BookPage February 2009

®

America’s BoOK Review

Birthday Boys

February 2009

A bicentennial celebration for Darwin, Poe & Lincoln

PLUS Maeve Binchy • T.C. Boyle • Adam Gopnik • Gwen Ifill • J.D. Robb

®

America’s BoOK Review THE BEST IN NEW BOOKS Publisher Michael A. Zibart Associate publisher Julia Steele

8 E dgar Allan Poe Still scaring today’s readers 8 C harles Darwin The naturalist’s legacy 10 A braham Lincoln His life and times

INTERVIEWS 7 T.C. Boyle New novel chronicles Frank Lloyd

Assistant EditorS MiChelle Jones Trisha Ping

18 K athryn Stockett Breaking the rules to make

Contributor Roger Bishop 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.

S U B S CR I B E 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.

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february 2009 ON THE COVER behind the book

Editor Lynn L. Green

Contributing Editor Sukey Howard

CONTENTS

Wright’s female troubles a change

26 H elen Fisher Love and science go hand in hand

FEATURES 6 M eet the Author Miss Piggy speaks up 12 Trends in Romance Coming up: big love 26 Dating The rocky path to relationship success 31 I Do Planning a greener wedding

24 K athryn Fitzmaurice A grandmother’s legacy leads to a new career

25 B lack History Bringing the past to life for kids 25 J eff Kinney Meet the author-illustrator

H otel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes

REVIEWS

18

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Fiction

22

Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

5 Security by Stephen Amidon

27

Promises in Death by J.D. Robb

5 The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian

30

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

6 Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy

30

The Séance by John Harwood

6 Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani

Nonfiction 4 Blank Spots on the Map by Trevor Paglen

black history month

11

Mrs. Lincoln by Catherine Clinton

11

Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik

22 The Breakthrough by Gwen Ifill 28 The Canal Builders by Julie Greene 28 The Painter’s Chair by Howard Hugh 31 Mother in the Middle by Sybil Lockhart

A DV E R T I S E

DEPARTMENTS

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

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.

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Amy Dickinson shares wisdom from the women in her life

Remembering past struggles

page 22

3 4 12 14 17 28 30

Buzz Girl The Author Enablers Romance Audio Whodunit?

Book Clubs Cooking

Cover illustration © 2009 Dave Carlson, carlson-art.com

NOW IN PAPERBACK

buzz girl ➥ Our publishing

insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers Patterson is not the first crime novelist who thinks he has the answer to a longago murder: Patricia Cornwell did the same with the Jack the Ripper case back in 2002 with Portrait of a Killer. “Ripperologists” and lawyers alike found Cornwell’s case for painter Walter Sickert being the Ripper less than convincing. When Little, Brown publishes The Murder of King Tut in October, we’ll find out if the prolific Patterson fares better.

Not all the news coming out of the publishing world these days is grim—looking ahead to spring and summer, we’ve found plenty of reasons for hope.

to Fatherhood (Norton). Based on the notes Lewis took after the births of each of his three children with former MTV VJ Tabitha Soren, the book is billed as “maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded from the point of view of the man inside.”

➥ shadow of a hit

Debut novelist David Wroblewski hit the big time with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, an atmospheric tale about a young high hopes boy and his dog with ShakeNick Hornby readers spearean overtones. The book’s count on getting a wild and many fans—including Oprah witty ride from the English Winfrey—should be pleased to novelist, whose books also hear that the book will now be david wroblewski tend to make great movies part of a trilogy.

(High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, There’s no publication date set yet, but the second novel, which is About a Boy). So they’re sure to want to actually a prequel to Edgar, is described pick up his latest—Juliet, Naked (Riveras the story of “the life of John Sawtelle, head). An American pub date for the book, the patriarch of the Sawtelle clan, the ori- which Hornby said he was “a third of the gins of his extraordinary fictional breed way through” writing in August, has yet of dog, and the fraught, ultimately fatal to be set, but rumor has it we could see the relationship between his finished version sometime this fall. sons, Gar and Claude, Edgar Sawtelle’s father and uncle.” going gruen

➥ father’s day

Discover your next great book

Scribner is betting that the world wants more of at least one Bush—former first lady Laura Bush, who recently signed a deal reportedly worth millions with the publisher to tell the story of her life before, during and after the White House.

Of course the question everyone’s asking is, will there be dirt? Given Bush’s legendary circumspection, it seems doubtful, but with her White House days behind her, she might feel freer to express herself. The memoir will be published in 2010—until then, readers interested in speculation on the first lady’s inner life can pick up Curtis Sittenfeld’s stellar novel American Wife.

➥ past patterson Author James Patterson has dominated the fiction bestseller lists for years. Now he’s apparently determined to conquer the realm of nonfiction as well.

Last year he co-wrote the story of a family’s struggle against the medical establishment in Against Medical Advice. This year, he’s revealing the secrets of the past in The Murder of King Tut.

Her third novel, Water for Elephants, was a surprise hit back in 2006 and went on to sell more than 2 million copies.

In June, Sara Gruen will be back with a long-awaited new novel, Ape House (Speigel & Grau). Gruen spent the last few years studying apes at Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, to write this new novel, which stars a famous family of bonoabo apes sara gruen and makes the reader question how different they are from humans.

➥ little book, big sales Dai Sijie charmed American readers with a tale set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. His second novel, the somewhat surreal Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch, did not have the same appeal—but in a new work, to be published by Knopf in August, he seems to be returning to the themes of longing and literature that he mined so expertly in Seamstress. In Once on a Moonless Night, a Westerner studying in China in the 1970s goes in search of a lost love— and a missing, mythical silk scroll that is said to have belonged to China’s last emperor. 

DAKOTA In Biting the Moon, amnesiac drifter Andi Oliver sought the one man who held the key to her past. Now, Andi goes from one small town to the next, surviving the dangers of the plains, until she finds her mission in Dakota.

Taking a job at a pig farming facility, Andi learns the gruesome truth of livestock management.

As she begins to uncover even darker secrets about her employer, a stranger from her past surfaces— demanding information of which Andi has no memory. marthagrimes.com penguin.com

A Member of Penguin Group (USA) $16/9780451225894

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Where? On the exciting new BookPage.com, of course! Stay tuned for the launch of our new site, coming soon. There, you’ll find news and reviews that won’t appear in the print edition—as well as blogs from columnists Bruce Tierney and the Author Enablers.

You can also create your own profile—or one for your book club—and let other readers know about the books and authors you love.

If you’ve been looking for a site that gives book lovers what they want, we’re bringing it to you. 

➥

➥ Bush’s Book

MARTHA GRIMES

➥

© Terence W. Bailey

Former Wall Street bond trader Michael Lewis, best known for groundbreaking books such as Moneyball and Liar’s Poker, is reputedly working on a new book about the Wall Street crash. But on May 18, his readers will get a book that is strictly personal—Home Game: An Accidental Guide Laura bush

© Ellen Jaskol

His English-language debut, The Shadow of the Wind, caused a sensation in 2004 but since then there’s been only silence from Spanish novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafón. No longer—we’re excited to report that The Angel’s Game is set for a June release from Doubleday.

Like Shadow, it’s a historical novel set in Barcelona—but this time it follows a novelist instead of a reader. David Martin makes a Faustian bargain with a mysterious publisher to write a book “like no other before”—one that perhaps holds the power of life and death in its pages.

➥ sawtelle stories

from New York Times bestseller

NONFICTION

A secret map of the world

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BY EDWARD MORRIS The “blank spots” of the title of Trevor Paglen’s Blank Spots on the Map refer to America’s secret intelligence-gathering outposts—from unacknowledged air bases in the Southwest, to innocuous office buildings in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to disguised prisons in Afghanistan, to undeclared spy satellites circling overhead. Drawing on his reporting skills and training as a geographer, Paglen constructs both a history and a remarkably detailed outline of America’s “black” operations, many of which are now in the hands of profitoriented private contractors who have no allegiance to the taxpayers who fund them—or to constitutional niceties.

Indeed, Paglen argues that government-sanctioned secrecy exacts a severe toll on America’s legal system. The Central Intelligence Act of 1949, he points out, exempts CIA funding from Congressional oversight in spite of the constitutional clause that mandates it. Now, Paglen asserts, the law has been stretched through state-secrecy arguments to embrace wiretapping of citizens without court approval, torture, “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to other countries for interrogation, punishment and concealment and routine denial of due process.

“Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of Blank Spots the Constitution,” he says, “creating blank spots in the law . . . on the Map handing sovereign powers . . . to the executive branch . . . and By Trevor Paglen turning our own history into a state secret.”

Dutton To document these conclusions, Paglen monitored $25.95, 336 pages (from a distance) secret sites from Las Vegas to Kabul; sifted ISBN 9780525951018 through government and private documents and extrapolated the data found there; and enlisted the talents of an array of amateur researchers, including a zealous recorder and interpreter of satellite data in Toronto and a retired history professor in Hawaii who specializes in the privatization of intelligence gathering. Paglen engages in no UFO voodoo or conspiracy theories here.

He’s just a concerned citizen doggedly attempting to gain relevant facts from a government now designed to conceal them. o Edward Morris gathers intelligence from Nashville.

THE AUTHOR ENABLERS Doing it your way Dear Author Enablers, Last year I self-published my first novel, Mommy Machine, of which I am very proud. I paid for professional editing and the cover is eye-catching, a 1950s throwback. I continually sell books, although in small quantities, at library author days, nursing conventions (I am a school nurse administrator), readings through my writers’ guild and to professional colleagues. I have received very favorable feedback from strangers who have read the book, so it’s not just friends being “nice.”

Since my book is self-published, is it too late to shop it around to a publisher or pursue an agent? I am working on a sequel and would appreciate your advice for both books. My reason for self-pubBY SAM BARRY & lishing in the first place was that I am in my 50s and didn’t want to wait around to KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK be accepted by a publisher. I have no regrets, but perhaps that wasn’t the best decision from a business standpoint.

Kathleen McElligott Orland Park, Illinois There are no hard and fast rules and no reason for you to have regrets—well, none that you have revealed to us in your question, that is. We’ve had a few regrets, but then again, too few to mention.

Our July 2005 column is all about marketing self-published books, so you might want to have a look (see the BookPage archives online at bookpage.com). Sometimes self-published books are picked up by traditional publishers, usually on the basis of exceptionally strong sales or extraordinary publicity. In our opinion, you should focus on finishing book two and go the traditional route of getting an agent. A publisher who makes an offer for book number two (and three and four) might also be interested in number one.

Dear Author Enablers, I saw your advice column in a copy of BookPage that I got from the local bookstore recently when I bought a few books (I couldn’t resist) and thought that perhaps you could help me. I’m first and foremost a writer, but I have been looking into going into book publishing, specifically editing, when I leave high school. I contacted several big publishing companies and asked them what kind of college degree and experience I would need to get into that field. That was over a month ago, and so far I have received no replies. Do you happen to know what type of degree I would need, and what colleges cater to students like myself who specifically want to go into book publishing? It would make my college search a LOT easier.

Danielle Raymond Cassadaga, New York Most of the people we know in publishing ended up there because they love books, not because they chose a specific college program. The usual trajectory is English major to internship to paid position; the trick question is: how are you going to live during your unpaid internship? (Maybe you can invent some software and make a few billion on the side.)

Start saving now, read everything you can get your hands on and offer to edit your friends’ writing, school papers, literary journals (maybe start your own online?). And it can’t hurt to add a business course or two to your liberal arts program.

Because of rapidly changing technology in publishing, it will also help to develop a high level of expertise in web-related technology and design.

Dear Author Enablers, Is there a book out there that tells the various agents’ likes, interests, etc.? Like if they like animals or nature, or flowers, or Mr. T? Lorrie C. Dixon, Illinois Mr. T?? As a matter of fact there is, and we pity da fool who doesn’t know about Literary Market Place, an excellent source for information on agents and publishers.

LMP has a descriptive paragraph of each agent, along with the agents’ strengths, interests and experience. Check with your local librarian for the latest copy or visit the LMP website at literarymarketplace.com. Take it from us, Mr. and Mrs. A.E. o With more than 25 years experience in the industry, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry have the inside scoop on writing and publishing. E-mail your questions (along with your name and hometown) to AuthorEnabler@aol.com.

SUSPENSE

®

The dark secrets of suburban life

By Harvey Freedenberg It’s 3 a.m. in Stoneleigh, Massachusetts. Can you imagine all the trouble brewing there?

Stephen Amidon can, and he offers a generous helping of it in his fast-paced, stylish suburban mystery/thriller, Security.

Edward Inman is the owner of Stoneleigh Security, a low-pressure business in this sleepy college town “with a crime rate equal to a sedate Swiss canton.” Still, Edward’s night terrors have gotten so severe he’s taken to leaving his home in the middle of the night to prowl the empty homes of absent clients. Edward, whose wife is an ambitious town selectman planning a mayoral campaign, is simultaneously excited and dismayed at the prospect of rekindling a relationship with his former lover, Kathryn Williams, a single mother beset by the problems of her college dropout son, Conor.

Tension builds slowly in the first half of the novel, as Amidon establishes the complex web of relationships among his characters. In addition to the Inman and Williams families, there’s Angela, a student at Mt. Stoneleigh College, and Stuart Symes, the creative writing teacher and failed novelist with whom she’s been having an affair; another student, Mary Steckl, and her alcoholic father Walter, notorious Security for his frequent brushes with Stoneleigh’s authorities; and Doyle Cutler, a vaguely sinister businessman who’s made his By Stephen Amidon Farrar, Straus fortune in the “debt management industry.”

288 pages The pace of Security accelerates dramatically in its sec- $25, ISBN 9780374257118 ond half, when police respond to a 911 call and find Mary severely beaten in the kitchen of her home, her father standing nearby and unable to remember anything of the evening’s events. But when her account of the incident changes, the cloud of suspicion slowly shifts from Walter to men like Conor Williams, Stuart Symes and Doyle Cutler, each one possessing a secret he’s desperate to hide. As the crisis in his personal life escalates, Edward Inman struggles to discover what happened that night.

Amidon’s plotting is crisp and assured and his depiction of disturbing secrets embedded just below the surface of placid suburban life has the feeling of truth. It’s a territory he knows well and in Security he’s successfully made it his own. o Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

FICTION

Final kicks on Route 66

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By Thane Tierney There comes a point in life when your bucket list has narrowed down to a single item, and that’s just where John and Ella Robina find themselves in The Leisure Seeker. She’s riddled with cancer, his mind’s in tatters from the latter stages of Alzheimer’s, but over the protests of their kids and doctors, they decide to take their camper van—and what’s left of their dreams—on one final great adventure: a cross-country trip from Detroit to Disneyland, on the fabled Route 66.

Michael Zadoorian, author of Second Hand and The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit, serves up an affectionate, clear-eyed peek at a pair of self-styled “down-on-their-luck geezers” who just aren’t ready to go gentle into that good night.

Zadoorian’s real-life struggle with his father’s case of Alzheimer’s informs the story in a funny, sad, poignant way that cuts very close to the bone.

John and Ella aren’t saints and they aren’t fools; they’re just a couple of middle-class folks who worked hard, raised a family, hung together in good times and bad, and came to the realization that the clock that has already run out on so many of their friends and acquaintances is ticking louder for them with each succeeding sunrise. While many of their adventures would be tame by the standards of Bourdain, Iyer or Theroux, the Robinas encounter a The Leisure Seeker few genuinely life-threatening situations, handled with By Michael Zadoorian the quietly tenacious aplomb of a couple who have spent a Morrow lifetime in the shark-infested waters of suburbia. And the $24.99, 288 pages moments of tenderness that pass between the AARP-card- ISBN 9780061671784 carrying pair are achingly sweet without ever straying into Hallmark territory.

As John notes, in his suite at the Flagstaff Radisson, “This is the life,” to which his wife acerbically rejoins, “What’s left of it.” Here’s to hoping we all handle our last days so well. o Thane Tierney lives in Los Angeles, not even a day’s journey from Disneyland.

.com

FICTION

Binchy’s tale of everyday life has heart

By Maude McDaniel Today’s brave new literary culture seems to demand oddballs, preferably super ones.

They can be benign oddballs, like Harry Potter, or dark ones (the vampire of your choice), but real people are somewhat out of fashion these days. Nevertheless, a brave coterie of writers, like Irish stalwart Maeve Binchy here in Heart and Soul, insists against all odds on telling readers that ordinary folks still exist.

St. Brigid’s Heart Clinic is based in a white elephant section of Dublin, and the hospital head honcho aches to convert the site to good money. Unfortunately for him, new director Clara Casey doggedly assembles an excellent staff to run the place. In true Binchyan fashion, each of the new employees has a story of his/her own, a technique that turns run-of-the-mill personalities into memorable, one-of-akind individuals.

