wilderness Warrior with two more related volumes that will dined at the White House, much to the chagrin of many promichronicle the American environmental movement through the nent Southerners), Mark Twain (who opposed Roosevelt on the administration of President Clinton.

Spanish-American War and later derided him in print for his im“We’ve created this extraordinary system of wildlife refuges, pulsiveness and bloodlust) Jack London (whose fiction Roosevelt parks and forests,” says Brinkley, “and we’ve pioneered in savattacked for biological inaccuracy) and folklorist John Lomax ing endangered species and rehabilitating lakes and rivers. We’ve (for whom Roosevelt personally secured a grant to enable him to done a lot of things right. In many ways, the conservation story continue his seminal study of American cowboy songs). is a triumphal American story, but it’s also filled with warnings Apart from its impressive scholarship, The Wilderness Warrior about the things we’re not doing propalso has an appealing turn-of-the-20th century design. The ilerly now.” lustrations are integrated into the text rather than displayed on Roosevelt left a literary trail Brinseparate pages, and each chapter is prefaced by a list of phrases kley found easy to follow. In addition that outline the topics covered within. to his 30 or so books, most of which Brinkley applauds Roosevelt for his “bold, hubristic moves” to dealt with nature, TR wrote an estipreserve the nation’s most arresting landscapes. “He was the only politician we had in the White House in that period who had a biological sense of the world, who understood the need for species survival and did something about it. . . . When you open up a The Wilderness Warrior Rand McNally map and look at all the green on the United States,

By Douglas Brinkley you’re looking at TR’s America.” o Harper, $34.99, 960 pages ISBN 9780060565282 Edward Morris writes from Nashville. © PENNY TURNER GREEN

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CULTURE

FICTION

Woodstock turns 40

Family follies

By Ron Wynn he most turbulent decade in American history was nearing its end on August 15, 1969, when the Woodstock Music & Art Festival began. An event that brought more than half a million people to Max Yasgur’s farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York for three days of music and celebration, Woodstock signaled the popularity and potency of modern rock ’n’ roll in American society, and ultimately led to the creation of today’s popular music empire and celebrity culture. Three books, two new volumes and an updated reissue, provide exhaustive and often spirited accounts from insiders, historians and participants in the epic festival that paved the way for the convergence of commerce and culture that constitutes such contemporary spectacles as Bonnaroo.

By Harvey Freedenberg Things aren’t going well for Judd Foxman. His wife Jen has been carrying on a torrid affair with his boss. His father has just died of cancer and on the day of the funeral Jen informs him she’s pregnant. And that’s only the beginning of the poignant and hilarious events that pour forth with an almost manic intensity in Jonathan Tropper’s darkly comic contemporary family saga, This Is Where I Leave You. Mort Foxman’s dying request is that his wife and four adult children observe the Jewish mourning practice of shiva, remaining together for seven days following his burial.

“It’s like a wake,” Judd observes, “except it’s going to last for seven days, and there’s no booze.” Mort’s widow Hillary is a psychiatrist who’s authored a best-selling book on child rearing. Now, she’s forced to confront the consequences of applying her (sometimes bizarre) prescriptions to the rearing of her brood.

Within the walls of the family homestead, the Foxman children wrestle mightily with their demons as they sort out their father’s legacy. Romances are rekindled; punches are thrown; and in one theatrical scene after another the members of the clan pick the scabs from their psychic wounds while re-enacting—in a single chaotic week—the emo- This Is Where I tional struggles of a lifetime. Tropper’s triumph in this sly Leave You and sympathetic novel lies in making us care deeply about a group of people who on the surface aren’t especially like- By Jonathan Tropper able and who ruthlessly expose each other’s character flaws Dutton as they engage in some shockingly bad behavior. In all that, $25.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780525951278 they’re fully human in the best and worst senses of the word.

The story of the Foxman family is messy, painful, funny, sad and, in the end, oh so real.

You don’t have to be Jewish to wince in pain or laugh with joy at the pageant of domestic comedy and drama on display here. It’s impossible to pigeonhole this vibrant story, but if you want to venture a try there’s only one word for it—and that’s life. o Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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Behind the scenes The Road To Woodstock: From The Man Behind The Legendary Festival (Ecco, $29.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780061576553) is famed promoter and artist manager Michael Lang’s account of the maneuvering, deal-making and deft planning that resulted in Woodstock. Only in his 20s, he’d already organized the Miami Pop Festival in 1968 and enjoyed producing other shows and concerts. He deemed himself part of a new generation rejecting the old social order and embracing fresh ideas about such issues as civil rights, sexuality and drugs. Lang envisioned Woodstock as much more than a series of concerts: it would also be a forum for alternative political and social philosophies, and a chance to debunk myths about long-haired kids, their music and their heroes.

The book documents the daily improvising on details like staging, security and contracts. Lang recruited the help of everyone from The Hog Farm, a commune whose assistance ranged from aiding victims of drug overdoses to providing food for hungry kids, to off-duty cops who took security gigs against the wishes of their superiors, and apprentice carpenters who helped design and build sets with minimal or no specifications.

It also contains several rare photographs and many great stories. These include Lang recruiting Peter Townshend of The Who by keeping him awake and plying him with alcohol, and getting a terrified Richie Havens to open the concert, then having him do so many encores he forgets the words to a number and starts wailing “Freedom.”

History of a phenom If Lang’s book takes an ultra-personal approach, Brad Littleproud and Joanne Hague’s Woodstock: Peace, Music & Memories (Krause, $24.99, 255 pages, ISBN 9780896898332) is the prototypical historical chronicle. Littleproud and Hague were too young to attend the festival, but they interviewed its co-creator and promoter Artie Kornfield, along with numerous Woodstock survivors. Their colorful chronicles add spice to what would otherwise be a dry factual summary of the concert and related episodes.

Kornfield’s anecdotes dovetail almost exactly with Lang’s, while the spicy rhetoric of such figures as peace activist Wavy Gravy shows that not everyone at Yasgur’s farm was in a joyous and giving mood. There are also 350 color and black-and-white pictures, many of them great candid shots of folks enjoying the music, being overcome by the spectacle and reveling in the atmosphere.

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Picturing legends

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Like Lang and Kornfield, photographer Elliott Landy considered himself part of the new order Woodstock was created to serve. But his involvement and connections came from the journalistic rather than musical end. He took pictures for various underground and alternative newspapers and magazines, and became friends with Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin before the festival. Landy was also a prolific contributor to record labels, providing spectacular shots that would become legendary album covers.

While Woodstock Vision: The Spirit of A Generation (BackBeat, $35, 224 pages, ISBN 9780879309657) was first released in 1994, this latest version includes a special 90-page photo commemorative of the Woodstock festival personally selected by Landy from his archive. Because of his relationships with artists, his photos were never posed or staged. Whether it’s classic album covers like Dylan’s Nashville Skyline or Janis Joplin and Richie Havens before and after gut-wrenching Woodstock performances, Landy’s Woodstock Vision gives incredible entry into the personalities of icons.

There will be many other Woodstock retrospective items coming in the days leading up to the anniversary date. Still, these books are a fine addition to the legacy of sources that evaluate the three-day journey that helped change a nation’s culture. o Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville CityPaper and other publications.

FICTION

Road trip reunites estranged brothers

By Jessica Inman Oscar Casares’ Amigoland, his first novel and a follow-up to his much-acclaimed book of short stories, Brownsville, is a liberating journey full of warmth and color.

Don Fidencio and Don Celestino are senior-citizen brothers who live near each other but haven’t spoken in years. Their falling-out has something to do with a haircut, or the fact that Celestino never quite believed Fidencio’s account of a story their grandfather told him. At the prompting of his much younger new girlfriend, Socorro, Celestino attempts to reconnect with his aging brother. One fateful morning, Celestino and Socorro spring Fidencio from his nursing home. And bickering all the way, they journey through Mexico in search of their grandfather’s childhood home (which may not actually exist the way it does in Fidencio’s mind).

By the last page, the trio just might find exactly what they need—but didn’t know they were searching for.

This dryly humorous yet big-hearted novel boasts three compelling and intricately drawn characters. Don Fidencio is imprisoned in a nursing home and growing bitter—and terrified—over the betrayals of his aging body, even as he holds on to his stubbornness and a still-flickering hope for resolution. Don Celestino shares his brother’s stubborn Amigoland pride and faces his own uncertain future with a quiet so- By Oscar Casares briety. The two are just alike enough to clash—and alike Little, Brown enough to slowly grow to understand each other. $23.99, 368 pages Meanwhile, Socorro, Celestino’s cleaning-lady-turned- ISBN 9780316159692 lover, is a study in patience and wistfulness. Her name means “help,” and help she will—help broker understanding between the two brothers, help Fidencio during their whirlwind of travel and in the end, one hopes, help herself finally get what she wants.

In Casares’ gifted hands, the brothers and Socorro completely come to life, while the group’s impromptu trip to Mexico feels like a refreshing, rejuvenating trip for the reader as well as the characters. And the ending? Bittersweet, unexpected and undeniably precious.

All told, Amigoland is full of new friends and makes for perfect summer reading. o Jessica Inman writes and reads in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Book clubs Best paperbacks for reading groups The Good Thief

By Hannah Tinti Set in 19th-century New England, Tinti’s wonderfully readable debut novel features an unusual protagonist: a one-handed orphan named Ren. Abandoned as an infant, 12-year-old Ren is one of the unfortunate inhabitants of Saint Anthony’s, a Catholic home for forgotten children. When he’s adopted by Benjamin, a con artist and thief, Ren finds himself being used as an accessory for crime. Concocting outlandish stories to account for Ren’s affliction, Benjamin takes advantage of the boy’s handicap to filch money from the sympa- Dial Press thetic. Ren has no choice but to follow Benjamin’s lead, and $15, 352 pages ISBN 9780385337465 the pair eventually take up residence in a peculiar place called North Umbrage, where a mousetrap factory operated by a legion of young women is the major source of industry. Drawn to the town by its grave-robbing prospects, Benjamin is soon involved in the trafficking of dead bodies—work that Ren finds horrifying. Ren’s greatest desire is to be part of a family, and as the novel progresses, he does just that, joining a strange little tribe that consists of a giant, a dwarf and a deaf woman. But there’s more strangeness in store for Ren, as he comes close to solving the mystery of his own origins. Recalling the work of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, this is a spirited, expertly crafted tale written by a gifted new novelist. A reading group guide is available online at randomhouse.com.

A Mercy

By Toni Morrison The Nobel Prize-winning author returns with another masterwork, a brief novel set on the east coast of America during the 1600s. Florens, a young slave girl, is given to a sympathetic plantation owner named Jacob Vaark in order to pay off a debt incurred by her owner. Located in upstate New York, Jacob’s farm is home to a group of women who are struggling to make lives for themselves. Rebekka, Jacob’s wife, endures the deaths of her children from the harsh conditions of plantation living—a tragedy that makes her question her trust in Vintage God. Lina, a 14-year-old Native American who lost her fam- $15, 224 pages ily to smallpox, helps Jacob run the farm. She feels suspicious ISBN 9780307276766 of a fellow servant named Sorrow—an odd young girl—and hopes to stave off loneliness by bonding with Florens. But when Jacob becomes sick, the women’s lives and the meager stability afforded by plantation existence are endangered. Narrated by each of the women in turn, the book offers a panoramic view of America during the 17th century. The hardships her characters experience—both physical and spiritual—are recounted in vivid and poetic detail by Morrison, who is unmatched when it comes to writing about America’s troubled history. Fierce and thrilling, this is an unflinching examination of our country’s coming-of-age and of the dynamics of slavery. A reading group guide is available online at randomhouse.com.

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard

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A star in the romance genre with more than 45 books to her credit, Suzanne Brockmann leapt onto bestseller lists more than a decade ago with her suspense series featuring Navy SEALs. Her latest, Hot Pursuit (Ballantine, $26, 416 pages, ISBN 9780345501578), is the 15th book in the Troubleshooters series. Brockmann lives near Boston with her husband, author Ed Gaffney.

By Erin McGraw Set in the 1920s, McGraw’s fifth book is a charming historical novel with an ambitious heroine at its center. Seventeenyear-old Nell Plat is an uncommonly gifted seamstress who makes dresses for the women of Grant Station, Kansas, where she lives with her husband and two infant daughters. Nell’s failure as a cook, however, has a damaging effect upon her marriage, and so she decides to take off for Hollywood and create a new identity for herself. Relying on a French grammar book and her own ingenuity, Nell adapts an exciting new persona—that of Madame Annelle, seamstress to the Mariner $13.95, 384 pages wealthy, an identity that opens unexpected doors. She eventu- ISBN 9780547237855 ally marries an oilman named George Curran and has a third daughter, Mary. But Nell’s break with her old life isn’t as clean as she’d hoped, and the past eventually comes back to haunt her. Her two daughters—full-grown, liberated flappers—track her down in California. Adopting an air of elegance and using the names Lisette and Aimée, they have big dreams of taking Hollywood by storm. Nell tries to play them off as her younger sisters, but the deceit soon fails—as do the rest of her lies. A richly detailed narrative about one woman’s quest to transform herself and find the happiness she craves, McGraw’s book brims with the joie de vivre of the Roaring ’20s. This is a fast-moving narrative that fans of literary fiction will love. o —JULIE HALE

WHODUNIT? With friends like these . . .

Mystery of the month

Four friends: Alex, the ne’er-do-well dad who toils by night as a bartender; Ian, the high-stakes dealmaker with an addictive personality; Jenn, a travel agent with an ever-more-humdrum existence; and Mitch, the doorman at a tony apartment building. Somehow, amid the comings and goings of other friends and acquaintances, these four have stuck together, carving out space for one another at a down-at-the-heels bar every Thursday night—the very bar where Alex serves as bartender.

Their major bond is that they are all inveterate game players, the favorite pastime being variations of “what if,” as in “what if I had the opportunity to appropriate a bucket of money that didn’t belong to me?” They are about to find out the answer to that question, and it will be light years away from what any of them

BY BRUCE TIERNEY could have predicted. Marcus Sakey’s The Amateurs (Dutton, $25.95, 388 pages, ISBN 9780525951261) takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of epic proportions, an illplanned heist in which Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) runs amok, and outcomes can only be guessed at by extrapolating worst-case scenarios. Friendships will be strained, new alliances formed and the rules of the game will change at the whims of the key players, leading up to a dramatic (and more than a little cathartic) conclusion.

In a month filled with extraordinarily good mysteries, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire (Knopf, $25.95, 528 pages, ISBN 9780307269980) stands apart from the crowd, a hip post-modern tale of a crusading journalist and an inordinately talented computer hacker caught up together in the aftermath of a lurid murder. Lisbeth Salander, a troubled young woman who can play a computer the way Tommy Emmanuel can play an acoustic guitar, has used her talents, quite illegally and untraceably, to make herself a wealthy woman. It should almost be the happily-ever-after end of the story, except that her fingerprints have been found on a gun used to kill a pair of researchers on the eve of their publication of an expose on sex slavery in Scandinavia.