Chief among them is the little Polish immigrant, Ania, who has more personal history than anyone suspects, but repudiates it in her new country. Then there is the nice heart doctor, Declan, who falls in love with the beautiful nurse, Fiona, and has a terrible accident. There are heart patient Bobby and his malicious wife; Eileen, who is not what Heart and Soul she seems; and Brian, the local priest who attracts her unwanted attentions. Not to mention various callow offspring By Maeve Binchy and a whole host of other characters whose stories braid Knopf together until the direction of each new twist depends on $26.95, 432 pages ISBN 9780307265791 the ones around it.

Also available on audio The author has written 14 other heartwarming novels about such ordinary people, not an accomplishment that will win her many literary prizes in our time. Her notable storytelling skills are taken for granted, and her subversive humor, based on situations more than repartee—the kind that makes the reader look up and grin as it sinks in—often goes unappreciated.

Nevertheless, as Binchy’s fiction sometimes points out, we often regret the things we don’t do. My recommendation, then: rein in your taste for spectacle and read this book about real human beings. o Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland.

WOMEN’S FICTION

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Trigiani’s latest is a delicious delight

By Amy Scribner Anyone who’s ever read an Adriana Trigiani book—oh, who are we kidding? No one ever reads just one of Trigiani’s wonderfully quirky tales. Once you pick up the first, you are hooked by her all-too-human characters and their sprawling families. So let us rephrase: Anyone who’s ever devoured Trigiani’s books knows what you’re going to get—a lot of fun delivered with a lot of heart.

Lucky for us, Trigiani has embarked on a new trilogy centered on a 30-something Italian-American custom shoemaker living in Greenwich Village. In Very Valentine, we meet Valentine Roncalli, who in her close-knit family is known as “the funny one.” Single and living with her beloved Gram, Valentine is focused on mastering the art of shoemaking while bringing the family’s business into the 21st century.

When she meets Roman Falconi, chef of the new Manhattan hot spot Ca’ d’Oro, Valentine is smitten but weary of trying to balance work and love. Her business is floundering, and she needs to focus on the biggest opportunity ever to come to the Angelini Shoe Company: a contest to design a wedding shoe for the winter window display at Bergdorf Very Valentine Goodman. When Valentine travels to Italy with her Gram to find inspiration for the design, she studies with a master By Adriana Trigiani Harper cobbler and learns she’s not just a shoemaker but an artist.

384 pages “New York City is everything to me,” she says, “but I $25.99, ISBN 9780061257056 know now, in the frenzy and the noise, amidst the urgency and rush, that the voice of the artist can be drowned out in the pursuit of making a living. . . . an artist needs time to think and to dream.”

Valentine also finds something else she wasn’t expecting: Gianluca, an intriguing Italian man who makes her re-evaluate her life and relationship back in Manhattan.

Trigiani fills her pages with snappy dialogue and luscious descriptions of both the Italian food her characters love and their surroundings, whether it’s New York or the island of Capri. Reading Very Valentine is like tucking into a plate of homemade manicotti: irresistible and delicious. o Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

INTERVIEW

Fiery romance The incendiary love life of Frank Lloyd Wright

By Jay MacDonald ast November, T.C. Boyle stood on the roof of his house in Montecito, California, garden hose in hand, prepared, if ill-equipped, to battle the conflagration known as the “Tea Fire” as it swept down the Santa Ynez Mountains. Only a last-minute westerly spared Boyle’s home from joining the 230 homes ultimately destroyed in the blaze. Compared to other concerned neighbors (Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges, Rob Lowe), Boyle’s anxiety was tenfold: the house he and his family have been restoring for the past 16 years, a 1909 Frank Lloyd Wright original known as the George C. Stewart house or “Butterfly Woods,” was just weeks away from marking its centennial. The celebration would coincide with the publication of Boyle’s 12th novel, The Women, an artfully playful

L

“He only seemed able to create when all hell was breaking loose.”

Poison does not discriminate between classes.

Coming next month!

On sale now!

www.MIRABooks.com www.deannaraybourn.typepad.com

08_333_BookPage_SOTM.indd 1

“With a strong and unique voice, Deanna Raybourn creates unforgettable characters in a richly detailed world.

This is storytelling at its most compelling.”

—Bestselling author Nora Roberts

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T.C. boyle rendering of the life, loves and, yes, the two headline-making fires at Wright’s Taliesin home that stoked the creativity of America’s foremost architect. Mere insurance could never restore such a loss.

“I thought, this is hubris!” Boyle recalls. “I was hysterical. This house is entirely made of redwood, so it would have been terrible.”

Fire—destruction as prelude to construction—is as much a leitmotif in Boyle’s latest and most ambitious historical novel as it was in Wright’s personal life, the details of which were highly flammable indeed. Wright abandoned his first wife, Catherine “Kitty” Tobin, and their six children to run off to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of a client and neighbor in Oak Park, Illinois, the cradle of Wright’s Prairie School of architecture. Though they were both married, Wright installed Mamah at the newly built Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where she would ultimately be brutally murdered along with seven others by a deranged servant in 1914. Wright would again outrage the citizenry by living out of wedlock with, before marrying, second wife Maud Miriam Noel, a Southern belle and closet morphine user. He would similarly replace Miriam with his third and final wife, Montenegrin beauty Olgivanna Milanoff.

Although Boyle envisioned tackling the larger-than-life Wright from the moment he set foot in Butterfly Woods, it was the master’s scorched-earth love life rather than his architectural genius that ultimately sparked The Women.

“My editor jokes that we should eventually do a boxed set of my books about the great American egomaniacs of the 20th century, with the last book about [sex researcher Dr. Albert] Kinsey (The Inner Circle), the Kellogg book (The Road to Wellville) and Wright,” Boyle chuckles. “There is a lot of appeal in these figures for me.

“All three were dynamos of the 20th century who changed the way that we live in radical ways, but each was a narcissist in the clinical sense of the word. That is, they had a scheme and that scheme was all-important; you and I and anyone else weren’t really individuals who had lives or needs of our own, we were simply figures in their design. It comes to a head with Wright, who not only designed the furniture but in some cases the clothing that the housewife was to wear. These figures are fascinating to me because, of course, novelists are like that.”

A less inventive writer might have been content to render the Wright stuff with a simple chronological narrative; certainly the historical facts in this case need little embellishment. But Boyle, never one to retrace his steps, nimbly reverses the order, introducing us first to Wright’s last wife Olgivanna, then Miriam, and concluding with Mamah’s tragic death. The effect lends a spirit of parlor comedy with a whiff of ash to the proceedings as each woman in turn falls for Wright and feels the inevitable sting of her predecessor’s wrath.

To further pique our curiosity, Boyle leaves the narration to Tadashi Sato, a Japanese apprentice and devotee of Wright, as translated from the Japanese by his great-grandson. Tadashi’s own story moves forward in time, a novel within a novel, slipped in primarily in the section introducThe Women tions and droll footnotes. Credit Boyle’s

By T.C. Boyle mastery with keeping Viking, $27.95, 464 pages this circus moving and ISBN 9780670020416 Also available on audio easy to follow.

“I wanted not simply to do a kind of melodrama but to do something almost in the way that Nabokov would have approached it, something that is amusing and ironic in some ways, but also is complicated structurally and has many layers of narration,” Boyle says. “The structure allows you always to question who is writing this book and how deeply they are representing a given point of view and whether or not that view is true. I guess we’re having fun in a postmodern way, not that I really thought about it as I was writing it. I’m just always seeking to find something new.”

Boyle willingly cops to a few similarities with the mercurial Wright.

“He was like me in the sense that we’re control freaks and we have an agenda and this is our world; I write these books as a cautionary tale to myself,” he admits. “But he’s also very unlike me in that he only seemed to be able to create when all hell was breaking loose, when he was being sued by creditors and pursued by lawyers and divorce lawyers and women and cops. I can’t work unless everything is perfect and quiet.”

Although Boyle turned in the finished manuscript in July 2007, he says publication was delayed, first due to the publication of Nancy Horan’s novel Loving Frank, which centers on Mamah, then to avoid being lost in the drama of the 2008 presidential election. He’s pleased that the book’s publication now coincides with the centennial celebration of his own piece of Wright’s legacy.

“I thought that living here would give me an extra charge or thrill while writing the book in this house, and it did to a degree, but not as much as you would think because it’s my house; I’ve lived here for a long time and I’ve written many books here. And yet it gave me great satisfaction to learn more about this particular house and more about his work.” o Jay MacDonald writes in the Prairie style from Austin, Texas.