Respected journalist Michael Blomqvist doesn’t think Salander had anything to do with it. He had a relationship with her some time back, and he knows all too well what she is capable of—or more importantly, what she is not capable of. Blomqvist’s relationship with Salander ended badly, and she doesn’t trust him any further than she can spit, but with or without her help, Blomqvist intends to clear her name, and perhaps in the process figure out just what went wrong between the two of them. Blomqvist’s only ally is an elderly hospitalized man of limited communication capacity, Salander’s onetime advocate. Together, the men launch a investigation parallel to the official one, an investigation without the foregone conclusions that seem to characterize the police work in the case.

Salander is an edgy character, more than a little reminiscent of Robert Eversz’ punk photographer/detective Nina Zero; Blomqvist, for his part, is an urbane mix of relentless researcher and firebrand reformer, always stirred, never shaken.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is their second outing together; their first, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, should be on your “do not miss” short list as well. o —BRUCE TIERNEY

Dark times in Africa Kwei Quartey’s Wife of the Gods (Random House, $24, 336 pages, ISBN 9781400067596) is one of the best debuts I have had the pleasure of reading in some time. Set in Ghana, the book has generated comparisons to Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books, although I have to say I don’t see any similarity whatsoever—apart from the African setting. Kwartey’s book is a darker tale of murder in the bush, a malevolent village shaman and a tradition of human bondage. The title refers to young women who are “apprenticed” to fetish priests, in order to bring blessings and good fortune to their families. They are little more than indentured servants at best, or concubine slaves at worst. In the midst of this antiquated system, an attractive social worker is murdered, and the investigation quickly overwhelms the local constabulary. The big guns are summoned from the capital, and immediately there is turf conflict with the locals, who have identified (or perhaps framed?) a village lad for the crime. As Detective Inspector Darko Dawson digs into the meager assortment of clues, he comes face to face with a mystery that has haunted him since he was a child. Wife of the Gods is a lush and well-written tale of murder most foul, set in an alien landscape, but laced with many of the same motivations and alibis you might expect to find much closer to home.

Dueling narratives make for a suspenseful ride

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A terrific novel!”

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One of my favorite types of suspense novel follows the actions of two main characters, displaced either by distance or time, and their inexorable march toward one another. Dan Fesperman’s latest novel, The Arms Maker of Berlin (Knopf, $24.95, 384 pages, ISBN 9780307268372), plays on this theme like a classical concerto. In half of the story, the action follows Kurt Bauer, the college-age son of a Berlin industrialist in the closing days of WWII. Bauer is faced with the Sophie’s Choice of selling out his friends and lover to save his family; his decision will haunt him for the rest of his days. Fast forward to present times: in the wake of the suspicious jailhouse death of his estranged mentor, a young professor of German history finds himself conscripted by the FBI to do some consulting regarding a box of wartime German documents—documents featuring the aforementioned Bauer, and real-life prototype spymaster Allen Dulles. Under normal circumstances, it would be a researcher’s dream, but not when people are lining up to steal the documents and, if necessary, kill anyone who stands in their way. And so the cat-and-mouse games begin, the trail leading from New England to Switzerland to Berlin, with both “white hat” and “black hat” guys in hot pursuit. There are clues to the denouement for the ardent mystrophile (don’t bother looking this word up; I just coined it), and although one piece thereof came as no surprise to me, I was completely blindsided by another more critical revelation, to my immense delight. o

Hotshot Chicago attorney Izzy McNeil suddenly finds herself swept into a world of lies and murder. It’s going to be a

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FICTION

Dreams lost and realized on the Cape

By Kim Schmidt As a child, Jack Griffin vacationed on Cape Cod with his parents, academics who sought respite on the Cape each summer after begrudgingly spending 11 months of the year in the Midwest.

Years later, Jack and his new wife, Joy, honeymooned on Cape Cod, dreamily making plans for their life (thereafter referred to as the Great Truro Accord) which included “A ‘professor’s house’ . . . a library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and comfortable chairs for reading, a big OED on its own stand, a small stereo for quiet, contemplative music.”

In middle-age, Jack and Joy return to the Cape with most, if not all, of their dreams having been realized, to attend the first of two weddings that bookend That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo’s reflective new novel.

This time, however, there is more that brings Jack to the Cape than the wedding of his daughter’s best friend. He is here to find the right spot to scatter his father’s ashes, which have been traveling with him in the trunk of his car for nearly a year. This weekend begins what will become the most transformative year in their lives. By the time Jack and Joy reach a second wedding at the end of the book, the tec- That Old tonic plates of their lives have shifted, leading them to ask Cape Magic the question: if we could do it all again, would we? Is what we imagined and achieved in our lives what we really want? By Richard Russo Russo’s novel is ultimately a quiet study of middle age— Knopf of the time in between the harried pace of raising small $25.95, 272 pages ISBN 9780375414961 children and the slow, muddied walk of our waning years.

Also available on audio Russo’s use of symbolism is far from subtle, but his richly drawn characters redeem the novel. He has painted a portrait of Jack’s parents so vivid, you can practically hear the crisp, patronizing texture to their voices when they speak of, well, anything.

Over the course of the novel, Jack comes to realize what a profound impact his parents have had on his life, despite his very best efforts to prevent just such a thing. Russo’s characterizations of the Griffins will have the same effect on the reader, living long after the last page has been turned. o Kim Schmidt writes from Champaign, Illinois.

WOMEN’S FICTION

From best friends to ‘frenemies’

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Carla Jean Whitley After spending college in her best friend’s shadow, Wendy Murman has emerged into adulthood as the more successful of the pair. She’s an editor at an important political magazine and married to a great guy. True, she can’t seem to get pregnant. And OK, she’s never been a great beauty. But she’s happy—until the tables turn.

In the span of a week, Wendy’s best friend, Daphne Uberoff, flips from threatening suicide because of her distress over a married lover to falling in love with an available, ageappropriate lawyer Wendy almost instantly dislikes.

When things start going well for Daphne, Wendy becomes argumentative, quickly growing frustrated with her husband for the little things (the fact that she has to walk the Doberman Pinscher while he visits his father in the hospital) and the big (her inability to conceive). As she becomes even more obsessed with fertility, her resentment toward friends—especially those with kids or newfound happiness—grows and grows. “Envy was a bulldozer emotion,” Wendy says—and in Wendy’s case, envy invites comparison and critique of her social circle.

In I’m So Happy for You, Lucinda Rosenfeld turns her attention from the romantic dilemmas of her past work to the I ’m So Happy dark side of female friendships. The book retains the hu- for You morous and often satirical tone of Rosenfeld’s novels, What By Lucinda Rosenfeld She Saw. . . and Why She Went Home, while building on the Back Bay female friendship articles she’s penned for the New York $13.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780316044509 Times Magazine.

I’m So Happy for You is an amusing and chilling look at the less frequently explored one-upmanship of some female friendships. And while Wendy’s psychotic behavior pushes people away, Rosenfeld will only draw fans closer with this masterful cautionary tale. o 12 Carla Jean Whitley writes from Birmingham, Alabama, where she’s fortunate to have lots of friends and few “frenemies”—that she’s aware of, at least.

Well Read A portrait of Poland, old and new Like much of Eastern Europe, Poland endured a turbulent 20th century as a pawn in the match for regional supremacy between Germany and the Soviet Union. It is that contest—World War II and the postwar Communist years—that gives shape to Brigid Pasulka’s accomplished debut novel, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True. While not a war novel per se, Pasulka’s frequently charming narrative has its share of wartime tragedy, but it is underplayed, wrapped in an unruffled, fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable that comes to define and motivate her Polish characters.

As its folk story-like title signals, a good deal of Long, Long Time Ago unfolds like a tale that has been told and retold for generations. It is a story involving a resourceful young peasant named Pigeon, who utilizes his “golden hands” as a builder to win his way into the heart of the family of his beloved, Anielica. The invasion of the Germans in 1939 puts their predestined marriage on hold, as Pigeon becomes a partisan and, for the next six years,

BY ROBERT lends his considerable wiles to the defeat of the Nazis. AnWEIBEZAHL ielica’s brother is married to a Jewish girl (their wedding is in fact interrupted by the arrival of the first bombers in the skies over their village), which puts the family in a particularly precarious position.

At war’s end, Pigeon, Anielica and others leave behind the village life they know and move to Krakow, where they discover that, rumors to the contrary, the streets are not paved with gold. Indeed, in the newly organized People’s Republic of Poland, only the mother tongue of the enemy has changed, and the long repressed voice of Polish national identity continues to struggle to be heard.

In alternating chapters, Pasulka complements Pigeon’s story with a more contemporary one, set in the early ’90s, just after the fall of Communism. It is told by a young woman newly

Past, present and future Poland mingle and become one in Pasulka’s magical debut. arrived in Krakow from the countryside. Nicknamed Baba Yaga—because her features resemble those of the A Long, Long witch-like character of Slavic folktales—this young Time Ago and woman is, in fact, the granddaughter of Pigeon and Essentially True Anielica. Living with her cousin Irena and Irena’s daughter, Magda, in a cramped flat, Baba Yaga works as By Brigid Pasulka a companion to a nostalgic old woman during the day Houghton Mifflin Harcourt $25, 368 pages and as a bar girl at night. Directionless and yearning for ISBN 9780547055077 love, she has one passion: movies. As a “good girl,” she wins Irena’s affection, especially when her behavior is contrasted with Magda’s profligate ways.

Baba Yaga’s adventures in the city and faltering love affairs are tempered by the new freedom that has arrived with democracy and capitalism. It is a time of uncertainty as the people of Poland, particularly this new generation, grapple every day with a new world order. Most dream of leaving for the West. “Things are terrible here in Poland,” Irena dictates in an imaginary letter she wishes she could send to the American tourists who rent the spare room of her flat as they pass through Krakow. “There is so much poverty and unemployment, and the filthy capitalist pigs in your country who wanted this revolution are doing nothing to help the people. Once the communists fell, you left us like manure in the pasture.”

Like Krakow, and Poland overall, Baba Yaga and the others are caught in a strange netherworld between the old-world past and the frightening open-ended possibilities of the future. Ultimately, it will take a tragedy for Baba Yaga to be able to say, “I’m not naïve anymore.” Tragedy brings self-awareness, both as a woman and as a Pole.

Though at times the Baba Yaga chapters of the book lapse into the episodic, the story of Pigeon and Anielica is consistently magical, and this first-time novelist has an indisputable talent for a tale well-told. Pasulka, an American of Polish descent, stumbled upon Krakow as a young college graduate in 1994 and decided to stay on for a year. She clearly knows and loves this culturally rich city, where the medieval and the modern live side by side. She proves a reliable guide to a destination many have never visited—or even thought about visiting. Like any good host, she makes us feel as if we’ve found a small piece of home. o

INTERNATIONAL FICTION

A Chinese author’s timeless love affair with language

By Becky Ohlsen Some people just really love words. Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, is one of those people. His new novel, Once on a Moonless Night, revels in language—or more accurately, languages.

The plot hinges on an ancient silk manuscript written in a mysterious tongue, torn in half by the teeth of the last Chinese emperor, Puyi, in a fit of rage, and destined to be a source of fascination and mystery thereafter. This scroll serves as a narrative device that leads the novel through the centuries from Imperial China to 1979, where it piques the interest of a Western student in China. And here enters the love story.

If this all sounds a little complicated, well— it is. But it’s also enthralling. Sijie creates a world in which linguists and word-nerds are the heroes, in which the use of passive verbs is cause for existential delight, in which a greengrocer named for an obscure, ancient language plays a crucial role in history (and the plot). And the author pulls off this feat while writing the kind of sentences you’d like to wrap around yourself and cuddle up in— even in translation from his original French.

Sijie is a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and it’s obvious in his writing: the lush descriptions bring every scene into sharp focus. And despite the enormous pleasure to be gained from his prose, it’s hard not to wish for the movie version of the book to hit theaters soon.

The other great achievement of Once on a Moonless Night is in the way it collapses time,

so that the character and setting of the emperor Puyi is just as vivid and immediate as the parts of the book that take place in modern times. Some of this has to do with the way Sijie has brought the power of a sacred text forward into today’s world. A humble greengrocer in the ’70s shares a name with the language of a sacred text from 1128, and somehow it all makes sense within the gorgeously woven fabric of the novel. The mes-

sage, or part of the message, is that language can transcend time—and the novel itself is sure to prove the point. o

Once on a Moonless Night

By Dai Sijie Knopf $24.95, 288 pages ISBN 9780307271587

When Cultures Collide, Can Family & Faith Survive?

Introducing the Kauffman Amish Bakery Series by Amy Clipston Rebecca Kauffman’s tranquil Old Order Amish life is transformed when she suddenly has custody of her two teenage nieces after her “English” sister is killed.

Instead of the beautiful family life she has dreamed of,

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4

Rebecca feels as if her world is being torn apart by two

Release dates for some of the guaranteed blockbusters hitting shelves in August:

different cultures, leaving her to question her place in the

Inherent Vice

By Thomas Pynchon

Available wherever books are sold.

Amish community, her marriage, and her faith in God.

Penguin, $27.95, ISBN 9781594202247

Pynchon introduces Doc Sportello, a pot-head private eye at the end of the psychedelic ‘60s.

11

Smash Cut

By Sandra Brown A young playboy who re-enacts scenes from old films is accused of his wealthy uncle’s murder.

18

The White Queen

By Philippa Gregory Touchstone, $25.99 ISBN 9781416563686

The first in a new series set during the Wars of the Roses—from the author of The Other Boleyn Girl.

25

Even Money

By Dick Francis and Felix Francis Putnam, $26.95, ISBN 9780399155918

Bookmaker and amateur investigator Ed Talbot juggles business woes, family troubles and murder.

AmyClipston.com

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Simon & Schuster, $26.99 ISBN 9781416563082

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HISTORICAL FICTION

Dunant’s convent girls

By Karen Ann Cullotta In Sarah Dunant’s latest novel, the Bard’s “get thee to a nunnery” is an apt description of the destiny of 120 young women, for whom Ophelia-esque despair lurks behind the walls of the convent Santa Caterina. Set in mid-16th century Italy, Sacred Hearts takes the reader into the dank and dreary confines of a convent that serves as a virtual prison for those unlucky ladies bereft of a wedding dowry.

For Serafina, a passionate teenager whose romance is torn asunder when she is shipped off to Santa Caterina, living in the convent is torture; a spirited girl, she is not ready to go down without a fight. But when Serafina’s rebellion begins to influence even those who have reconciled themselves to the staid existence of convent life, tenuous relationships begin to fray and the peace at Santa Caterina is replaced with dissent and mistrust.

Dunant has populated Sacred Hearts with only women, yet interestingly it is the males of 1570 Ferrara who are clearly guiding the destinies of Santa Caterina’s inhabitants, as well as battling the incendiary Counter Reformation beyond the convent’s walls. The novel’s greatest strength lies in its ability to convey the intricate complexities of female friendship against the patriarchal rule of the times, with the sage Suora Zuana Sacred Hearts stepping in as a 16th century “frenemy,” the wise nun acting as By Sarah Dunant both jailer and shaman, manipulator and surrogate mother to Random House $25, 432 pages the woe-begotten Serafina.

Dunant is adept at writing the cliffhanging chapter, and ISBN 978081297404 Also available on audio also spares no details in explaining the painful, torturous rituals of penance followed by those who believe spirituality lies in leaving behind the temporal, and allowing the soul to seek wonderment in a higher power. Readers who have cherished The Birth of Venus and The Company of the Courtesan will embrace this latest addition to the triumvirate of Dunant’s Italian Renaissance novels. o Karen Ann Cullotta writes from Chicago.

MUSIC

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Harmonic life lessons

14

By Deanna Larson Oh Susannah, anybody can play an instrument! That’s the simple revelation made charmingly real in How to Play the Harmonica (and Other Life Lessons)

by Sam Barry, a former Presbyterian minister now working for a major book publisher (and co-writing the Author Enablers column for BookPage). Barry is also a musician and music teacher who plays in and around San Francisco in the band Los Train Wreck and tours with the all-author rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders. Clearly, this isn’t his first camp “Kumbaya.”

In this little gem of a book, Barry’s pastorly reassurances loosen ties, bring out inner chickens and enable nascent musicians to let rip like Dylan and the Boss, eventually moving toward pomposity-slaying licks and writing an original blues song (because you know you have one in you). “The greatest crime of all is that we’ve stopped telling our own stories and making our own music,” Barry writes. “It’s just plain wrong.” Chapter by chapter, Barry shares memories from the embarrassments he’s had in life, along with How to Play the a simple harp lesson charted out in a sidebar. It’s a Harmonica whole lot more than Mel Bay. “Right now, take your harmonica and pretend you are in the Deep South By Sam Barry late in the nineteenth century . . . Tell us a story. Gibbs Smith 144 pages Make us remember how sad the world is yet how $9.99, ISBN 9781423605706 joyous life is. Take us on a journey.”

In Barry’s hands, this humble portable instrument teaches ideas like patience, letting go, tolerating failure, practice as meditation, listening to others and seeing the beauty in imperfection. “We can have new adventures at any time of life,” Barry writes. “Unfortunately, as we take on the responsibilities of adulthood, our fear of appearing silly or inept or less accomplished in the eyes of others increases and we shy away from trying anything new.

We allow these concerns to dictate our behavior and miss a great deal. You don’t need anyone’s permission, so play.” o

THE SPOKEN WORD A French bestseller for American ears The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Highbridge, $29.95, 9 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781598879254) by philosophy professor Muriel Barbery sold over a million copies in France and became an international blockbuster. In an excellent English translation, it’s been one of the most talked-about novels in years, and now we have a nuanced audio presentation that perfectly captures the unique eloquence, mordent wit and charm of its protagonists. Barbara Rosenblat, one of the very best audio actors going, is Mme. Renée Michel, the 54-year-old concierge of a ritzy Paris apartment building, self-described as short and ugly, discreet and insignificant. But behind her carefully engineered veneer of sour, dowdy, working-class

BY SUKEY HOWARD widow is an amazing autodidact who loves Tolstoy, reads philosophy with a keen eye, listens to Mahler, watches Japanese films and reflects on the “lavish but vacuous lives” of her employers. Paloma, read by Cassandra Morris, is the brilliant, prodigiously precocious 12-year-old daughter of a wealthy family in the building who writes a diary of “profound thoughts” that alternates with Renée’s musings. Both keep their true hearts and minds hidden until a cultured Japanese gentleman moves in, lifts their masks and allows them to bloom. A Platonic romance à trois emerges, wonderfully French, wonderfully engaging.

Running with ultra-athletes Whether you run, jog or walk, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (Random House, $39.95, 11 hours unabridged, ISBN 9780739383728) read, dare I say it, at race-pace by Fred Sanders, is fascinating. And though author Christopher McDougall has provided a detailed subtitle, there’s a lot more to his book. The race “never seen” is run by the reclusive, serenely peaceful, incredibly healthy Tarahumara Indians who live in Mexico’s remote, mountainous Copper Canyon (and are probably the greatest distance runners in the world) and a few superb American ultra-marathoners. It’s a doozy of a contest that will leave you excitedly exhausted. How McDougall gets involved, the mysterious ex-pat loner who stages this run on the wild side and the people who actually run it fill most of this adrenaline-packed adventure. But I found the asides—the findings of evolutionary anthropologists who think running, not walking, is key to the development of homo sapiens; the coaches who search for the elusive element that seems to light up great distance runners and the head-spinning, counterintuitive advice offered on running shoes—just as intriguing. Armchair athletes will take the run of their lives and ordinary road warriors (I’ve been one for years) will hit those hills with new heart.

Sukey’s favorite There seems to be another memoir published every day, but in that mountain of manuscripts is a small, special sub-, maybe sub-sub-, genre by fine writers who are compelled, I think, to write of intensely personal love or loss, or both, because that’s how they navigate the world. Losing Mum and Pup (Hachette, $34.98, 6.5 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781600246838), Christopher Buckley’s book—which he reads with unaffected openness—about his illustrious, legendary parents who died within 11 months of each other is such a memoir: poignant, loving, honest to a fault, entertaining, well written and, because Buckley is a natural, gifted humorist, funny. His father was an iconic conservative leader, prolific writer, famed debater, founder of the National Review, beloved friend of the famous and a true gentleman. His mother, “the chic and stunning” Patricia Taylor Buckley, was a superb hostess, a super-elegant New York socialite, the possessor of both wicked wit and the chutzpah to use it. Extraordinarily devoted to each other in their decidedly idiosyncratic manner, they were fabulous and fabulously difficult.

The portrait of Mum and Pup that emerges is brilliant, cringe moments and all, and I can only thank “Christo,” their own child, for sharing them with us. o

The New York Times bestselling “master of the modern thriller” (Boston Globe) returns with his most compelling hero— and his most electrifying tale yet

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“If Jack Reacher met Nick Heller in a dark alley, my money’s on Reacher. But it would be ugly. Or would it? Actually, I think they’d go for a beer together and set the world to rights—because Joseph Finder has given me a terrific new hero to root for.”

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Debut Fiction reading list with a selection from our picks of the season’s best debut novels.

EUGENIA KIM

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

By Amy Scribner Author Amy Tan created her own subgenre of popular literature back in the late 1980s (sweeping, semi-autobiographical stories of family, loyalty and love set in various Asian times and cultures), beginning with The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife. More recently, Lisa See has carried the torch with Snowflower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love.

Now, first-time novelist Eugenia Kim confidently enters the field with The Calligrapher’s Daughter, a bold, richly detailed story about the young daughter of a well-known calligrapher in turn-of-the 20th-century Korea.

Najin Han was born in a Korea already under Japanese occupation. Her father, Nin, clings to the traditions of a dynastic country he feels slipping away (even serving time in prison for his loyalty). He looks to marry his only daughter off to the young son of a respectable family, but Najin and her mother resist, wanting more for her life.

They secretly arrange for her to serve on the royal court as a companion to the princess, a betrayal Nin only discovers later through a letter sent to his wife.

But when the king is assassinated, young Najin leaves the court seeking to further her education and find freeThe Calligrapher’s dom amid oppression. After a thwarted attempt to join her husband in America, she remains in Korea as a teach- Daughter er, but like so many of her countrymen, never stops seek- By Eugenia Kim ing a better life.

Holt The daughter of Korean immigrants, Kim grew up hear- $26, 400 pages ing stories of her family’s life before the Korean War. A ISBN 9780805089127 Also available on audio dearth of literature about the lives of Korean women during the occupation led Kim to interview her mother. That, with other meticulous research, helped the Washington, D.C., resident paint this vivid, heartfelt portrait of faith, love and life for one family during a pivotal time in history. o Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

16

By Arlene McKanic Twelve-year-old Eugene Smalls is a young man with problems. The first problem is his name. Smalls fits him, since he’s one of the smallest kids in his class. The name Eugene has been reduced to the humiliatingly girlish “Genie,” and people keep forgetting that he now calls himself “Huge.” He’s a bit too smart for his own good. His father has left.

His mother loves him but is overworked, and puberty has made his sister Neecey incomprehensible. His attempts to fit in range from useless to disastrous. He has what could be called an anger management problem and an unfortunate incident in school leaves him with a reputation as an incorrigible. His only friend is a bloodthirsty thug of a stuffed frog named Thrash—named for what Huge used to do to him in moments of frustration. Huge’s other friend may be a football teammate who’s as much a misfit as he is, and his view of the world comes with a Holden Caulfield-ish cynicism. But Huge believes his sal- Huge vation lies in emulating world-weary gumshoes like Sam By James Fuerst Spade and Philip Marlowe, heroes of the novels his doting Three Rivers grandmother gives him. When she tasks him with finding $14, 320 pages out who vandalized the sign outside the old folks’ home ISBN 9780307452498 where she lives, Huge is off and running. © KATHERIN McINNIS

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

JAMES FUERST

James Fuerst is brilliant in the way he immerses the reader both in Huge’s mixed-up head and the world in which he lives. His take on the class warfare and teenage sexual politics of a small New Jersey town is at once hilarious and poignant. “Are you a slut?” seems the most pressing question put to the girls. And Fuerst’s understanding of how the mind of an impulsive but highly intelligent preteen is liable to misinterpret just about everything is spot on. Huge’s conclusions about why Neecey goes to a particular party, for example, are both preposterous and perfectly understandable. Who hasn’t committed such a leap of illogic when they were 12? And who hasn’t felt Huge’s humiliation when everything you thought you knew for sure was wrong? We can only hope that our own comeuppance led to the sad wisdom Huge embraces at the end of this wonderfully written debut. o Arlene McKanic writes from South Carolina.

CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON

By Maude McDaniel Admittedly, 12-year-old Tom Page is no Gulliver, but he’s way ahead of his time (late 18th-century England) in his belief that animals and humans can interact with respect—and even love—on both sides. So it is fortuitous that Tom’s sugar-merchant master puts him in charge of two Indian elephants, delivered on British soil as exotic curiosities and almost dead after a long journey by ship with little food or care.

In Christopher Nicholson’s remarkable debut, The Elephant Keeper, Tom nurses the elephants back to life. He names them Jenny and Timothy, and together, the three of them bond on the palatial estate of a wealthy local man. Later, the kindly Lord Bidborough buys Jenny, but Timothy, whose hormones often render him fairly uncontrollable, is sold away. Tom, now 17, accompanies Jenny, and the two of them live the best years of their lives together at Lord Bidborough’s Sussex manor. Lord Bidborough suggests that Tom write a “his- The Elephant tory of the elephant” and doubtfully Tom starts “a simple Keeper account of particulars.” Gaining confidence, he launches By Christopher into a joint biography/autobiography so engaging that at Nicholson least one reviewer kept forgetting to make notes and sim- Morrow ply charged ahead to find out what happens next. $24.99, 304 pages First-time novelist Nicholson has produced many pro- ISBN 9780061651601 grams for BBC World Service about animals and humans.

Here he does justice to both, establishing an unexpected venue of British aristocratic whimsy, along with an unforgettable picture of an elephant/human relationship so close that, as the elephant learns to think like a human, she teaches her human to think like an elephant, too.

After a Bidborough heir returns home, things deteriorate fast. In the end, a clever abandonment of literal storytelling succeeds in persuading the reader that, against all odds, Jenny and Tom survive into health and happiness together. This is one of the best books of the year, and “the crinkled line of writing on the distant horizon” promises a bittersweet ending that eases the heart, though it may boggle the mind. o Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

JUAN GABRIEL VÁZQUEZ

By Katie Lewis A father’s criticism of his son, when presented privately, can be devastating enough. The words “I’m disappointed in you” can wrap themselves around a son’s mind and heart so that all decisions henceforth must filter through that statement in fear of what words will follow those haunting four. But familial criticism in the public forum proves to be even more disastrous for Gabriel Santoro after he publishes a novel about a family friend’s 1938 immigration from Germany to Colombia—and his father, a famous professor of rhetoric, gives it a contemptuous review.

Gabriel’s anger over his father’s public denouncement of his novel sends him on a quest to work loose his father’s reasons for doing so. In the course of his research, Gabriel finds that people are not necessarily who they present themselves to be, and that his father harbors a secret that is both disquieting and illuminating. © PETER DRUBIN

First look Add a new author to your

Debut Fiction

The Informers

By Juan Gabriel Vázquez Riverhead $26.95, 368 pages ISBN 9781594488788

BRIAN DeLEEUW

© BENJAMIN COLLIER

© GRETCHEN DOW MASHKURI

NASEEM RAKHA

By Rebecca Stropoli Is it possible not only to forgive but to befriend the person who murdered someone you love? In The Crying Tree, an absorbing and deeply melancholy novel by journalist Naseem Rakha, a mother does what might seem unbearable to most: she forgives the man who is on death row for brutally killing her 15-year-old son, then allows a friendship of sorts to develop, all through a series of letters.

But it’s a long road to that state of forgiveness for Irene Stanley, who spends years in a furious, depressive

BICH MINH NGUYEN

By Rebecca Shapiro Sisters Van and Linny Luong, born in America to Vietnamese refugees, have never seen eye to eye. Sensible Van, in her khakis and pageboy haircut, has a law degree, a promising career, a mortgage and a perfect Asian husband. And wild Linny, who could never even finish community college, is spinning her wheels at a “Do It Yourself” catering company in Chicago and sleeping with a married client.

At home in Michigan, their widowed father is marking some milestones of his own—throwing a party to celebrate his new U.S. citizenship and auditioning for a reality show for aspiring inventors (for years, his passion has been devices designed to help the short statured, such as a claw grabber called the “Luong Arm” and a periscope called the “Luong Eye”). An eccentric man, he seems to have given more attention to his harebrained ideas and his gaggle of friends than he has to his family, and both sisters are ambivalent about his achievements.

Regardless, the sisters travel home for the events, and there they must confront some of the forces that shaped them into the young women they became. Linny wonders if her disastrous love life was a result of her suspi- Short Girls cions that her father was having an affair of his own, and Van realizes that all of her years of hiding behind school By Bich Minh Nguyen have left her unprepared to deal with the fact that her per- Viking $25.95, 304 pages fect marriage may be anything but. As Linny’s affair and ISBN 9780670020812 Van’s marriage both deteriorate, they find in each other a Also available on audio confidante that they never knew they had.

Nguyen made a splash with her memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, and this, her first novel, has been much anticipated—with good reason.

In this relatively simple story, she brings in many of the universal challenges facing second-generation immigrants, not avoiding, but almost interrogating the clichés that plague so many similar stories. Her characters are stubborn, selfish and often paralyzed with inaction, but also warm, dutiful and loving, and this careful balance makes them incredibly real and sympathetic. But the real star is the prose itself, which is succinct, efficient and peppered with perfectly chosen details that make each scene come alive. o Rebecca Shapiro is an editor and fellow short girl who writes from Brooklyn, New York.

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Lindsey Schwoeri Brian DeLeeuw’s smart, haunting debut is unlike any novel I’ve ever read. A coming-of-age story and a literary thriller in equal parts, In This Way I Was Saved is a story of friendship and betrayal, violence, madness, lust and power that will keep you guessing until the very last page—and leave you gasping for air.