12/15/08 3:34:29 PM

Well Read

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Happy 200th, Mr. Poe

January 19 marked the bicentennial of Edgar Allan’s Poe’s birth and, predictably, publishers have observed the occasion with new books honoring the American master.

British biographer and novelist Peter Ackroyd offers a scaled-down biography, Poe: A Life Cut Short (Nan A. Talese, $21.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9780385508001), the latest in the Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series. Given the book’s concision, Ackroyd does an admirable job touching the highlights of EAP’s life—though perhaps lowlights would be a more apt phrase, since so many of Poe’s 40 years were spent in emotional despair and financial penury.

There have been a lot of Poe biographies, and known details of Poe’s life and death have been well-documented: the desertion by his father and the death of his mother when he was still a boy; his affection for his adopted mother,

BY ROBERT Fanny Allan, and his fractious relationship with her husband, John; his short stint at West Point; his marriage to his WEIBEZAHL 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who, like his mother, would suffer from tuberculosis and die at a very early age; his own mysterious death in Baltimore. Ackroyd adds nothing new to the story, but instead contents himself with sketching a portrait of the artist behind some of the most original and influential stories and poems in the American canon.

Poe is thin on literary criticism and heavy on psychology. The study is, by necessity, inconclusive. “What was his character, in the most general sense?” Ackroyd wonders. “He has alternately been described as ambitious and unworldly, jealous and restrained, childlike and theatrical, fearful and vicious, self-confident and wayward, defiant and self-pitying. He was all these and more.”

Mostly, Poe was a writer like none before or since, and while largely underappreciated and financially unrewarded during his lifetime (although Ackroyd reminds us that he had devoted followers and “The Raven” was an instant classic), his reputation started to grow immediately after his death. The tentacles of his influence stretch far and wide, to what we now call horror or gothic fiction, but also to science fiction and mystery (many credit Poe with inventing the detective story with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”) Celebrating this lineage, the Mystery Writers of America, whose annual prizes are named in Poe’s honor, has published two new anthologies that call upon the talents of some of the group’s more prominent members.

In the Shadow of the Master: Classics Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (Morrow, $25.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9780061690396), edited by Michael Connelly, collects 13 of his most famous stories (no surprises here), two poems (“The Raven” and “The Bells”) and a short excerpt from his only novel. Since all of Poe’s work is readily available elsewhere, even for free on the Internet, a new anthology needs a raison d’être, and the draw here—in addition to the attractiveness of the volume, which uses some of Harry Clarke’s 1919 illustrations—are the essays interspersed throughout by such popular writers as Jeffery Deaver and Stephen King.

Many of these personal pieces recall the writers’ first discoveries of Poe in adolescence (a remarkable number talk about the Poe-inspired Roger Corman films from the 1960s). Some are touching, some funny (Joseph Wambaugh lampoons “The Raven”), and a few are a bit self-indulgent. Sue Grafton steals the show with her confession that she had nothing nice to say about Poe, and almost gave up, until. . . .

The title of the other anthology, On a Raven’s Wing: New Tales in Honor of Edgar Allan Poe (Harper, $14.95, 304 pages, ISBN 9780061690426), edited by Stuart M. Kaminsky, says it all. The contributors had loose parameters: Poe or his work had to be central to the story. The 20 stories run the gamut from traditional whodunits and puzzles to humor to brooding gothic tales. Peter Lovesey offers an intriguing new twist on Poe’s death and Conan Doyle-biographer Daniel Stashower plots a haunting story of revenge. The book also contains the last story by the prolific Edward D. Hoch, who wrote close to a thousand stories before his death in 2008.

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of Poe collections over the years, making money for everyone but the impecunious author himself. As Kaminsky points out, the inflation-adjusted revenue from Poe T-shirts and bobbleheads alone comes to far more than this great writer’s total life earnings. Alas. Happy birthday anyway, Eddie. o Robert Weibezahl is the author of the novel The Wicked and the Dead.

SCIENCE

The origins of Darwin’s theories

By Howard Shirley s the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth arrives, along with it come three books celebrating the scientist and his revolutionary ideas.

All three offer intriguing views on the man and his theories, and their mutual impact on society and science.

Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30, 496 pages, ISBN 9780547055268) places Darwin and his ideas within the context of the worldwide struggle with slavery that eventually exploded into the American Civil War. Darwin was born into a family at the forefront of the British abolitionist movement, growing up during the days of Wilberforce—British emancipation was passed while Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle. But that was an opening salvo, and to Darwin’s horror the pro-slavery forces latched onto science as a rationalization, declaring that the various races of man were distinct species created independently—with Europeans conveniently the dominant race. This idea was anathema to Darwin on a moral level as well as a scientific one, and authors Desmond and Moore set out to show how Darwin’s fury over slavery drove his theory of the unified descent of man as much as did his innate curiosity about nature.

Darwin’s Sacred Cause is a compelling narrative, well researched and convincingly presented, offering a new understanding of who Darwin was and the passions that motivated his thought. Particularly eye opening is the surprising connection between Darwin’s theory and the Christian abolition movement as they together fought a scientific community that rejected the Christian belief that all mankind was descended from a single pair. The story of that unlikely alliance is fascinating to follow, full of colorful characters both noble and vile, revealing how science and religion were debased by the evil of racism.

Darwin’s Garden: Down House and ‘The Origin of Species’ by Michael Boulter (Counterpoint, $26, 272 pages, ISBN 9781582434711) uses the garden of Darwin’s country home—Down House—as a picture of the progress of evolution science and ongoing biological studies.

Still in existence today (maintained both as a museum and a living laboratory as Darwin used it), the garden at Down House becomes, in Boulter’s words, a metaphorical path through both history and modern science, its plants and animals offering the same insights to the reader as for Darwin. Here are fascinating glimpses into the lean edge of modern biological science, beautifully tied to the simple pleasure Darwin found in experimenting in his garden. Like a stroll with the scientist himself, the book points out that for all we do know about life, we still do not even fundamentally understand the events happening in a quiet English garden, much less the raucous turmoil of the living world. Science, like life, Darwin might say, continues to evolve.

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After Darwin Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America (Random House, $27, 400 pages, ISBN 9781400067787) by Barry Werth is as much about the societal impact of Darwin’s theory as it is about Darwin himself. On November 9, 1882, a remarkable group gathered at the famous Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York to host a banquet honoring the ideals of evolution, and in particular the philosopher of evolution, Herbert Spencer. Though Darwin himself had died seven months before, everyone attending acknowledged the naturalist as the founder of the movement (with the possible exception of the rarely humble Spencer). It was a night to praise the ideals of evolution and look forward to the golden age the philosophy would bring. The dignitaries present ranged from the capitalist Andrew Carnegie to the famed preacher Henry Ward Beecher, with an assortment of scientists, politicians and orators mixed into the bunch. The story of how each came to be at the banquet is the story of how Darwin’s theory of evolution was influencing American thought in the latter 19th century.

Werth’s book is a thoroughly involving read, weaving history and biography together as the various actors move toward the culminating dinner. It is a tale of philosophy, science, political chicanery, public scandals, capitalism, socialism and eccentricity on many sides. The final contrast between the attendees’ assumptions compared to the eventual progress of history (for good and ill) ends the book on an ironic note. The banquet at Delmonico’s may not have signaled a triumph for anyone, but the book is a deliciously evolving read. o Howard Shirley writes from Franklin, Tennessee.

LINCOLN BICENTENNIAL

Presidential library

A collection of Lincoln books for everyone, honest

By Martin Brady he writings on Abraham Lincoln are almost too considerable to calculate, thus testifying to his endurance as historical personage, iconic hero and the source of curiosity for endless researchers. But with the bicentennial of his birth upon us, a wealth of recent publications retrace his life and legacy, hoping to shed new—or merely refocused—light on all that is already known about the man.

Ronald C. White Jr.’s A. Lincoln: A Biography (Random House, $35, 816 pages, ISBN 9781400064991) is an imposing doorstopper of a book, close to a thousand pages and exhaustively annotated and referenced.

As near as any interested reader might determine, White has left absolutely no stone unturned, from an account of forebear Samuel Lincoln leaving England for the New World in 1637, to the family struggles in Kentucky and Indiana, to the young Abe’s adventurous younger years, to his rise as lawyer and politician in Illinois, and on through the Civil War and the grief of the nation upon his assassination in 1865.