From the moment six-year-old Luke meets Daniel in a playground near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the two are constant companions. Daniel plays with Luke’s toys, sleeps in his bedroom and distracts Luke from the painful realities of his parents’ divorce. He even follows Luke and his mother, Claire, to Fire Island, where Luke’s attentions to Claire and his new puppy gnaw incessantly at Daniel. Fiercely jealous of Luke’s other relationships and fearful a day will come when Luke forgets him entirely, Daniel’s attempts to regain his position grow increasingly sinister—and even violent.

Once you’ve seen the lengths to which Daniel is willing to go to keep Luke by his side—or rather, under his influence—you won’t be able to put this book down. Daniel accompanies Luke to high school, feeding him the right answers during class, and helping him call plays on the football field. But Daniel’s motives are far from innocent. In This Way The more Luke needs him, the stronger Daniel grows, until I Was Saved he begins to be able to make choices for Luke—choices he By Brian DeLeeuw would never make on his own. And in the battle to control Simon & Schuster the life they share, only one of them can emerge the victor. $25, 304 pages In This Way I Was Saved is an impressive debut—fasci- ISBN 9781439103135 nating, suspenseful and controlled—and it will chill you to the bone. In Daniel, DeLeeuw has created an unforgettable character with a voice that is both highly intelligent and deeply unsettling. After seeing the world through Daniel’s eyes, there may be no turning back. o Lindsey Schwoeri writes from Brooklyn, New York.

haze after her son, Shep, is shot in their Oregon home during an apparent robbery.

From the day 19-year-old Daniel Robbin is arrested for Shep’s murder, Irene lives for the time when he is executed—until she finally lets go of her rage in order to save herself.

The Crying Tree is largely Irene’s story, but the tale is also told through the eyes of Mason Tab, the Oregon State Penitentiary superintendent who is reluctantly in charge of Robbins’ execution; Irene’s husband, Nate; her daughter, Bliss; and Daniel himself. The book opens 19 years after Shep’s murder, then goes back and forth through time, allowing the story to unfold in a non-linear fashion.

There are some twists and turns along the way: while Irene keeps her almost eight-year correspondence with Daniel a secret, she has no idea that both Daniel and her husband are harboring a stunning secret of their own about the day of the murder—one that will change everything once it is revealed. Many readers will likely figure out at least part of this secret before the big revelation, The Crying Tree as many signs point to it. While this blunts the impact a bit, it still adds an intriguing layer to a story that appears By Naseem Rakha Broadway straightforward at first glance. $22.95, 368 pages Rakha knows her subject well; she covered an execution ISBN 9780767931403 for public radio and also did a series of interviews with parents of murdered children. Delving into the controversial subjects of capital punishment, forbidden relationships and forgiveness for horrific acts, her debut novel seems designed to inspire heated debate in book clubs. o Rebecca Stropoli writes from Brooklyn, New York.

Read all our reviews online at www.bookpage.com

17

© PORTER SHREVE

Juan Gabriel Vázquez’s The Informers presents history as something others have said to be true; fact is but a person’s insistence that things happened as they claimed. Each character in this thoughtful, complex novel truly believes the details of certain events transpired in the way he or she chooses to remember. The story is framed by the U.S. State Department’s blacklists during WWII, and Vázquez uses this practice as a parallel for the personally concealed blacklist—thoughts that are never made public but are still devastating.

Vázquez is an excellent writer and a fine storyteller. By presenting The Informers as his narrator’s second novel— Gabriel’s attempt to mend his eminent father’s reputation with truth, good or bad, following the posthumous airing of his dirty laundry—the author reinforces the idea that there are stories within stories and there are secrets huddling inside spoken words. We come to realize that what we are told is not always truth, and taking people at their word carries with it the risk of being uninformed after all. o Katie Lewis writes from Nashville.

Two murders 15 years apart

INTERVIEW

No laughing matter

Former comedian delivers a darkly alluring first novel

By Alden Mudge eople who know Teri Coyne’s work as a stand-up comedian are going to be very, very surprised by her intense, emotionally wrenching first novel, The Last Bridge. There are many good words that could describe Coyne’s story of 28-year-old Alex “Cat” Rucker, an alcoholic waitress who fled her rural childhood home as a teenager then returns to confront her family demons 10 years later, after her mother’s suicide. “Page-turner,” perhaps. Or “psychologically compelling.”

But “funny”? Most definitely not.

“People ask, wow, where did that come from?” Coyne says with a characteristic laugh during a call to her home on Long Island’s North Fork.

For some years Coyne managed a technical writing and training team at a New York law firm and divided her time between an apartment in Queens and the 110-year-old house she bought and renovated on Long Island, while performing and writing on the side. The favorable early buzz about her first book has not entirely freed her from needing a job, but she now works as a consultant and spends more time at her North Fork home composing an early draft of a second novel. “I am drawn to the darker side of humor,” Coyne says. “I was inspired TERI COYNE and influenced by comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks. But when I performed, I certainly wasn’t intense and dark like this book.”

The Last Bridge developed from a kind of vision Coyne had after abandoning standup in order to tell a larger story than she could in her comedy routines. “The book started with an image in my head of a mother taping garbage bags to the wall, a shotgun and the opening line of the book: ‘Two days after my father had a massive stroke, my mother shot herself in the head.’ Once I heard that voice, I couldn’t stop. I wrote the opening line and it just started coming. Looking back, it started at a time in my life when I was exploring this concept of what makes a family, what makes a person a parent. Is it blood or is it choice?

Are we the product of our experiences? Or are we the product of our choices? As I started to write this story, it became very clear that that was really what I was trying to explore.”

The exploration did not go entirely smoothly. “Clearly when it takes you 10 years to write a book, you’re not in a big hurry to get something out there,” Coyne says, laughing. “This was my first book. I was learning the process of writing a novel while I was working on it. My goal was not publication but rather to make it the best story I could make it. That meant spending a lot of time writing and rewriting and focusing on getting the tone right.”

Interestingly, Coyne says that she had to leave her house to write the most difficult parts of the book.

“When I was working on something that was really, really emotional it

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was easier for me to just go sit in a public space because for some reason I’m not as distracted in a public space.”

Although she can’t listen to music while she writes, Coyne uses music to get into the writing. She developed playlists for each character she was working on. “Every character has a song and that song just puts me immediately into the head of that person,” she says. Her playlists are on iTunes and her website, tericoyne.com.

Coyne’s early struggles to learn her craft were not helped by the nature of her central character, Alex, otherwise known as Cat. “It’s very difficult to write a character that you know your reader is not going to like right away.

Cat is not a very likeable person in the beginning. But I felt very protective of her. I had to find a way to keep readers with me until I could show who she really is. Anger is not a real emotion and Cat’s anger is a disguise for something deeper. I had to find a way to show what that anger is covering.”

Part of what Alex is covering—or running from—is an abusive relationship with her father. Coyne’s unnerving portrait of that relationship draws on research she did with victims of abuse and from her own family history.

“Cat is not me,” Coyne says, “and none of the characters are reflective of people or characters in my own life, but some of their qualities are composites. That said, I made them all up, so they really are me. I dedicate the book to my father. He had a drinking problem and he had abusive and violent behavior. I struggled with that, as did all the people in our family. There’s this very private thing that happens inside of the family and then there’s this public life you lead in school or outside of the family. You learn very early that your family situation is not something you share outside of your family.”

“I had a lot of friends who had siblings who were kind of the black sheep or developed drug problems or drinking problems,” Coyne recalls. “People thought these people were broken, that something was wrong with them, that they were weak, that they didn’t have any ambition. But the older that I got and the more that I talked to people and saw what really happens to people who come from abusive families, I saw that these are not weak people. These are people that are masquerading a tremendous amount of pain. As I started to learn more and understand more, I started to really see that we have these notions or conceptions about people who are troubled that often aren’t really honest about what that person is really going through. It’s very, very important for me to shed light on that.”

As a result of this passion for bringing light to a difficult subject, Coyne’s empathic and ultimately redemptive first novel has struck a chord with early readers in ways that have completely amazed her. “It has been a lifelong dream of mine to get a book sold and published,” she says. “It’s a phenomenal thing that has happened to me. But I have to say I am in total awe of the reading community. It has just really blown me away how passionate readers are and how they do go out of their way to make contact with me and how dedicated they are to getting the word out about The Last Bridge. It’s really impressive and inspiring.”

The feeling, it seems, is completely mutual. o Alden Mudge writes from Berkeley, California.

“Clearly when it takes you 10 years to write a book,

you’re not in a big hurry to get something out there.”

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HISTORY

When Khrushchev’s comic escapades warmed up the Cold War not aware of the caveat.

Carlson’s account is extremely well researched and includes interviews with a number of participants, most notably Khrushchev’s son, Sergei. Many of the accounts and memos he quotes are from State Department historical documents. His book is enlivened by many direct quotes from Khrushchev and others. Anyone interested in cultural exchange, international diplomacy and fine

writing should enjoy this unique book. o Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and frequent contributor to BookPage.

K Blows Top

By Peter Carlson Public Affairs $26.95, 352 pages ISBN 9781586484972

“Engrossing.”—NEw York TimEs

A sweeping tale of love and loss that was long-listed for both the man Booker Prize and the orange Prize, an intimate peek at the woman behind Charles Dickens, and a fascinating rumination on marriage that will resonate across centuries.

“intensely readable.”

—kirkus

C r o wN |

CrownPublishing.com

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Roger Bishop Nikita S. Khrushchev was a walking bundle of contradictions. He rose to power in the Soviet system in the service of the dictator Josef Stalin. Following Stalin’s orders, Khrushchev was complicit in the deaths of many innocent people. Yet after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev, in a four-hour public address, courageously revealed the truth about Stalin’s many crimes against humanity. Khrushchev could, within a few seconds, be charming, funny, rude and frightening. All of those aspects of his personality were on display for the American public when he toured the United States for two weeks in 1959. It was a rare interlude in the Cold War, at a time when the possibility of war between the world’s two superpowers was on many minds throughout the world.

Peter Carlson, a former Washington Post feature writer and columnist, brings this unique trip vividly to life in K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist.

American reaction to Khrushchev reveals much about the mood of our country at the time and makes for fascinating reading.

Khrushchev’s own reactions are equally engrossing. At banquets with speakers extolling the virtues of capitalism, the Soviet Leader defended Communism and threw tantrums, refusing to concede the U.S. any point of superiority. In Hollywood he met movie stars like Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, and was invited to watch the filming of the movie Can-Can where, although he appeared to enjoy himself, he later objected to the dancing. He threw a major tantrum when told he could not go to Disneyland because police could not assure his safety. On a corn farm in Iowa Khrushchev was amused when his host, upset at the media circus on his property, started throwing corn stalks at the press. The foreign visitor also brought havoc to a supermarket in San Francisco. And these are only a few of the stories.

Carlson carefully explains the trip within the context of U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations. Just weeks before Khrushchev’s visit, he had his famous “kitchen debate” with Vice President Richard Nixon in Moscow. Seven months after Khrushchev left the U.S., two weeks before a Paris summit of major powers, and six weeks before President Eisenhower’s planned reciprocal trip to Moscow, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane and captured the pilot. When Khrushchev returned to the U.S. for the 1960 U.N. General Assembly session, he did not get a warm welcome and is best remembered for banging his shoe in outrage over remarks by a Filipino delegate.

The invitation to visit the U.S. almost didn’t happen. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a short and purposely vague letter to the Soviet leader about a possible visit.

The note was to be supplemented by an oral explanation from an undersecretary of state.

Both sources were to make clear the visit to Camp David was contingent upon a successful resolution of deadlocked diplomatic negotiations in Geneva relating to Khrushchev’s 1958 ultimatum for the Western allies to leave Berlin. However, the state department official misunderstood his role and Khrushchev was

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SENSE OF WONDER An epic quest When the Barenaked Ladies sang “Everything old is new again,” they probably weren’t referring to science fiction and fantasy. But if this month’s offerings are any indication, they certainly could have been. For August we have a new vision of elves, a Dyson sphere populated by historians, pirates and fools, and an anthology of vampires inhabiting a multitude of ecological niches.

The title of Elfland (Tor, $25.99, 464 pages, ISBN 9780765318695) leads one to expect a traditional fantasy story—the orphaned hero, the last surviving remnant of the monarchy, a motley and moral fellowship, a great quest—but readers will be pleasantly surprised by the directions in which the story branches. Yes, the narrative engine is driven by the threat of a world-ending ice giant, Brawth, and the efforts of one man, Lawrence Wilder, the Gatekeeper between Earth and the Otherworld, to contain Brawth.

BY SEAN MELICAN But Freda Warrington’s novel rises above other fantasies by focusing on the lives of the densely interwoven Wilder and Fox families who are concerned with the threat, but not consumed by it. Though it’s branded as a fantasy, Elfland shares as much with mainstream fiction as it does genre. The novel begins when the oldest child is not yet an adolescent and ends well after he’s spent time in prison for murder and has (borrowing from the romance genre) stolen the heart of a woman who once despised him. The novel generates greater emotional responses from the warp and weft of the families’ twisted skein, including adultery, betrayal, incest, love, lust, murder and brutal secrets brought to light. It is a strong beginning for a series that has the potential to attract a diverse group of readers.

A fantastic new world Even though three books in the Virga series come before it, The Sunless Countries (Tor, $25.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780765320766) doesn’t require any outside knowledge—an odd discovery in light of the novel’s philosophical stance. Virga is a mini-Dyson sphere with a nuclear fusion engine as its sun, and various wheeled cities rotating around even smaller fusion engines. Leal Maspeth is a tutor hoping to be promoted to faculty, but what is a historian to do when the ahistorical Eternists (straw-men stand-ins for Creationists and Wikipedia-ists) have taken control of her city? And what is she to do when she falls in with Hayden Griffin, the hero and sunlighter, just as a voice resounds through the world warning of impending doom for all Virga? As in many otherwise excellent hard science fiction novels, the characters here suffer from a certain flatness. Virga is a superb example of world-building, with complex visual wonders deftly handled by Karl Schroeder’s writing. Curiously, Leal’s historical view is oddly old-fashioned, seeing history as a collection of static, objective facts, which she sticks to despite the evidence that her own historical role will be read one of two ways—heroine or quisling—depending on whether she is alive or dead when the Eternists eventually fall. A fifth novel is demanded.

The vampire authority AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Popularly, vampires have ranged from bogeymen to darkly sensual to angst-ridden, but John Joseph Adams’ hefty anthology, By Blood We Live (Night Shade, $15.95, 492 pages, ISBN 9781597801560), resurrects 37 incarnations. There are familiar names with familiar stories, most notably Armstrong, King, Lumley and Rice, who is represented by her only published piece of short fiction. Vampires appear in historical and mythological contexts, from the sinking of the Titanic to James Wentworth’s South Pole excursion, the American West to 1930s China, Roanoke to Fallujah. Often the setting is merely a place to locate the vampire, but some authors venture much further. In “Snow, Glass, Apples,” Neil Gaiman brilliantly re-examines the underlying assumptions of the Snow White mythology, and with Lilith Saintcrow’s pitch-perfect “A Standup Dame,” we are treated to a consideration of gender roles in noir genre. We learn what happened to Elvis and Gatsby, Jesus and the devil’s own son, among others. There is also lust, parasitism, violence and narrow escapes. More than anything, this anthology demonstrates that the vampire is not only undead but mutable, and in the best writers’ hands, a tool for analyzing our mortal frailty and resilience in the teeth of unadulterated evil and unimaginable love. o Sean Melican is the new science fiction and fantasy columnist for BookPage. In 20 alphabetical order, he is a chemist, father, husband and writer.

MEMOIR

Searching for the meaning of it all

By Alison Hood Lots of ladies these days seem to be waxing not exactly poetic about their lives as wives and mothers. Some of these so-called memoirs are dubious rants rather short on epiphany, but Melanie Gideon’s The Slippery Year doesn’t slide down that precarious slope.

This self-deprecating, wickedly funny and mildly philosophical reflection on marriage, mothering, middle age and the march toward life’s meaning will ring true for midlife women—whether they are mothers or not—as well as for men of a certain age.

Gideon’s chronicle of her year, written as a series of monthly essays, sprang from her realization that she had been “sleepwalking” through her life. “This realization wasn’t precipitated by some traumatic event. I did not have cancer.

My parents had not abused me. I was in a good marriage to a kind man. But something wasn’t right. I felt empty.”

Who am I? Is this all there is to life? Gideon has the privileges of time, writing talent and a comfy American lifestyle to explore these existential questions—an expedition that could comprise a dreary tale. The Slippery Year, however, pokes edgy fun at the boundaries and markers of a mod- The Slippery Year ern American woman’s middle-class life: conundrums over By Melanie Gideon a small son’s Halloween costume woes and school carpool Knopf lines, along with angst over summer soccer camp, disastrous $24.95, 224 pages visits to the beauty salon, the death of a beloved pet, a spouse ISBN 9780307270672 in love with his monster camper van and the ongoing search for—and compromise about—the perfect marital mattress.

As we follow Gideon through a year of months and seasons, her July reflection that “marriage changes passion. Suddenly you’re in bed with a relative” slowly morphs, after a short separation from her husband, into a renewed love and appreciation of the man she married 20 years before. The year ends with a peaceful family moment by the seashore, in which Gideon realizes she has come full circle and finally arrived home from her archeological inner journey: “Home—the ways in which we are bound to one another. Not by chance . . . but by choice.” o Alison Hood writes from the sometimes culturally slippery slopes of Marin County, California.

ANTHOLOGY

An impressive lonely hearts club

By Jillian Quint Love is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts, a new collection edited by Michael Taeckens, offers flashes of insight from well-known writers about love gone wrong. Gary Shteyngart writes of the leggy blonde who followed him all over Europe, sobbing. Junot Diaz remembers an ill-fated trip with a lover to the Dominican Republic. George Singleton somehow brings dignity to the act of peeing in his girlfriend’s kitty litter box.

But the best stories come from the newer or lesser-known writers. Both “Runaway Train” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh and “Conversations You Have at Twenty” by blogger Maud Newton depict torturous, sprawling and ultimately unhealthy relationships with the wincing comedy and clarity that can only come from having been in the trenches. Meanwhile, “Why Won’t You Just Love Me?” by Emily Flake— one of several comic strips in the batch—shows the painful trajectory of a one-night stand that resulted in the author having to send an apology note.

There are a few misses here—most notably, the lifeless introduction by Neal Pollack—but on the Love is a Fourwhole, the pieces sparkle with wit, pain and hon- Letter Word esty. If one can deduce an overarching conclusion, Edited by Michael it’s that love is not as blind as the clichés would lead Taeckens us to believe. Nearly all the writers in this collection Plume sensed their breakup well before it happened, but let $16, 320 pages the relationship continue past (sometimes well past) ISBN 9780452295506 this point of realization. The anthology never seeks to explore this disconnect, but one has to wonder: is it because we’re spineless? Naïve? Complacent? Or is it simply—as the contributors here continually show—that the best stories are often the least clear-cut? o Jillian Quint is an editor at a publishing house in New York. She lives in Brooklyn.

COOKING

Do-it-yourself—it’s better than store-bought

Yes, you can can, preserve, pickle, cure and smoke. You can fill your fridge, freezer and pantry with homemade, handmade wonders, avoid additives, adulterants and unwanted antibiotics, take advantage of each season’s splendor, reduce your carbon footprint, lessen your dependence on the industrial food complex and make Michael Pollan happy to boot. You can go to the greenmarket and buy to your heart’s content, knowing that what isn’t consumed immediately can star in marvelous meals months later. If you need advice, guidance, inspiration and motivation, it’s all here in two terrific new books. In Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Food (Potter, $24.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9780307405241) Eugenia Bone demonstrates how to transform today’s bounty into tomorBY SYBIL PRATT row’s (or next week’s or next year’s) edible treasures. Eugenia’s technical instruction is up-close and personal. So, if you suffer from fear-of-canning, read through her detailed, comforting “All About Canning” chapter and you’ll feel confident—ready to make her master recipes for Canned Tomatoes, Spiced Apples, Brandied Figs, Green Olive Tapenade, Pickled Asparagus, Cured Bacon without nitrites and many more, each followed by a trio of great dishes that highlight your preserving handiwork.

Time to get creative Karen Solomon says she’s not a chef, she’s a curious, creative crafter whose medium of choice is food.

Her delight is in “making stuff,” savory and sweet, to keep her culinary coffers filled with made-in-her-ownkitchen goods and goodies rather than those that are processed and store-bought. Some of the “stuff” in Karen’s Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It: And Other Cooking Projects (Ten Speed, $24.95, 160 pages, ISBN 9781580089586) is preserved and pickled, but there’s a lot that’s not. She starts off with basic dough that you

can turn into crackers, breadsticks and flatbread, then goes on to all kinds of condiments, easy homemade pastas, preserved and cured fish and meat, butter and a few cheeses.

Then come the sweet treats without artificial color or high fructose corn syrup—fruit leathers, marshmallows, Toaster Tarts, frozen confections, candy and beverages—hard and soft—to wash everything down. She includes a “time commitment” with every recipe, so you know what to expect and how to plan. I had never thought about making my own graham crackers, pickled daikons, ginger beer, ketchup or queso blanco, and I haven’t spent time canning in years. I will now—it’s fun, healthy and, as Eugenia Bone says, “very relaxing and cheaper than psychotherapy.”

Stylish organic baking In all the hubbub and hurly-burly about green markets and organic meats and vegetables, organic baking has been underemphasized and, when it does come to mind, hardly conjures up visions of inventive, elegant cakes with luscious frostings and exquisite decorations. Sarah Magid’s Organic and Chic: Cakes, Cookies, and Other Sweets that Taste as Good as They Look (Morrow, $27.99, 272 pages, IBSN 9780061673580) is bound to change the way you think about organic baking. “Chic” is not a word usually used to describe baked goods, but Sarah was a fashion designer before she became a fashionable baker—and her innate sense of style shines through in all her confections, from a super-sophisticated Lotus Cake, flavored with orangeflower water syrup, to vegan Double Ginger Cookies, and her organic twists on junk food, including irresistible gold-dusted “Twinkies” and silver “Ring-a-Dings.”

With Sarah’s 60 recipes, plus a chapter on design techniques and downright inspirational color photographs, you can keep it simple or you can find your inner cake-decorator. If you choose to be organic, just pay attention to where your flour, eggs, sugar and dairy products come from (a source list is supplied)—and if you opt to be non-organic or semi-organic and still chic, I promise not to tell. o

CULTURAL HISTORY

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America’s Chinatowns, old and new

By Rebecca Steinitz Though Bonnie Tsui grew up in suburban Long Island, Chinatown was the epicenter of her Chinese-American life. Chinatown was where her grandparents worked and shopped for groceries, where her extended family celebrated weddings and christenings, and where, as an adult, she ate lunch and studied Chinese. Now Tsui has written American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods, an engaging exploration of Chinatown’s history and culture.

Although the book includes hand-drawn maps, this is not your standard tourist guide. Tsui looks beyond the gift shops and dim sum restaurants to see Chinatown through the eyes of its residents. She talks to scholars and shop owners, activists and immigrants, even teens. The result is a sharply drawn portrait of five Chinatowns—and of Chinatown as it has been writ large in the American imagination.

In San Francisco, Tsui learns that Chinatown’s “authentic” architecture was designed after the 1906 earthquake by white architects hired by Chinese merchants to make Chinatown more appealing to prejudiced white Americans.

New York’s Chinatown was an economic powerhouse, employing recent immigrants and longtime residents in New York’s garment and restaurant industries. The Los Angeles American Chinatown grew up hand-in-hand with Hollywood: its res- Chinatown idents were hired for all kinds of Asian movie roles, and the By Bonnie Tsui image of Chinatown as mysterious, exotic and dangerous Free Press emerged from the silver screen as much as anywhere else. In $25, 272 pages Honolulu, where cultural mixing is the norm, Chinatown is ISBN 9781416557234 pan-Asian, or, in the local vernacular, “kapakahi, Hawaiian for all mixed up.” A developer built Las Vegas’ Chinatown in the 1990s as a commercial enterprise—but it has since evolved into a real community.

These diverse Chinatowns also have many commonalities. Chinatown has always been a meeting point for tourism and ordinary life. Indeed, American Chinatown helps us understand how Chinatown—complex, conflicted and buffeted by the same forces of globalization, commercialization and gentrification that are transforming the rest of the country—is itself profoundly American. o Rebecca Steinitz is a writer in Arlington, Massachusetts.

ROMANCE From danger to desire With the temperatures spiking, so is the danger in this month’s incendiary offerings. Enjoy with cold lemonade!

One of the most entertaining and versatile storytellers of the romance genre, Christina Dodd, offers up Storm of Visions (Signet, $7.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780451227638). Jacqueline Vargha is hiding from her destiny when bodyguard and ex-lover Caleb D’Angelo tracks her down. Despite her protests, he drags her back to New York City and what awaits her there—induction into the Chosen Ones, a select few with special gifts who are dedicated to combating evil as perpetrated by the Others, a group in league with the devil. These latest Chosen assume they will be trained by those more experienced, but then BY christie ridgway an explosion destroys the old guard and their headquarters. Now, the novices must find their way alone, even as they fear someone in their midst is bent on their destruction. Power struggles within the group and between fiery Jacqueline and determined Caleb keep the pages turning.

While the love story does resolve, the continued threat to the Chosen Ones will draw readers to the next installment in this exciting, otherworldly series.

More than a man Seducing the Moon (Kensington Brava, $14, 320 pages, ISBN 9780758231895) by Sherrill Quinn stars a newly turned werewolf trying to regain the love of the woman who thinks he betrayed her. Declan O’Connell was bitten four months ago and is coping with the changes to his life. Though he can’t complain about his new powers, he’s worried how the woman he wants to claim as his mate, Pelicia Cobb, will handle the news. While she’s one of the few who know of the existence of werewolves, Declan already has a strike against him after he helped jail her scamming grandfather two years before—even as their romance was hot and heavy. But Declan is determined to have a second chance, and even more determined to stay close when it appears that someone is out to harm Pelicia. Who is making her a target? And why? The former commando in the Royal Marines will do what he must as violence comes even closer. Teeming with action and earthy sex, this story will rocket the reader’s pulse.

Game of love

Sensual spy Mysterious master spy “Dalziel” from Stephanie Laurens’ Bastion Club series gets his own book in Mastered by Love (Avon, $7.99, 480 pages, ISBN 9780061246371). Just as he winds up his duties to his country, the man known as Dalziel gets word that his father has died. Now Royce Henry Varisey, 10th Duke of Wolverstone, he must return to his principal estate. Royce expects his homecoming won’t be easy, and yet it’s made more interesting when he renews his acquaintance with a beautiful orphan, Minerva Chesterton. Minerva vowed to Royce’s parents that she will see him settled and with a wife—but doesn’t see herself as a candidate despite her long-held fascination with the seductive duke. Minerva wishes to marry only for love, and the ex-spymaster cannot make that promise. But as Royce woos Minerva he learns more about himself and a surprising enemy who threatens the two lovers. Packed with passion and peril, this story is a superb ending to the series. o Christie Ridgway writes contemporary romance from her home in Southern California.

antastic F ICT ION by abulous AUTHORS Mastered By Love

By Stephanie Laurens

$7.99, 9780061246371 The men of the Bastion Club proved their bravery secretly fighting for their country. Now their leader faces that most dangerous mission of all: finding a bride.

Yet the young ladies the grand dames would have him consider are predictably boring. Far more tempting is his castle’s willful and determinedly aloof chatelaine, Minerva Chesterton.

It Only Takes a Moment

By Mary Jane Clark $7.99, 9780061286100

Eliza Blake, seasoned television professional, has reported on tragedies many times. But only now is she learning the true meaning of terror when her sevenyear-old daughter, Janie, is kidnapped from summer camp. But Eliza isn’t going to just sit around and wait.

Duke of Her Own

By Eloisa James $7.99, 9780061626838 Leopold Dautry, the notorious Duke of Villiers, must wed quickly and nobly—and his choices, alas, are few. Torn between logic and passion, between intelligence and imagination, Villiers finds himself drawn to the very edge of impropriety.

Secret of the Seventh Son

By Glenn Cooper $7.99, 9780061721793

Nine strangers have been slain in New York City—the apparent victims of a frighteningly elusive serial killer.

Assigned to the case is a legendary FBI profiler with a drinking problem and nothing left to lose. Clues lead into the crypts of a clandestine medieval society, and a secret embroiled in destiny, history, evil, faith and corruption.

Twisted

By Andrea Kane

$7.99, 9780061236792 FBI Special Agent Derek Parker has no interest in working with ex-lover, Sloane Burbank. But as women disappear and others are brutally murdered, they realize that these random crimes are linked to the same crazed killer—a psychotic, twisted fiend. It will take everything they have to capture him—even as Sloane becomes his latest target.

www.harpercollins.com

AUGUST 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Two wounded souls unite during a terrifying series of murders in Karen Rose’s I Can See You (Grand Central, $18.99, 496 pages, ISBN 9780446538343). Eve Wilson is scarred both inside and out by two past traumas, but she continues to rebuild her life. A graduate student in psychology, she’s employed parttime at a cop bar and also works on a study about the efficacy of online role-playing games as therapeutic tools. When some of the women in her study appear to commit suicide, she takes her suspicion that the deaths aren’t self-inflicted to the police. Homicide detective Noah Webster, who has watched Eve from afar for a year, discovers the woman is right: the suicides are faked and there’s a serial murderer on the loose. As Noah and Eve work together to unravel the killer’s pattern and stop further deaths, their efforts are complicated by yet more frightening acts. Is one person behind them all? There is another battle at hand too, that of Eve and Noah against the attraction both are afraid to face. Skin-shivering suspense and a poignant passion between two vulnerable people combine in this lethally good read.

1 F

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ADVICE

New releases share the truth about parenting

By Joanna Brichetto eet some of the best parenting books of the year so far, culled from the gravid shelves at BookPage. Selected on individual merit, this disparate grouping nonetheless suggests a pattern: truth.