White’s research benefits from the availability of the recently completed Lincoln Legal Papers—which offer a more thorough view of Lincoln’s law practice—and also the emergence of newly discovered letters and photos. Besides a sense of Lincoln’s integrity—something pretty much easily assumed by most anyway—it is perhaps the man’s smartly practical spirit that emerges through this stout tome, in particular as relates to the great political issues before him (e.g., slavery) and the difficult task of guiding his armies and a nation through a horrific war, which tested every aspect of daily life and constantly demanded a nurturant sense of its absolute necessity. Finally, Lincoln rises up in this volume as a patriot of the ultimate rank, one with a determined eye on the prize: Union.

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Presidential brief Abraham Lincoln (Times Books, $22, 192 pages, ISBN 9780805083453) is an entry in the highly regarded American Presidents series, originally under the editorship of the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. These volumes are usually authored by distinguished journalists or historians, and, once in a while, by noted politicos, in this case former South Dakota senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George S. McGovern. McGovern capably sticks to the series formula, which involves a more general overview of the subject’s life and career, along with a development of the key themes that shaped his most important actions.

McGovern’s tone is laudatory throughout, as he offers insights into Lincoln’s attitudes on politics, the war and his most dearly held personal beliefs. Coverage is from hardscrabble Kentucky beginnings to the last moments at Ford’s Theatre. This is a fine read for those who want to know about Lincoln but may not have time for the more in-depth biographies.

Inside the Lincoln White House FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Pulitzer Prize winner James M. McPherson’s Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief (Penguin Press, $35, 384 pages, ISBN 9781594201912) mines a topic that’s been touched upon previously in many other publications— Lincoln dealing with the command aspects of war. Yet the author offers an engrossing narrative that shows how Honest Abe grasped the reins of his new and heretofore untested presidential duties, while also examining his difficulties in dealing with a string of Army generals whose failings often proved vexatious. McPherson gives us a Lincoln who, after taking office, immersed himself in a crash course on military strategy, then steadfastly applied what he’d learned to the enormous task at hand. Leaving the micro-issues of campaigns and tactics to his military men, Lincoln nevertheless consistently prodded them with commonsensical admonishments on the value of stalking the enemy and striking hard when necessary. Flummoxed by the vain and overly cautious McClellan, the unprepared Burnside, the disappointing Hooker and the merely competent Meade, Lincoln finally found his fighter in Ulysses Grant. McPherson effectively mixes the political undercurrent of events with his deconstruction of Lincoln’s process in eventually achieving victory.

Daniel Mark Epstein’s Lincoln’s Men: The President and His Private Secretar10 ies (Collins, $26.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9780061565441) captures the lives of Lincoln’s

secretaries—John Hay, John Nicolay and William Stoddard—each of whom claimed Illinois roots by virtue of residence, education or work. Nicolay had essentially run Lincoln’s 1860 presidential campaign, Stoddard had been a supportive Illinois newspaperman, and the youngest, Hay, came recommended as a young poet and fresh graduate of Brown University. Epstein mixes their accounts into one narrative, with the obvious bulk of the material focused on their time in the White House, where the trio basically comprised the whole of the president’s staff. Nicolay did the chief executive’s scheduling and Hay ran interference; this duo eventually went on to jointly publish a seminal Lincoln biography years later. Stoddard, originally hired as a patent officer at the Interior Department, juggled several jobs, including assisting the president with his speeches, but eventually dealing more with the affairs of Mrs. Lincoln. Hay ultimately established the biggest name for himself—he was secretary of state under McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. This is a readable joint biography that connects its subjects to Lincoln with legitimacy.

His final act and legacy Lincoln’s last year as president was certainly taken up in large part with the prosecution of the war, but, as Charles Bracelen Flood makes clear in 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History (Simon & Schuster, $30, 528 pages, ISBN 9781416552284), the man was also dealing with intense extracurricular political matters. Somehow continuing to more or less efficiently battle the Confederate Army, Lincoln meanwhile dealt with the presence of French troops in Mexico, grousing cabinet members, myriad technical issues regarding the continued settling of the expanding American West and related railroad legislation, not to mention the onslaught of a stormy re-election campaign, which brought with it endless pressure from an often-hostile press and infighting within his own party about the terms of impending Reconstruction and the disposition of the freed-slave issue. Flood’s extensively sourced text tracks the official Lincoln in great detail, while also making sure the well-researched quoted excerpts provide insight into the president’s admirable character and manners and incredible strength under pressure.

The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now (Library of America, $40, 964 pages, ISBN 9781598530339) would make an astute gift for any Lincoln buff, but it’s a definite keeper for any home library as well. Editor Harold Holzer (whose Lincoln President-Elect was released last fall) gathers more than 100 works composed by writers, historians and politicians, from Lincoln’s time to the present day. The pieces represent all genres— essays, novels, plays, biographies, speeches, magazine articles, poetry and memoirs—and the topical coverage is essentially universal. That includes discussions on Lincoln’s fascination with language, the lost love of his life (Ann Rutledge), his historic debates with Stephen Douglas, his outlook on race and religion, his daily work regimen, and his politics and policies. Men and women of verse are here in force (Robert Lowell, Mark Van Doren, Stephen Vincent Benét, Marianne Moore, Carl Sandburg, etc.), and the general range of contributors throughout is all-encompassing (Emerson, Marx, Hawthorne, Stowe, Ibsen, Melville, Twain, Tolstoy, Wicker, Vidal, Safire, Doctorow et al.). Walt Whitman, perhaps Lincoln’s most ardent literary fan, weighs in with no fewer than nine separate contributions. Arrangement of the entries is chronological, but Lincoln diehards can pick this one up and start reading just about anywhere. o Thanks to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Brady believes in the “better angels of our nature.”

Exploring Lincoln’s world Among the many books celebrating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln, these three offer something more personal, a look at the world through Lincoln’s eyes: what he read, how he translated his thoughts into words and what he saw in the various places he lived and worked.

A beautiful mind Biographer and university professor Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer (Harper, $27.95, 416 pages, ISBN 9780060773342) is a full-bodied volume that should interest readers captivated by the Lincoln who expressed himself so movingly with pen in hand. Kaplan’s scope is essentially biographical, yet his main intent is to trace those influences that shaped Lincoln’s writing along the way—his style, his logic, his rational tone, his restraint, his noted brevity, his humor and his political sensibilities. Examples are plentiful and highly pertinent, and they’re all rooted in a narrative that fully details the personal and professional events that evinced their writing. Imbued with scholarly rigor, yet readably crafted, Kaplan’s study gives us a Lincoln who absorbed Shakespeare and Burns in the early going, then transformed his writing style from somewhat ponderous to both “honest and particularized . . . its persuasiveness determined by its adherence to the linguistic ground rules of a moral lexicon.” And, yes, this was the book seen tucked under Barack Obama’s arm shortly after his election last November.

Compiled under the editorship of Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk, In Lincoln’s Hand: His Original Manuscripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans (Bantam, $35, 196 pages, ISBN 9780553807424) is a tie-in to a special Library of Congress exhibition, “With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition,” which features around 2,000 Lincoln documents, many of which have not been seen previously by the public.

This volume reproduces nearly four dozen of the Lincoln writings in the author’s original hand and provides a printed transcription of each. It then presents commentary on each piece from individuals representing a broad spectrum of Americans, including former presidents, noted politicians, historians and also figures from the worlds of arts and letters and show business. The Lincoln excerpts are fascinating, of course—they derive from formal speeches, official acts, internal memos, letters, unsent missives, etc.— but it’s the contemporary responses that help add understanding and perspective to Lincoln’s words.

Literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. perceptively amplifies the key phrases in Lincoln’s second inaugural address (“With malice toward none . . .”); comic Conan O’Brien gives us a serious Lincolnian chuckle in assessing a brief message from the president to Gen. Grant (“[H]e wrote his own material”); and current Illinois senior Sen. Richard J. Durbin offers some nuanced historical feedback on the famous “House Divided” speech. There are even surprises here, such as former President Jimmy Carter’s rather provocative—even subtly churlish—assessment of a brief Lincoln essay on the notion of God’s will as it relates to the Civil War. Other contributors muse about Lincoln’s subtle turns of phrase or his occasional pointed irony. The text is also studded with marvelous archival photos that relate to the people and events that are the subject matter of the Lincoln writings.