These new books seem to concern themselves with rooting out truth no matter how entrenched the myth, how muddled the syndrome, how white the lie, and all entirely to our favor. Truth can be shocking. For example, what we thought was OK for kid’s health is bad, and what we thought was bad is actually OK. Or, we learn our ideals of the “good” mother and the “good” girl must be radically redefined. Or, we find the real nitty-gritty coming home with a newborn is not quite what we expected. Still, these books are just what the doctor should order: a frank, fearless and sometimes very funny heads-up. Of course, the ultimate parenting truth is that we all want to succeed, and with selections like these, we have a pretty good chance.

M

Myth-busters How often have you heard these health facts: burns are best treated with ice, wounds should “air out” at night, spinach is a good source of iron, and teething can cause high fever? Guess what? These facts are fiction: baby myths, if you will. Pediatrician Andrew Adesman heard these and hundreds of other baby myths so often, he felt duty-bound to write a book: Babyfacts: the Truth About Your Child’s Health From Newborn Through Preschool (Wiley, $15.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780470179390). How about: raw carrots improve vision, green mucous always indicates a bacterial infection and cupcakes make kids hyper? Again, not true. If you are surprised, you aren’t alone: a pilot study showed a shocking number of pediatricians are just as credulous about these pervasive myths as the rest of us. Adesman deftly debunks the most common nuggets of misinformation in an easy-to-use, absorbing reference.

Open in case of emergency

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The next book debunks myths too, but it specializes in how to distinguish a real emergency from a routine situation or a false alarm. Emergency room pediatrician Lara Zibners has the street cred to teach parents when a trip to the ER is a must, a maybe or a wait-and-see, and ditto for a regular acute office visit. In If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay (Wellness Central, $14.99, 303 pages, ISBN 9780446508803) Dr. Zibners covers every category likely to be a concern at some point: newborn issues, skin, guts, “plumbing,” allergies, wounds, fever, head injuries and so on. The range is immense (and realistic): swallowed fish-tank gravel, super-glued body parts, high fevers or major trauma, she’s been there. A nice touch is the author’s overriding assertion that parents should always trust intuition: we know our own children best. Keep a copy in the medi24 cine cabinet for quick, straightforward advice when you need it most.

In the trenches Former war photojournalist Deborah Copaken Kogan is back with more stories from the family front. Picking up where her best-selling memoir Shutterbabe left off, Kogan weaves past and present into a wry portrait of real life at home. In Hell Is Other Parents: and Other Tales of Maternal Combustion (Voice, $14.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9781401340810) the author confronts family challenges that make covering carnage in Afghanistan (which she has done) seem easy by comparison. Her frank take on Mommy & Me classes, life as a reluctant stage mother and encounters with parents who espouse decidedly different childrearing philosophies (i.e. helicopter parents) is delightful. So too are her flashbacks to younger and wilder days: days before she and her family of five must squeeze into a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and get by on a freelancer’s pittance. Above all, do not miss the chapter about sharing a room in the maternity ward with the world’s rudest postpartum teenager.

Instruction manual New moms and moms-to-be, meet your new best friend. Claudine Wolk, author of It Gets Easier! And Other Lies We Tell New Mothers (Amacom, $14, 192 pages, ISBN 9780814415023), tells it (and all of it) like it really is: pregnancy, childbirth and those first, foggy baby months. Never mind all the other advice that will inevitably bombard the pregnant and postpartum: listen to her. Wolk, a mother of three, interviewed hundreds of women to find the real deal: the most helpful tips, most urgent issues and most practical solutions for the transition to motherhood. The three big common concerns—sleep, schedule and guilt—are covered in great detail, but each chapter is packed with invaluable, uncensored advice on absolutely everything. This book is precisely what the subtitle claims: “a fun, practical guide to becoming a mom.” Where, oh where was it when my two kids were new? A must for baby shower and new mom gifts.

The confident parent Parents who have made it past the baby stage are ready for Jen Singer, award-winning mommy blogger and author of You’re a Good Mom. Singer’s new series began this spring with the publication of Stop Second-Guessing Yourself: The Toddler Years, and continues with the September release of Stop Second-Guessing Yourself: The Preschool Years (Health Communications, Inc., $14.95, 312 pages, ISBN 9780757314179).

Singer’s cheery, no-nonsense style helps parents navigate the challenges unique to the threeto five-year-old set (or, as she calls them, “tiny teens in lightup sneakers”). Combining her own experiences with those of veteran moms from her web-

site, MommaSaid.net, she gives the support, advice and insights most of us desperately need. Note the reassuring reader-contributed “It Worked for Me” and “Okay, I Admit It” boxes sprinkled throughout.

Giving girls voice Rachel Simmons broke new ground with Odd Girl Out, the best-selling exploration of bullying among girls.

With The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls With Courage and Confidence (The Penguin Press, $25.95, 304 pages, ISBN 9781594202186) she turns her lens to the insidious myth of the Good Girl: a narrow and unrealistic model of female perfection. Far too many girls equate self-esteem with being “good”: thinking and acting only in modest, polite, conscientious and selfless ways. Such a limited repertoire of acceptable feelings limits the healthy development of real self esteem, body image and overall confidence, and prevents girls from cultivating potential.

The pattern can start in early childhood and expand throughout life, affecting choices in education, career, relationships and family life, as well as a sense of purpose and worth. Simmons presents case studies and research to illustrate the complexities of the Good Girl syndrome, as well as numerous strategies we can all undertake to encourage the authentic inner—and ultimately outer—voice of girls. o Joanna Brichetto objects to the word “parent” used as a verb, but she parents a teen and a toddler, anyway.

First, do no harm Despite evidence to the contrary, many people still link autism with vaccines. While these two books do briefly address the controversy, they are included here as authoritative guides to separate subjects.

Every parent wonders, if not outright worries, about vaccines: which ones are necessary, when should they be given, what the risks might be, and so on.

In response to these perennial concerns, Dr. Jamie Loehr created The Vaccine Answer Book: 200 Essential Answers to Help You Make the Right Decision for Your Child (Sourcebooks, $11.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781402218262). Loehr, a family physician, breaks down the top 200 questions asked by parents into easy-to-find categories. Included are vaccine basics, controversies and myths, side effects and advice on how to evaluate choices.

Individual vaccines are organized on a timeline: vaccines in the first year, during childhood and throughout life.

Written especially for parents and educators, the Autism Encyclopedia: the Complete Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorders (Prufrock Press, $22.95, 344 pages, ISBN 9781593633608) by E. Amanda Boutot proves a concise, practical resource. Cross-referenced with key terms highlighted, the encyclopedia organizes information most pertinent to those who serve and advocate for children with ASD, reflecting cutting-edge research into causes, assessment and intervention. o —JOANNA BRICHETTO

INTERVIEW

A philosopher finds meaning in the lives of children

By Amy Scribner lipping through the channels one recent morning, I landed on a cable infomercial showing a 14-monthold strapped in his high chair, sippy cup by his side.

His mother stood in front of him, running through a set of flash cards each printed with a single word.

“Monkey!” yelled the child gleefully. “Clap!”

A voiceover on the ad urged parents to grab the small window of opportunity and give their children the © KATHERINE KING

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children not as research subjects but as an essential part of the universal conversation about who we are.

“We raise children, and live with them every day,” she said. “It always seemed to me, even growing up, that we should talk about babies with the same seriousness and importance as any other topic. I’m always surprised at parties that the conversation around babies is how to get them to sleep, and that’s it. Then it’s, oh, no, let’s talk about real estate or something grown up.”

In The Philosophical Baby, Gopnik argues that young children have been unfairly omitted from the broader conversation about human nature— consider this from the chapter titled “Babies and the Meaning of Life:” “What makes life meaningful, beautiful and morally significant? Is there something that we care about more than we care about ourselves? What endures beyond death?

“For most parents, in day-to-day, simple, ordinary life, there is an obvious answer to these questions—even if it isn’t the only answer. Our children give point and purpose to our lives. They are beautiful (with a small dispensation for chicken pox, scraped knees and runny noses), and the words and images they create are beautiful too. They are at the root of our deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral triumphs. We care more about our children than we do about ourselves. Our children live on after we are gone, and this gives us a kind of immortality.”

And yet, she goes on, children are rarely considered or even mentioned in thousands of years of thinking about human nature and immortality. Shouldn’t we look to the

“I want parents to appreciate the

wonder and complexity of what’s going on in their children’s lives.”

MEMOIR

Charting her course on a journey with cancer

By Robin Smith It’s easy to see who might enjoy this story (and, dePoet, mother, hiker, Coloradan—these are all spite the heavy topic, it is a joy to read)—folks with illwords that describe Carrie Host. But in October 2003, ness and their friends and family. There is one group another word was added to the list: that should read it: doctors. Host mostly patient. Shortly after the birth of her has good doctors, who listen to her stothird child, in the midst of unexry and carefully consider how they will plained, excruciating pain, Host’s life answer her questions. They are not flip changed dramatically. What was initialor dismissive and understand that a paly thought to be an ovarian cyst, then tient hangs on every word, listening for a ruptured appendix, turned out to be doubt or worry. When one of her docrare and difficult-to-treat carcinoid tutors makes a mistake, he apologizes and mors that had spread to her abdomen, accepts the fact that he is not God. Docliver and lungs. tors don’t often hear how their words Host’s Between Me and the River goes and actions can make such a difference where many cancer stories go—the to the patient and the family. Host’s search for the right doctors, painful and clear memory of the most critical times humiliating tests, terrifying Internet in her illness will change the lives of searches, bouts of depression, surgerdoctors who take the time to read it. ies and treatments. But this is no mere Between Me It is sometimes difficult to read a “cancer book.” The author, while spar- and the River story like this that hits close to home ing none of the difficult and horrifying for any of us who have fought cancer or details, tells her story with dignity and By Carrie Host lived with someone who has, but Host’s humor and gives credit where it is due: Harlequin sure voice and careful explanations al$22.95, 304 pages her husband and teenage children are ISBN 9780373892143 low us onto the boat with her, sure that, her anchor and her siblings, doctors, in the end, whatever that end might be, and friends steer the boat when the we will be better for the trip. o river, which is the metaphor that holds this memoir Robin Smith is a reader, teacher and cancer survivor in Nashville. together, threatens to drown her.

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edge they’ll need for lifelong success.

As seen on TV, it seems, even infants and toddlers need a competitive edge to succeed in life.

Enter Alison Gopnik, an influential child psychologist and philosopher whose research at the University of California Berkeley is changing the way we think about the lives of children.

In her fascinating and thought-provoking new book, The Philosophical Baby, Gopnik argues that instead of relying on the same old how-to-get-your-child-to-sleep parenting books and gimmicky get-smart-quick products, parents should simply embrace their children’s youngest years as a necessary time for exploration and imagination. She posits that young humans are “useless on purpose,” unable to care for themselves in even the most basic ways, so that they can focus on what Gopnik calls research and development. The most intelligent and flexible species, she says, are usually the ones with the longest periods of childhood.

“I want parents to appreciate the wonder and complexity of what’s going on in their children’s lives,” Gopnik said in a recent phone interview from her home in Berkeley. “This is not a pseudo science—do this and your baby will be smarter. I don’t want them to come away [from my book] with any kind of formula for making their child better!”

Still, Gopnik understands the attraction of books and toys promising smarter, more successful children. It’s linked, she said, to a fragmented society where fewer and fewer people have experienced caring for other children before having their own.

“It’s a fact that for most of human history, almost everyone becomes a parent and more significantly at some point before becoming a parent, they took care of other children,” says Gopnik. “Taking care of children was just part of what it meant to be human. It’s only fairly recently that you have people who have babies who’ve never taken care of babies before—even held a baby.”

The oldest of six children, Gopnik certainly grew up taking care of babies. Even as a young girl, she says, she was fascinated both by children and by philosophy. The daughter of two college professors, she was reading Plato at 10 and is considered a leader in her field of study. Her brother, Adam, is a well-known author and staff writer for The New Yorker. Another brother, Blake, is the Washington Post art critic. Yet for all that, she is strikingly down-toearth, warm and bubbling with enthusiasm when talking about her work. The mother of three grown sons, she sees ALISON GOPNIK

creation of the next generation as part of what gives life meaning?

For all the heavy subject matter, The Philosophical Baby is never ponderous. In fact, Gopnik explores the subject of how children think with a fresh, enthusiastic and wry voice. She draws on memories from her own childhood, weaving in lively and even poignant details from research sessions she’s conducted over her years in the field and other anecdotes.

In a chapter exploring the purpose of imaginary friends, Gopnik recounts her three-year-old niece Olivia’s imaginary friend, Charlie Ravioli, who seemingly helped her understand the busy Manhattan culture in which she was growing up.

Charlie Ravioli, you see, was not a very accessible friend.

Olivia often left him pretend voice mail messages implorThe Philosophical ing him to call her.

Fun and fascinating, The Baby Philosophical Baby is a must- By Alison Gopnik read for anyone who wants Farrar, Straus to better understand child $25, 304 pages development and what it ISBN 9780374231965 means to be human.

“It matters the way all science matters,” Gopnik says. “It matters for the same reason finding out about black holes matters, finding out about DNA matters. We have to acknowledge just how important a part children are of our lives.” o Amy Scribner is the mother of two young children who would probably prefer to chew or color on flash cards.

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MEET Mélanie Watt

CHILDREN’S BOOKS Back to school, with a smile

By Robin Smith ith year-round school schedules and earlier and earlier starting dates, it’s sometimes hard to say when the back-to-school season for American kids begins. Those of us of a certain age know that school should start after Labor Day, but that, like cassette players and phones with cords, is just a quaint oldtimey idea in many parts of the country.

No matter the start date in your area, it won’t be long before kindergartners and elementary school kids are looking for books to explain the world of school to them. Whenever your new school year begins, you can be ready with these new offerings and know that they will help pave the way to a successful school year.

It’s not just kids who go to school—buses make the daily trek, too. Poet Marilyn Singer explores in exuberant rhyme the trip to school in I’m Your Bus (Scholastic, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780545089180), illustrated by Evan Polenghi. Every page bustles with brightness and sparkle, and even the traffic lights on the dedication page have big smiling faces, ready for school! Short, easy-to-read rhymes keep this story moving. “Sweepers sweeping, bakers baking. / Dawn is barely even breaking. / Time for buses to be waking!” All the vehicles, from street sweepers and trucks to taxis and limos, are painted with wide, welcoming smiles—just the encouragement youngsters need to face a new school year. This would be a wonderful book to read on one of the first days of kindergarten, even if your kids walk or drive; the rhythm is infectious and the words are easy to memorize, which makes this a perfect choice for children who are excited about learning to read.

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French lessons Once parents have gotten their children over their concerns about school buses, the real issue will have to be faced: school itself. No matter the happy faces that parents put on, some kids do not want to go to school, ever. A newcomer to America, Stephanie Blake, has just the antidote for this reluctance with I Don’t Want to Go to School! (Random House, $12.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780375856884). Originally published in France, this is the humorous tale of Simon, a mischievous little rabbit who does not want to go to school. Each time one of his parents tells him all the great things that happen at school, he answers with just two words, “No way!” Despite his firm statements, the time for the first day keeps drawing nearer and nearer. Using a mixture of half-page illustrations, saturated primary colored backgrounds and amusing graphic elements, the story will have new readers delightfully unsure whether Simon will even go to school, let alone like it. American children will enjoy some of the details that mark this book as a little bit Continental— the children have chocolate mousse in the cafeteria, nap under a communal blanket and the blackboards and posters are written in cursive with the numbers one and seven jauntily crossed. Simon’s many facial expressions are a marvel as well. The endpapers alone will make the most worried kindergartner laugh! Simon might be the perfect friend to carry to school on the first day.

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New beginnings

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Canadian artist Mélanie Watt created her first picture book, Leon the Chameleon, as an assignment for a graphic design class. Since that beginning, she has written and illustrated many more, including the popular Scaredy Squirrel and Chester series. Her latest is the hilarious sales pitch, Have I Got a Book for You! (Kids Can, $16.95, 32 pages, ISBN 9781554532896). She lives in Montreal.

A much more serious offering about school adjustment is My Name is Sangoel (Eerdmans, $17, 32 pages, ISBN 9780802853073) by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed, illustrated by Catherine Stock. This is the gentle story of one refugee boy from Sudan and his adjustment to life in his new country, the United States. Young readers will quickly empathize with Sangoel as he, his mother and sister enter the bustling airport, filled with English signs and people speaking English. Because his father was killed in Sudan and he carries his Dinka name, Sangoel is the man of the family and the only one who speaks any English. The biggest adjustment for Sangoel is school. Everywhere he turns, people mispronounce his name, and he fears he will lose even that connection to his father. But his ingenuity pays off when he figures out a way to let everyone know just how his name is pronounced. Through soft watercolors and the occasional torn photo or fabric collage, Stock’s illustrations let the reader understand exactly how Sangoel is feeling and what a tremendous challenge it is to move to a new country and continent. Books like this tend to be preachy, but the writers keep the focus here on young Sangoel and his adjustment without veering into the political. Most schools in America have refugee children or children who are adjusting to a new culture and language; this is a book, along with Aliki’s excellent Marianthe’s Story, that should help build compassion in many classrooms. o Robin Smith teaches second grade in Nashville.

YOUNG ADULT Suspenseful summer reading for teens As the final weeks of summer wind down, don’t miss the chance to escape with some nonrequired reading. Try one of these thrillers—spine-tingling books for teens that will cast a chill on even the hottest summer days.

The monster within

By Angela Leeper James can’t wait to leave his old life behind him and make a new start as a freshman at State University. While stopping for gas on the way to college, he has a chance encounter with his childhood pal, Reggie, and the two are forced to recall their 12th summer. Daniel Kraus’s chilling debut novel, The Monster Variations, looks back at that time of terror, when a mysterious silver truck is running over boys at night. James and Reggie’s mutual blood brother, Willie, is lucky to be alive, only losing an arm from the hit-and-run attack.

Just when summer arrives, promising long evenings playing junkball with neighborhood friends, paranoia sweeps the boys’ small town, which institutes a curfew for children and sends parent vigilantes on the prowl. With more time at home, the boys take notice of the frequent The Monster absences by James’ father and his Variations parents’ disintegrating marriage, Reggie’s “well-known” waitress By Daniel Kraus mother who works long hours and Delacorte $16.99, 256 pages Willie’s alcoholic father and over- ISBN 9780385737333 protective mother. There’s also more Ages 12 and up time for the boys to seek out the school bully’s secrets, view the dead “monster” kept hidden in an older teen’s barn and turn against each other for the first time.

In this cerebral thriller, Kraus crafts masterful descriptions of bygone childhoods, a town overcome by suspicion and the psychological effects of fear. As the boys try to figure out the identity of the killer, everyone is a suspect until the shocking conclusion.

But perhaps the real fear is simply fear of growing up, realizing the disappointments and imperfections in life and trying to avoid becoming a monster oneself, burdened by life’s responsibilities.

Despite the difficult changes that coming of age brings, Kraus also offers hope for happiness and independence in the unsettling time known as adolescence. o

Animal magnetism

Shiver

By Maggie Stiefvater Scholastic $17.99, 400 pages ISBN 9780545123266 Ages 13 and up

A stop on the road to glory

by Angela Leeper Child prodigy Ronald Earl Pettway has always accepted his gift of healing, which has led to endless tent revivals and a sheltered life on the road with elderly, scripture-spouting evangelists Sugar Tom and Certain Certain and his great-aunt Wanda Joy. But now that he’s turned 16, Ronald Earl, known simply as Little Texas, finds himself doubting his once-solid gift. He has begun to take an interest in girls, especially a ghost-like girl named Lucy, whom he failed to save one evening on a revival stop.

“One thing I have learned is every story of the strange has a mustard seed of truth,” Sugar Tom tells the boy, and in R.A. Nelson’s modernday horror story, Days of Little Texas, forgotten truths wail to be heard.

Sensing Ronald Earl’s adolescent changes, Wanda Joy leads the troupe to Vanderloo, a former cotton plantation in Alabama. This last remaining structure atop an island, created when the Tennessee Valley Authority Days of Little Texas flooded the area, is better known to the locals as Devil Hill. Wanda Joy By R.A. Nelson hopes to encourage the teenager’s Knopf $16.99, 400 pages loyalty to the church by testing his ISBN 9780375855931 gift and avenging the diabolical Ages 12 and up death of her grandfather decades earlier.

With the help of Lucy, Ronald Earl discovers Vanderloo’s dark slavery secrets, held captive since its pre-Civil War days. His battle against its demons also becomes a personal fight against fear and for love and independence. Nelson’s eerie and sometimes downright scary descriptions of the plantation’s evil inhabitants and effective twists create a spine-chilling experience.

Although Ronald Earl may have a gift from God, he questions the world like any teenage boy. His stolen moments with Sugar Tom and Certain Certain, discussing his dilemmas and their own scrapes in life, provide rich commentary on living in the world today. Readers drawn to the story’s horror will also find a formidable champion for setting the past and present straight. o Angela Leeper is the Director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

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By Emily Booth Masters Seventeen-year-old Grace has held a morbid fascination with the wolves that reside behind her Minnesota home since she was dragged from her tire swing by the pack as a young child, only to be rescued and returned to safety by one of the wolves. For years she has watched and followed this yellow-eyed wolf when the weather is cold, only to feel the pangs of longing when he disappears each summer.

Eighteen-year-old Sam has lived a double life—wolf in the winter, boy in the summer—since he was attacked and bitten by a wolf as a young child. His werewolf pack is his family, but he longs to know Grace, the beautiful young woman who has watched him from her

house since the day he saved her from an attack by his fellow wolves.

When a local boy is attacked and presumably killed by the wolves, people from the town take matters into their own hands and go into the woods to hunt down and kill the wolves. Grace tracks the hunters into the woods, only to find that her own wolf has been shot, and, as a result, he has changed into his human form. She rescues him, and she and Sam learn that their love for one another is mutual. They then resolve to find a way to keep Sam human.

Maggie Stiefvater melds the worlds of fantasy and reality quite convincingly, making it easy to overlook the unlikeliness of a girl loving a wolf (or a faerie being sent to assassinate a 16-year-old girl).

In a market where the search for the next Twilight is in high gear, Stiefvater delivers a solid contender in Shiver. However, Shiver stands out for reasons beyond its place within the evergrowing genre of supernatural romance. Twilight lovers will appreciate a new take on the supernatural love story, but all readers will be able to enjoy Stiefvater’s fast-paced storytelling and dedication to the old-fashioned art of creating a believable and enduring romance. Shiver is beautifully written, even poetic at times, and a perfect indulgence for readers of all ages. o Emily Booth Masters reviews from Nashville.

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EDUCATION

That old college try Advice on getting in, and succeeding once you get there

By Angela Leeper or many students across the nation, back to school means more than shopping for new pencils, backpacks and clothes. It’s time to start searching for the right college or preparing for the first year away from home. While either experience can be daunting for teens and parents alike, several new books guide readers through the college selection process, the transition to college and even adventurous alternatives to the traditional university route.

“No future decision will carry as much social visibility as the college choice,” contends college advisor and author Joyce Slayton Mitchell. In her accessible 8 First Choices: An Expert’s Strategies for Getting into College (SuperCollege, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 9781932662399), she eases high school students’ pressure by walking them step by step through the college admissions process—from testing, researching universities and selecting eight first choices to how financial aid works and how to nail the college essay, application and interview. In an age where college applications are at an all-time high and still on the rise, she shows the specifics deans are looking for, with tips from some of the most selective universities. Mitchell also describes how to demonstrate diversity, personalize the college selection process and stand out among thousands of applications, even if you’re an overrepresented applicant. Above all, she encourages high school students to take ownership of the decisions that will direct their future. In a concluding chapter to parents, she addresses their concerns while gently reminding them to foster their children’s independence in this character-building experience.

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Temptation Island For young women who’ve earned a spot in college (hopefully, one of their eight first choices), U Chic: The College Girl’s Guide to Everything (Sourcebooks, $14.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9781402215087) offers hip yet down-to-earth suggestions on all areas of campus life. More than 30 women who’ve recently graduated from universities across the country give an insider’s scoop on getting along with roommates, dorm decorating, sororities, college perks and thriving when in the minority. While they touch upon studying and other ways to succeed in class, deciding on a major, campus safety, budgets, exercise and nutrition, the majority of this guide is dedicated to topics that parents tend to avoid. As one contributor writes, “College is the ultimate Temptation Island.” Whether it’s ditching the dorm and getting more involved on campus, “tech etiquette for a Facebook Age,” the dating scene, sex ed, “dormcest,” partying responsibly, depression or eating disorders, the authors dish it out with frank advice on surviving the newfound freedoms and temptations.

Letting go

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Teenagers may think they know everything, but they can always use some help making the switch from high school to college. So can parents. Marie Pinak Carr’s Sending Your Child to College: The Prepared Parent’s Operational Manual (Dicmar, $15.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780933165168) provides myriad tips for parents’ new role and for preparing their children for the next big step in their lives. Kicking off with the mountains of required paperwork and making sure they aren’t billed twice for insurance, this chatty guide also reminds parents about checking accounts, budgets, laundry, campus safety, alcohol and drug use and other important topics they need to discuss with their fledgling collegiates.

While some chapters focus on more serious matters, such as navigating campus, travel arrangements, health care and car emergencies, other chapters on furnishing a dorm room and thematic care packages remember the fun side of college. For parents who really want to stay connected, there’s even a quick chapter on volunteer possibilities, whether near or far from campus. But it’s the extensive checklists and forms throughout that are reasons enough to purchase this useful manual.

While the book above touches on the practical side of college, Marjorie Savage’s You’re On Your Own (But I’m Here if You Need Me): Mentoring Your Child Through the College Years (Fireside, $16, 352 pages, ISBN 9781416596073) focuses on the emotional transition—for students and parents—and makes an excellent com28 panion guide. For parents who want to give their children space but also want to know

how soon they can call after settling them into their dorms, this comprehensive book explains the change from primary caregiver to proud mentor and supporter. It addresses how college affects the entire family, from students’ range of emotions, especially in their first six weeks away from home, to ways parents can avoid empty nest feelings. Always encouraging parents to help and not “helicopter,” the author does let them know when their insights are important to share in such matters as finances, health, safety and the social scene.

Each chapter concludes with a list of “Quick Tips for Students” for parents to pass along to their children. And just when parents are starting to grasp their new relationships with their children, they come home again.

Luckily, there’s a section that covers this adjustment, too!

Going global If all the talk of standardized tests, college applications and high tuition rates are causing extreme dizziness and heart palpitations, then the “anti-college prep handbook” The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education (Three Rivers Press, $14.95, 336 pages, ISBN 9780307450623) may be the best guide yet. In the summer of 2005, author Maya Frost, her husband and four teenage daughters left their suburban life in Oregon to live around the world. Whether parents are considering sending their high school- or college-age children to study abroad or the “fullfamily deal,” a short stay or total immersion, Frost describes how all of these options focus on children’s total development rather than just on their education and help prepare them for a global workplace. While packing up the family and moving to a foreign country may seem scary or like a glamorous neverending vacation, the author also explains how to let go of fear, numerous expat misconceptions and key qualities for making the experience a success. A plethora of first-hand statements from experienced travelers reveals invaluable insight and the inspiration to get up and go—abroad. o Angela Leeper is the Director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

Finding the right school Valedictorian status or high test scores no longer open doors to the country’s top universities. And striking that subtle balance among academic achievement, extracurriculars and the dreaded college essay can be tricky. That’s why Oyster Bay High School on Long Island, whose diverse student body represents a range of cultures and socioeconomic levels, was lucky to have “guidance guru” Gwyeth Smith Jr., simply known as Smitty.

In Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right Colleges—and Find Themselves, (Penguin Press, $25.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9781594202148) Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David L. Marcus follows Oyster Bay’s class of 2008 as it prepares for college admissions. Focusing on several of Smitty’s special “projects” for the year—including an African-American girl with an overloaded schedule and limited financial resources, a popular jock who can’t focus on school work with all of the chaos at home, a free-spirited artist and a would-be engineer with a helicopter mother—Marcus’ engaging and inspiring narration reveals the mounting challenges teens face today and the resiliency that often exceeds their years.

Although he once flunked out of college and passed through three campuses before earning his bachelor’s degree, Smitty knows after nearly four decades of counseling that the secret to admissions success is not seeing college as a destination, but the beginning of a journey. The encouragement he gives his seniors on finding the right college—look beyond status and pressure from home and into one’s own character and passions—is timeless advice. For any student scouting the same path, and parents who want to help rather than hinder the search, Acceptance offers an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at the college admissions process. o —ANGELA LEEPER

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There Be Dragons Heather Graham Beautiful Marina is forced to choose between saving her land and her people or following her heart in this Christmas-themed romance from New York Times best-selling author Heather Graham.

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The U.S. Military has created a new warrior, but have scientists gone too far?

Gregory Lamberson Sequestered in rooms veiled in secrecy is the worst crime Jake Helman will ever see – the theft of the human soul.

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29

WOMEN’S FICTION

Chance meeting with a stranger transforms three lives

By Deborah Donovan Joyce Maynard’s novels are beloved for their compelling and carefully drawn characters, and this—her sixth—carries on that tradition, with three characters whose lives intersect by happenstance, each one changed irrevocably for the better.

Since 13-year-old Henry’s father left, his only family is his mother, Adele. He feels completely alienated from his father’s new family—his new wife Marjorie, her son

Richard (from her first marriage) and their new baby, Chloe. Henry and Richard have nothing in common as Henry enters the throes of adolescent self-doubt.

It’s been a long, dull summer for Henry, the boredom broken only by the occasional outing with this “other family,” and the increasingly unbearable Saturday nights when his father takes everyone (except Adele, of course) to Friendly’s for dinner. Adele actu-

30

THRILLER

THRILLER

Bengal’s Heart Reporter Cassa Hawkins has always supported Breed rights—especially in light of a specimen like Cabal St. Laurents, the epitome of the male animal. But when the Breeds are incriminated in a series of murders, it’s left to Cassa and Cabal to discover the truth—before they become prey.