Through the Eyes of Lincoln: A Modern Photographic Journey (Acclaim Press, $34.95, 160 pages, ISBN 9780979880278) is anchored by veteran Kentucky journalist Ron Elliott’s informative text, which provides a historical, time-and-place sensitivity to Lincoln’s various physical worlds, from the Bluegrass State of his birth, to his Indiana boyhood, through the Illinois years, and finally to the Washington, D.C., of the Great Emancipator’s final crucible. There are occasional archival photos of those places (and persons) made famous via Lincoln’s relationship to them, but what provides this book with a welcome, value-added counterpoint are John W. Snell’s many original photographs of the same sites as they are today. Snell’s work is clear and crisp and spans nicely from a scenic view of Knob Creek (Indiana), where the young Abe might’ve skipped stones, to a solemn shot of an illuminated Lincoln Memorial at nighttime, where Daniel C. French’s timeless sculpture keeps steady watch. The book has some niggling typos scattered within it—but, of course, they don’t detract at all from the photos. o —MARTIN BRADY

Mary Todd, with and without Abe

By Faye Jones On Good Friday, 1865, during a carriage ride, Abraham Lincoln told his wife Mary, “We must both be more cheerful in the future; between the war and the loss of our darling Willie—we have been very miserable.” Perhaps Mary Lincoln did hope the end of the Civil War pointed to a happier time. If so, her optimism was short-lived. That night, she witnessed her husband’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre.

Even this horror was not her last: her youngest son Tad died in 1871 and a few years later, her only surviving child, Robert, had her committed to an insane asylum.

Yet Mary Lincoln did not garner sympathy from journalists of her own time or from later historians. Instead she has been vilified as a spendthrift, Southern sympathizer, even a syphilitic. In Mrs. Lincoln: A Life, Catherine Clinton provides a more balanced picture of this controversial first lady.

While admitting Mary Lincoln’s faults, Clinton places her life in the context of 19th-century American womanhood.

Mary Todd came from a wealthy Kentucky family. Welleducated and vivacious, she was expected to focus her energies on being a wife and mother, roles she enthusiastically accepted. Some considered Abraham Lincoln a poor pros- Mrs. Lincoln pect for a Todd, but Mary believed in and fully supported his political ambitions. As first lady, she expected to contin- By Catherine Clinton ue her active partnership with Lincoln, something his advi- Harper $26.99, 432 pages sors resented. Yet, even when Mary Lincoln did something ISBN 9780060760403 “ladylike,” redecorating the White House, the press accused her of overspending. She wasn’t the only Civil War widow to have financial struggles or dabble in spiritualism, but she was forced to play out her grief and troubles on a national stage.

Clinton’s biography presents a complicated woman who endured unimaginable difficulties. She was far from perfect; still as Clinton notes, “she provided Abraham Lincoln with the space and support he required to achieve his goals, and with the emotional yeast he needed to become the wartime president he became.” o Faye Jones is Dean of Learning Resources at Nashville State Technical Community College.

BIOGRAPHY

Double life: Lincoln and Darwin

BY ALISON HOOD Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin: two great men, both born on February 12, 1809, are scrutinized in New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik’s Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life. In this year of their bicentennial birthdays, essayist Gopnik (Through the Children’s Gate) reveals a lifelong respect for these heroes and renders a finely considered, thought-provoking examination of their lives, their visions and the influence of their literary eloquence, borne of their public and private lives and “predicaments” of their times. Well-crafted essays form a double portrait, which avoids the shoehorn of mere comparison, illustrating that “it is not what they have in common with each other that matters; it is what they have in common with us,” namely, how Lincoln’s oral brilliance and exactitude and Darwin’s finely layered writings influence how we speak, think and live, publicly and privately, individually and collectively, and form our evolving democratic culture.

Gopnik perceives Lincoln and Darwin as symbols of the “twin pillars” upon which our modern-day society rests: democracy and science. Beyond his timely thesis that “literary eloquence is essential to liberal civilization,” the author gives Angels and Ages abbreviated biographies of the two eloquent men—an unsentimental analysis of politician Lincoln’s devotion to law, and a By Adam Gopnik softer sketch of scientist Darwin as storyteller and student of Knopf deep time. He further refines the portrayal by showing both $24.95, 224 pages ISBN 9780307270788 men at work and standing in the public eye, as well as sequestered in private life, contrasting how their work helped them gain “masterly knowledge of the common experience”—most notably, death—while this knowledge was of no use as consolation when tragic deaths touched the two men’s families.

This conundrum, which leads to the question of reconciliation, of where and in what space an authentic life is lived, is one that demands our individual and collective intelligence and eloquence. For that space, Gopnik says, is the ironic condition that bedeviled our two heroes. Its resolution calls for us (ape-like and angelic) humans to “be men and women possessed by the urgency of utterance, obsessed by the need to see for themselves 11 and to speak for us all.” o FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Land of Lincoln

BIOGRAPHY

TRENDS

ROMANCE

Romance: It’s timeless

Witty women and handsome heroes

By Christie Ridgway emlines go up and down; carbohydrates are in, then out; Southwest decor is hot, then not. But as Valerie Gray, executive editor of MIRA Books, SPICE Books and Red Dress Ink, tells BookPage, “The romance genre has never gone out of fashion.” She predicts that in the current economic situation these books “will be more popular then ever.” Why? Because they make the reader feel good—a sort of comfort food, one might say, to get people through difficult times.

Though romance as a whole is well rooted, it can be classified into subgenres that ebb and flow in popularity. For the past few years, stories with otherworldly elements have flourished, and Shauna Summers, senior editor at Bantam Books, says, “Paranormal doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.”

However, reader buzz and the talk at writers’ conferences are about stories that some are calling “big romance”—contemporary novels that closely mirror real life and real women.

Summers says these stories have “layered characters” and a “complex conflict,” while Abby Zidle, senior editor at Pocket Books, describes them as “romance/women’s fiction crossovers” that convey “intense emotional drama.”

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Building big romance Some of these crossover stories take place in highly detailed community settings. MIRA author Robyn Carr has gained popularity and reader loyalty through her stories set in fictional Virgin River (Second Chance Pass, A Virgin River Novel is out this month), just as Debbie Macomber, another best-selling MIRA author, has readers longing to visit Cedar Cove and Blossom Street, two of the locales for her most recent series. Gray says these books give readers the “community of their dreams.” Though most people do not live in a location like those depicted, they want to believe such “places of safety, family values . . . and neighborly nosiness exist.”

But big romance doesn’t necessarily require a small-town setting. Some are more urban, like the contemporaries by best-selling author Lisa Kleypas (her third, Smooth Talking Stranger, comes out next month). Though the characters are still rooted in reality, in this type of novel, the hero and heroine’s dilemmas, not the community, are the star attraction.

Lucia Macro, vice president and executive editor of Avon Books, describes these stories as “hard-hitting, with characters facing life changing events and/or moral dilemmas, so the books aren’t all sweetness and light.”

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Looking ahead

12

What’s driving this upsurge of realism? Zidle posits that it’s the “natural evolution of the genre, adding that “paranormal came up so strong that if you aren’t a reader to whom that appeals, you’ve maybe been feeling a little left out.” No longer, according to the editors we contacted. All expressed growing interest in big romance, and Tara Parsons, an editor at HQN Books who works with contemporary favorite Susan Mallery, says that the “authors’ fantastic writing and storytelling” deserve credit.

Yet the trend toward books in which “real women struggle with real problems and relationships” as described by Zidle, is spurred by more than a reaction to paranormal romance’s popularity. Macro reminds us that in life today “we are attached to devices—iPods . . . BlackBerrys. . . . Even our ‘friends’ are just tiny photos on Facebook.” The increasing popularity of these types of romances makes it clear that readers long for more intimacy. Those who love the placebased books get to feel like a community member who belongs, while in other contemporary stories it’s enough for the reader to identify with the heroine and see her own happy ending reflected in the character’s. That sense of connection with at least one other person, and the hopeful belief that love has the power to overcome difficult conflicts and troubling times, is why romance will never be out of style. o

This month’s highlights show the wide range of the romance/women’s fiction market. There’s a book for every reading taste, from stories about modern women on the run from themselves or from paranormal influences, to historicals that allow the reader a taste of the past.

Jane Austen Ruined My Life (Guideposts Books,$14.99,320 pages, ISBN 9780824947712)

by Beth Patillo is smart chick lit that’s an absolute pleasure to read.

BY christie ridgway English professor and Austen expert Emma Grant is heartbroken after her divorce when an intriguing communication lures her to England and a possible cache of Jane Austen’s unpublished letters. Her desire to inspect them is complicated by her renewed acquaintance with fellow professor Adam Clark, and the series of Austen-related assignments that the guardian of the letters gives to Emma. Yet through these tasks Emma learns about herself and her attitudes toward love and marriage. While the growing romance between the heroine and Adam is sweet, sweeter is the new sense of self that Emma gains. Written in first person and flavored with interesting Austen information, this is a book readers will drink down like a lovely cup of fragrant tea.

Star attraction Readers who love witty romance with a heart of gold will consider Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ latest contemporary, What I Did for Love (Morrow, $25.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9780061351501), their personal valentine. In a story ripped from the headlines (sort of), actress Georgie York publicly learns that the action movie hero husband who abandoned her has gotten his new lover pregnant. Georgie is reeling, and wondering how to shore up her pride, image and tanking career, when calamity strikes again in the guise of her long-ago co-star, bad boy Bramwell Shepard. After a Las Vegas party gone wrong she finds herself married to him . . . and just maybe with a plan to fix everything that’s wrong with her life.

But there is still something strange happening to her heart, which is buffeted by waves of sexual attraction and dangerous emotions she is starting to feel for the man—the husband—she’s sure she despises.

Full of engaging characters whose flaws only make them more endearing, this romance is love, Phillips-style, at its charming best.

Sins of the fathers Madeline Hunter tells a tale of secrets and shadowy conspiracies in her London-set historical, The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (Dell, $6.99, 370 pages, ISBN 9780440243960). Reclusive hero Lord Easterbrook is surprised when a woman from his past calls at his home in Grosvenor Square. During their time together, he’d kept his true identity

from her and it doesn’t take him long to discover she isn’t looking for him, but for the answer to a mystery that led to her father’s death and threatens her family’s trading business in Macao. Just like she did seven years before, Leona Montgomery enflames his desires. But she’s older and wiser now, and Easterbrook has to struggle to win her trust. Once partnered in bed and out of it, they work together to unravel the mystery that has brought her to London, while the knowledge that she will soon return home to the other side of the world hangs over them. The reader will care deeply for Easterbrook and Leona as they reveal hidden motives and their secret hearts in this sensual and poignant story.

Betting on a duke Written with sophistication and wit, The Courtesan’s Wager (Berkley Sensation, $15, 358 pages, ISBN 9780425225806) by Claudia Dain, features a talented but notorious matchmaker. Ex-courtesan Sophia Dalby has pledged her skills to help young Lady Amelia in her quest to capture a duke . . . but has someone else caught Amelia’s eye? Certainly sparks fly between herself and the disapproving Lord Cranleigh, who is definitely not a duke, and they’ve been caught more than once in scandalously close quarters. What are the people in town supposed to think? Told in a delightfully dry, tongue-in-cheek voice, this romance chronicles verbal skirmishes and even a physical brawl or two as part of an ongoing battle in the war of love.

Strong and sexy The paranormal world feels real and the plot is action-packed and super-sexy in Kate Perry’s Marked

by Passion (Grand Central, $6.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780446541008). Told through the voice of Gabrielle Sansouci Chin, a bartender and artist, this romance begins with Gabrielle’s discovery that her estranged father has died and left her as guardian of an ancient scroll with special powers. Despite her reluctance to take on the role of the artifact’s protector, Gabrielle finds she can’t turn away from it, nor from the sexy Brit, Rhys Llewellyn, who seems to know more about her and her situation than is safe. With bad guys shadowing her through the streets of San Francisco, not to mention the spirit of her father and the tantalizing sensuality that Rhys exudes, Gabrielle has her hands full.

There are secrets to uncover and danger to confront in this story of a woman learning to accept her new duties and the love of a powerful man. o Christie Ridgway writes contemporary romance from her home in Southern California.

DEBUT FICTION

First novel is more sweet than bitter

By Jessica Inman In the opening scene of Jamie Ford’s debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, 50-something Henry Lee watches as a crowd gathers around the Panama Hotel. The new owner of the long-abandoned building has discovered something in the basement: the belongings of 37 Japanese families, items left behind decades ago when their owners were rounded up for internment camps during World War II. There’s a delicious sense of mystery about this scene.

What will we find in the dusty memorabilia? Will its secrets be beautiful or tragic—or both? Henry is curious too, and he begins to remember his preteen years during the war and a girl named Keiko. In flashbacks, Ford tells us their story.

The only two students of Asian descent at their school, Chinese-American Henry and Japanese-American Keiko quickly strike up a friendship. But soon it becomes clear that their friendship is much deeper than schoolyard camaraderie. Their feelings for each other are simple, but their love story is complicated: by war, and by Henry’s father’s ill regard for the Japanese. When Keiko’s family is sent to an internment camp, time and tragedy separate her from Henry.

Hotel on the Ford aims to portray the Japanese-American internment Corner of Bitter with solid historicity, choosing to focus on how the events affected the course of real people’s lives. And he succeeds. and Sweet The book’s historical elements are sturdy, but they’re very By Jamie Ford gently threaded into the novel. It’s mostly just a good story, Ballantine $24, 285 pages one about families and first loves and identity and loyalty.

Ford, of Chinese descent, is the kind of down-to-earth ISBN 9780345505330 writer you’d like to have a cup of coffee with. His full-length Also available on audio fiction debut might make you fall in love with Seattle—or at least start digging up your own city’s wartime history and possible jazz roots. It will make you want to call your oldest relatives and ask how they met their spouses. More than anything, though, it will make you linger on the final pages, sure that even the bitterest memories and the most painful regret can yield something sweet. o Jessica Inman writes from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

FANTASY

Monsters, spies and paperwork

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Jedediah Berry Henry Lamb, formerly the child star of a BBC sitcom, is working a dead-end job in London’s Storage and Record Retrieval unit. He’s helplessly single, hopelessly in love with his landlady, and he can’t escape his oppressive mother. When his alcoholic grandfather falls suddenly into a coma, he learns that his family is tied to a secret government agency known as the Directorate, which for over a hundred years has been fighting a clandestine war to protect the people of the United Kingdom from an ancient and malevolent force.

Their enemy? Nothing less than the British royal family.

The Domino Men is a funny and often gripping entertainment, a wry mash-up of espionage thriller and Lovecraftian horror reminiscent of the Hellboy graphic novels. It is also a satire that cleverly draws parallels between the tropes of cosmic horror and the mundane tyrannies of the modern bureaucratic state.

Though The Domino Men takes place in the same world as Barnes’ first book, The Somnambulist, it is not properly speaking a sequel, and readers may enjoy this novel’s mysteries and intrigues without knowledge of what has come before. Queen Victoria, fearing the downfall of the Empire, made a deal with—well, not the devil exactly, but something quite bad. The Domino Men Now, conscripted into the Directorate by its gilled and aquarBy Jonathan Barnes ium-bound chief, Henry must thwart the House of Windsor by turning to something arguably worse: the Domino Men of Morrow $24.95, 400 pages the title, a pair of immortal goons who delight in human suf- ISBN 9780061671401 fering but who possess the secret that could tip the war in the Directorate’s favor.

In what may be the novel’s most effective gambit, interpolations from the opposition are scattered throughout Henry’s account of his final stand, representing the voice of doubt and fear that threatens to undo the protagonist and maybe the world itself.

Though the novel veers at times into overtly grotesque terrain, its horrors are usually of the subtle and psychological kind, a dark lens through which to observe a beguiling story of power and corruption. o 14 Jedediah Berry is the author of The Manual of Detection, published by Penguin Press.

THE SPOKEN WORD How do I love thee?

In the film version of Sex and the City, Carrie reads aloud from a book of great love letters by great men. Fans flocked to bookstores to get copies—but the book didn’t exist. Now, in an unusual reversal, pop culture has prompted real interest in these classics and Ursula Doyle has made the book a reality, collecting some of history’s most romantic messages in Love Letters of Great Men (Macmillan Audio, $14.95, 3.5 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781427206701). A far cry from the “i luv u” genre of text messages and emails, these dead white men of yore pour out their hearts, their longings, their passions and their peeves, and their words can still bring pitterpatter palpitations to the feistiest of fiercely independent females today. As Anton Lesser reads these extraordinary missives in his mellifluous, British-brushed voice, we

BY SUKEY HOWARD hear Beethoven beseeching his “immortal beloved,” Lord Nelson declaring Emma to be his “Alpha and Omega,” Henry VIII admitting to Anne Boleyn that “my heart and I surrender themselves into your hands” (and that just a few years before he had her beheaded in the Tower!), and Byron proclaiming that “I more than love you and cannot to cease love you.” A perfect Valentine gift to give or get.