Deep Lie CIA analyst Kate Rule goes head-tohead with a brilliant KGB operative who’s the architect of a secret plot to invade Sweden. The thrilling story leads Rule through one death trap after another, and builds to a climactic scene in which a Russian nuclear submarine threatens the Swedish government.

Good People When Tom and Anna Reed find $370,000 in their tenant’s apartment, it seems as if all their problems are solved. But before long they’ll know exactly where that cash came from and face the brutal truth that in order to save your own life, sometimes you have to destroy your dreams.

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Alibi When a wealthy heiress is brutally murdered, defense attorney David Cavanaugh’s young law student protégé is accused of the crime. The odds are against him, as David is led down a road where every ally is an enemy in disguise—and where privilege means anyone can get away with murder.

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SUSPENSE

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REFERENCE

MYSTERY

PARANORMAL

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Silks Geoffrey Mason is a defense barrister whose true passion is riding his Thoroughbred. Mason’s two lives collide when a fellow jockey is accused of murdering a colleague with a pitchfork.

Mason prefers not to get involved, but soon he is torn between doing what’s right and what will keep him alive.

Skykeepers Ancient Mayan prophecy holds that 12/21/2012 will bring a global cataclysm. Mankind’s only hope lies with the Nightkeepers, modern magic-wielding warriors who must find their destined mates and defeat the rise of terrible demon creatures to prevent global annihilation.

ally never goes anywhere since her goal is to remain invisible—for reasons the reader will soon discover.

But then Labor Day rolls along, and the lives of these two damaged souls are changed forever as they cruise the aisles of the local Pricemart for back-to-school clothes. Henry is approached by Frank, a soft-spoken stranger who is bleeding and asks for help. He and Adele, who has always been a nurturer, take Frank in, and hear of the horrific circumstances that led to his incarceration years before—a story that matches the intensity of Adele’s own private struggle. Over the next six days Henry learns the reasons for his mother’s fear of venturing into the world. And as he sees her with Frank, really happy for the first time he can remember, Henry begins to understand the difference between sex (which he has read about in magazines), and love, which he witnesses between them.

At first Henry feels as if he’s “off the hook”—released from the constant pressure of figuring out ways to make his mother happy. Then he becomes worried about the possibility that Frank will take his place in his mother’s affections. He gradually realizes that “Our finding each other . . . was the first true piece of good luck in any of our lives in a long time.”

Maynard deftly pulls the reader into the fragile lives of these three vulnerable characters and their preordained march toward the novel’s denouement. A marvelous read—perfect for one long sitting—this novel leaves the reader wishing it didn’t ever have to end. o Deborah Donovan writes from La Veta, Colorado.

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By Joyce Maynard HarperCollins $24.99, 256 pages ISBN 9780061843402

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CRAFTS

You can do it Channel your creativity with these recession-proof projects

By Linda M. Castellitto IY has never been hotter. Thanks to the rise of hipster culture and the fall of the economy, crafting is uber-cool. Really, why pay for a pricey photo album, lamp or tote bag when a handmade one is personalized—and priceless? This sextet of new books offers inspiration, instructions and ideas aplenty. Craft on!

D

A new perspective on paper In her introduction to Home, Paper, Scissors: Decorative Paper Accessories for the Home (Potter Craft, $19.95, 144 pages, ISBN 9780307452825), Patricia Zapata confesses to a strong affinity for paper. So strong, in fact, that she collects all manner of colors, textures and types, but can’t bring herself to write on any of the precious pages. She can, however, create with them, and her book offers projects suitable for a wide range of tastes and skill-levels. How-tos (including photos, materials lists, patterns, and time-estimates) cover Decorating, Entertaining and Gifting, from a Fluttering Mobile to Mosaic Place Mats to a Pocket Photo Album. This lovely book is perfect for crafters looking to explore an inexpensive new medium.

A bevy of bags By now, thanks to increased eco-awareness, most of us have purchased a few canvas totes—and maybe even remember to use them at the grocery store. With Sew What! Bags: 18 Pattern-Free Projects You Can Customize to Fit Your Needs (Storey, $16.95, 151 pages, ISBN 9781603420921), crafting veterans and amateurs alike can go a step further by designing and making their own totes, plus 17 other bag-esque projects. Author Lexie Barnes puts her experience as a handbags and accessories designer to work in this great guide, which includes detailed instructions, inspiring photos and plenty of you-can-do-it encouragement. Spot-on tips for hemming, choosing fabric and breaking out of the pattern mold help ensure this book is a crafter’s delight.

Dress up your dorm room

T-shirt transformation redux When it comes to t-shirts, Megan Nicolay is a seemingly tireless innovator. In her follow-up to the popular Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt, the author has come up with ideas for scarves, oven mitts, dresses, baby booties—and of course, a selection of t-shirts with a twist. In Generation T: Beyond Fashion: 120 New Ways to Transform a T-shirt (Workman, $15.95, 244 pages, ISBN 9780761154105), witty titles (Pom-Pom Circumstance for a toddler’s hat, Love it or Weave It for a crisscross tank top) share space with step-by-step instructions, line drawings, variations and photos of people and pets wearing the creations. Projects such as a wine cozy, pet bed, plant hanger and car floor mats up the DIY ante, but tutorials on tying, stitching and laundering—plus no-sew options—will boost beginners’ confidence. Thanks to the projects’ low-cost raw materials (t-shirts the crafter is already hoarding, scissors and a needle and thread) they offer crafters a recession-proof way to perk up a wardrobe, add some oomph to household décor or give thoughtful and personalized gifts.

Generation T: Beyond Fashion is a t-shirt-transformation sourcebook that crafters will refer to again and again. o Linda M. Castellitto has plans for her stack of concert t-shirts.

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Making the past present, through linens EllynAnne Geisel knows her vintage linens. In The Kitchen Linens Book: Using, Sharing, and Cherishing the Fabric of Our Daily Lives (Andrews McMeel, $19.99, 152 pages, ISBN 978074077763-9) she writes and rhapsodizes about tablecloths, hot pads, towels and more. A devoted fabric collector, she writes, “My vintage kitchen linens, like my aprons, speak of past generations, but they also inspire me to think of future gatherings.” To that end, Geisel provides instructions for fabric care, embellishing linens, packing a picnic and making a proper pot of tea. She also shares other linen aficionados’ touching stories and remembrances.

There are recipes, too, and a vintage Butterick transfer pattern is tucked in the back. The author’s knowledge of and love for fabric artifacts is evident—and infectious—in this enjoyable read, which surely will inspire readers to look at linens from bygone days with renewed respect and appreciation.

Delicious creativity From biscotti to fudge to preserves to spiced olives, Christ-

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If Theresa Gonzalez and Nicole Smith have anything to say about it, dorm rooms will no longer be drab. Rather than view a 200-square-foot space as a bland box, they urge, “Think of it as a creative challenge.” And instead of fighting the arrival of the inevitable concrete block, view it as a bed-booster and a “cute bookend that you adapt into a cinderblock cozy.” While Dorm Decor: Remake Your Space with More Than 35 Projects (Chronicle, $19.95, 132 pages, ISBN 9780811863476) mainly uses the feminine pronoun when addressing readers, guys would do well to check out the book as well; the sleek, Jonathan Adler-esque Stone’s Throw Pillow; the witty Oh Dear, Deer Head; and the ever-useful Laundry Day Backpack are just a few examples of projects that will appear to dorm-dwellers of either sex. The book (spiral-bound, with full-color photos) is organized by function, such as sleep, dress and hang out. This is one book enterprising crafters won’t mind studying.

mas Gifts from the Kitchen (Oxmoor House, $18.95, 112 pages, IBSN 9780848732950) is just the book for creative types who like to bestow delicious homemade presents on family and friends. Traditional recipes—kugelhopf (a fruit-and-nut cake), gingerbread and macaroons—mingle with more unusual ones, including Pine Nut Brittle, Candied Grapefruit Peel and Lemon Spice Olives. Foodwriter and farmer Georgeann Brennan provides gift-packaging ideas as well, such as glittery cones to hold candy, a teacup-ascookie-holder and a bread board as the foundation for packaging a cake. Readers likely will want to dive into these recipes—and begin taste-testing—right away.

31

WORDNOOK

Crossing the line

By the editors of Merriam-Webster

In the hood Dear Editor: Where does the word hoodlum come from? Does it have something to do with thugs wearing hoods to hide their faces? That’s my theory.

R. B. Amarillo, Texas Hoodlum is an Americanism. It originated in San Francisco around 1870. (The shortened form hood wasn’t recorded until some 60 years later.) By about 1877, people were taking notice of hoodlum in other areas of the country, but by that time no one could remember exactly how it had come to be. Newspaper articles were frequently written about the word, putting forth many colorful stories to account for it, but none of these have ever been proved true.

The prize for most dubious theory goes to the story that claims that a group of criminals would themselves cry “Huddle ‘im!” when they encountered a potential victim on the waterfront. They would then huddle around him to beat him and steal his valuables.

Another theory claims that a San Francisco reporter spelled a local gang leader’s name backwards because he feared the consequences of exposing the true name.

Muldoon became Noodlum, but a typesetter misread the reporter’s handwriting, and Noodlum became Hoodlum.

Soon hoodlum became a synonym for a petty criminal.

There are several variations on this story, including one in which Noodlum became Hoodlum because of an association with the Irish name Hooligan.

These stories show considerable creativity, but the

IT’S A MYSTERY

truth is likely to be far more prosaic. The leading current theory is that hoodlum comes from a German dialect word, hudelum, which means “disorderly.” There were many German-Americans living in the San Francisco area at the time, and it’s not unreasonable to suppose that some of them may have adapted a familiar word for a new use.

What’s in a nickname?

Dear Editor: Can you tell me about the word nickname? Does it come from Nick, which is short for Nicholas?

P. L Tampa, Florida Nick is a nickname, but it is not the source of the word nickname. The original form of nickname was the Middle English word ekename. Its meaning was slightly different from today’s nickname. The earliest sense of ekename is a descriptive name given to a person, or even a place, in addition to the proper name. Today, nickname also refers to a shortened or familiar form of a proper name.

Eke is an archaic adverb synonymous with also. Thus, in Middle English an ekename was an also name—that is, an additional name. The word acquired the initial “n” of its modern form when an ekename began to be misunderstood and written as a nekename, eventually becoming a nickname.

Other words that have acquired an “n” in much the same manner include newt and nonce. The word apron is an example of the opposite process—it was originally napron but lost its “n” when a napron became an apron.

Dear Editor: Why do we call intersecting lines a crisscross? Why not just call them a crossing or an intersection?

B. F. Putney, Vermont Crisscross has an interesting history. You might think that it was simply formed by reduplication of cross, but that is not the case. Crisscross is actually derived from the earlier forms Christ cross and Christ’s cross, which date back to the 15th century. In its earliest sense, Christ cross literally meant “the mark of the cross that symbolizes Christianity.”

In the hornbooks or primers used to teach elementary pupils in past centuries, a Christ cross was placed at the front of the alphabet. This arrangement of a Christ cross and the alphabet was called a Christ-cross-row or, ultimately, a criss-cross-row. As with Christmas and Christian, the original pronunciation of Christ-cross changed over time, and with it, the term’s spelling also changed, leading eventually to crisscross.

The association of crisscross with Christ Cross has gradually been forgotten, with the result that crisscross has taken on a number of additional senses unrelated to the Christian symbol. Aside from the one you mention, “a pattern of intersecting lines,” there are the less common senses “the state of being at cross-purposes” and “a confused state.” There is also an adjective crisscross, meaning “having a crisscross pattern,” and a verb crisscross, meaning “to mark with a crisscross pattern.” Please send correspondence regarding Word Nook to:

Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102

This crossword is from Linda K. Murdock’s Mystery Lover’s Puzzle Book, published by Bellwether Books. © 2007 Linda K. Murdock.

LAURIE KING

ACROSS 1. Sherlock’s young “sidekick” Mary __ 7. Belongs to Sherlock’s housekeeper 13. A multi-colored cat 15. Ethnicity of Mary & Sherlock’s guides in 38-Down 16. Digital display for short 18. A machine that bundles hay 20. Without ceremony Mary & Sherlock __ 21. Aloof, or what Sherlock can be 24. Provided nourishment 25. Kidnapped child is Mary’s first 26. What Mary might do to Sherlock’s insects to drive them away 28. “__, that hurts!”

30. Epochs, as Victorian and Civil War 31. University where Mary studies 33. Gary Burghoff on M*A*S*H (initials)

S O L U T I O N

35. Twelve mos.

36. Mrs. Reagan’s answer to drugs 37. Radio frequency (abbr.)

38. Belongs to Actress Dench 40. Mary is injected with this in Monstrous Regiment of Women 44. Substance causing vomiting 46. NYSE Index 47. Plural of isn’t 48. What Mary & Sherlock work as 50. A __ of Mary implies Mary Magdalene was an apostle 52. Sherlock is often in disguise or __ cover 54. Mary doesn’t always __ to Holmes 56. Mary is __ inch short of six feet tall 58. You old __ and __ 59. Assumes a role, as does Sherlock 60. Sherlock is older, but not always this 62. Mr. Linkletter 64. Acronym for severe Chinese disease 65. Associated with vampires 67. Wild animal collection place 68. Perpetual lease at a fixed rate 69. What Sherlock smokes 72. 7th letter of Greek alphabet 74. Age and year (19__) Mary met Sherlock 77. Villain of Holmes and Russell 78. Being followed, as Mary fears a mystic is in 40-Across

DOWN 2. What Mary calls Dr. Watson 3. Columbia is its capital

4. Alleviate, as a burden 5. __ Bean, outdoor apparel maker 6. Mary’s favorite site at alma mater 7. Mary’s tutor 8. Moor that is the subject of The Moor 9. Older citizen for short 10. Tree from an acorn 11. Killer in Psycho (initials) 12. Important ID number 14. Sid or Julius 16. Mary is __-handed 17. Long extinct bird 19. Miami Vice/Battlestar Galatica star (2 initials) 22. Sherlock always knows __ did it 23. Pastor in The Moor is Sherlock’s __ 25. Corps of Engineers (abbr.)

26. Mary returns to this West Coast city in Locked Rooms (abbr.)

27. Famous hockey player Bobby __ 29. Mary feels immortality lies in the __ word 32. Street person, a Sherlock disguise 34. Small willow used in basket work 36. Supporting post for staircase 38. O __, or setting for this book 39. Mary floats in this sea in 38-Down 40. Bolt __, hideaways used by Sherlock 41. Mares and does eat them (sing.)

42. Anger 43. Belonging to Roman fiddler?

45. US state of Mary’s youth 49. Sherlock’s brother 51. Football score for short

53. Used with neither 55. Possessive for a thing 57. Kind of tide 59. Secretary for short 60. Gravitational force for short 61. Internet service provider (abbr.)

63. Nicholas was the last Russian one 64. Davenport 65. What Sherlock “kept” in retirement

66. Mary’s guardian in the first book 68. Fairy tale refrain “__ fie fo fum” 70. Kind of stains Mary gets from her writing 71. What all good books must do 73. __ be or not __ be 75. Instant replay (abbr.)

76. Creator of Beanie Babies