Lessons not learned Oh, how I wish that Michael Lewis’ latest, Panic! The Story of Modern Financial Insanity (Simon & Schuster Audio, $29.99, 6 hours abridged, ISBN 9780743583664), read by Jesse Boggs and Blair Hardman, were not so timely, so on the mark. Somehow knowing that we’d need his wry humor and clear explanations of financial complexities (he must have been working on this book long before the screaming financial meemies engulfed the globe), Lewis has gathered a collection of articles, including his own, by some of the best interpreters of Wall Street’s maladies to re-create the five recent financial panics, explicate the market factors involved and dramatize how blind most Wall Street wizards were, and still may be, to the hazards of what they do. Lewis begins with the crash of 1987, the start of what he calls “the Age of Financial Unreason, when panic became just another, quotidian aspect of financial life,” goes on to the devaluation of the Thai baht which begat the Russian default on its own treasury bonds which begat the death of a major U.S. hedge fund; the dot-com debacle in 2000; and ends with the “The People’s Panic,” the catastrophe we’re mired in today. In a special, audio-only interview, Lewis adds his current observations—but no cures, except for one’s curiosity.

Sukey’s favorite The Shawl and Rosa, Cynthia Ozick’s extraordinary linked short stories, first published in The New Yorker more than 20 years ago, are now on CD (HighBridge Audio, $18.95, 2 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781598876840), performed by Yelena Schmulenson, whose emotional accuracy eats into your heart. The Shawl, only four tracks long, is a piercing glance into the horror of the Holocaust as Rosa, a young mother, watches the murder of her toddler, Magda, in a scene of searing pain, grief and loss. Rosa, the longer story, is set 30 years later in Miami where Rosa, now “a madwoman and a scavenger,” lives on handouts from her niece. The present is meaningless to her, the future without reality, all is in the past, in the unsettling landscape of a shattered, unfillably empty life and in a conjured relationship with an imagined Magda, grown and successful, to whom she writes long letters in Polish. But during the two days we spend with Rosa, she meets a man in the laundry who insists on befriending her and who may offer a glimmer of possibility. These stories are small gems, beautifully written, with jabs of colloquial dialogue that evoke this survivor’s angst, anger and yearning. o

WHODUNIT? Far-flung suspense for February

Mystery of the month

In last month’s Whodunit?, I made a rare exception and included a period mystery among the reviews, something I said I normally avoid “like the plague.” This month I may have to eat my words, reviewing not just one, but two excellent suspense novels set in the past, one in fin-de-siècle Vienna, and one in 1840s Istanbul.

J. Sydney Jones breathes life into turn-of-the-century Vienna in his stylish and atmospheric The Empty Mirror (Thomas Dunne, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9780312383893).

After an evening-long tryst, a lovely young woman finds she has missed the last tram home; now she must pick her way through the dark lanes of Stephansdom to get back to her Third District apartment. She is more than a little nervous, and with good reason: the newspapers have been trumpeting reports of a

BY BRUCE TIERNEY serial killer on the loose in Vienna.

Suddenly she realizes she has gotten lost. It will prove to be a fatal mistake. The following morning, lawyer Karl Werthen receives a disheveled and agitated visitor, renowned art nouveau painter Gustav Klimt. “They say I have murdered the girl. Imbeciles. She was my lovely Liesel, the best model I’ve ever had.” Just the previous night, Werthen and his friend, criminologist Hanns Gross, had been discussing the murders; now, it appears, they will be in the thick of things, searching the mean streets and the hallowed halls of the Austrian capital for some shred of evidence that will exonerate their famously quirky client.

If you like the style and convoluted plotting of say, Conan Doyle, but with a modern sensibility, The Empty Mirror should be right up your alley.

A long-overdue Tip of the Ice Pick award goes to Scottish crime writer Val McDermid for her multifaceted and relentlessly gripping A Darker Domain (Harper, $24.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780061688980). The book covers two cold cases, the first from 1984, when tensions were boiling over regarding the national miners’ strike.

One Mick Prentice, a Scottish miner, abandoned his family to join the strikebreakers, or so the story goes. His family and friends were appalled; Mick had always been a leading light in the workers’ movement, and now he had defected. Still, no crime, right? Except that 20-odd years later, when his abandoned daughter faces a medical emergency and desperately needs to get in touch with him, she finds that he has literally vanished from the grid.

Second cold case, 1985: the tabloid-fodder kidnapping of Scottish heiress Catriona Maclennan Grant and her infant son Adam. Although he agreed to the kidnappers’ demands, Brodie Grant, Catriona’s wealthy father, had an ace or two up his sleeve, not to mention a pistol. At the drop site, things went south badly, and the kidnappers got away with the ransom. Catriona was shot to death in the melee, and her child was never found. A shift of scene to current-day Tuscany, where journalist Bel Richmond is immersed in a yearly gathering of a group of girlfriends.

In an abandoned villa, Bel makes a pair of chilling discoveries: a huge bloodstain on the limestone floor, and an original ransom poster for Catriona Maclennan Grant. Either it is an elaborate hoax with no apparent payoff, or it is the seed of a story that stands to make Bel’s career.

Weaving these two disparate plot lines together is Detective Inspector Karen Pirie, to whom it falls to investigate both cases. McDermid advances each of the storylines separately until they are so intertwined that it becomes impossible to separate them, the intrigue mounting with each page turned. She drew upon her own childhood to make the mine workers’ struggle come to life: both of her grandfathers were miners, and she notes in the preface that she owes thanks to “the many miners and musicians whose songs and stories weave in and out of my childhood memories.” o —BRUCE TIERNEY

Intrigue in Istanbul Jason Goodwin’s protagonist, Istanbul’s Inspector Yashim (from the Edgar Award-winning The Janissary Tree) is unusual among fictional detectives, perhaps unique, in that he is a eunuch. A unique eunuch (sorry). So, as you might imagine, he engages in loftier pursuits than, say, chasing comely Turkish girls through the Grand Bazaar. In his latest adventure, The Bellini Card (Sarah Crichton, $25, 304 pages, ISBN 9780374110390), Yashim is tasked with unearthing a Venetian masterpiece, the fabled Bellini portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror. Mehmet, for those hazy on their Byzantine history, snatched Constantinople from the Christians in 1453, creating an empire that would stretch from the Black Sea to the Balkans, at the ripe old age of 21. So it is only natural that the newly ascended sultan would want the portrait of his iconic ancestor. Court intrigues abound, however, and Yashim deems it prudent to send his friend Stanislaw Palewski, the Polish ambassador to the Ottoman court, in his stead. Yashim and Palewski will not be the only ones in search of the Bellini, however, and at least one of their competitors is willing to kill for it. Yashim is a clever and formidable protagonist, Palewski his perfect foil; think Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in seraglio outfits and you won’t be far off.

A schoolyard hostage takeover.

A life-threatening fire.

A notoriously secretive cult ruled by the rich and powerful.

And that’s just the beginning.

Burke’s final ride

chills up your spine.”

“Will send

—Steve Berry on Taken

Pick up your copy today.

www.MIRABooks.com

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Fans of Andrew Vachss’ Burke series know the take-no-prisoners protagonist as something of an avenging angel. Indeed, the latest (and purportedly the last) Burke adventure, Another Life (Pantheon, $24.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780307377418), starts out down that very path: “Revenge is like any other religion: There’s always a lot more preaching than there is practicing. And most of the preaching is about what not to practice.” Vachss weaves two disparate story lines together as Burke is drawn into a sordid kidnapping case while his own father lies dying from a gunshot wound. “Sordid” barely begins to describe the kidnapping—a young boy was snatched from the backseat of his father’s Rolls Royce shortly after witnessing his father’s impromptu assignation with a paid companion. Naturally, the father, a Saudi prince, wants his child back; it is equally important to him that the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping not become tabloid fodder. Enter Burke, courtesy of his “handler,” a shadowy government spook by the name of Pryce. This is definitely not a job Burke wants, particularly at this time of family crisis, but according to Pryce, he has little choice. And so, once again Burke will prowl the mean streets of New York in search of answers, when in fact he may not even know all the questions. Another Life is not a book for the squeamish. Justice is dealt out with Old Testament swiftness and creativity, at times in a nightmare-inspiring manner. Somehow, though, it doesn’t have the definitive series-ending moment one might have expected. Perhaps Vachss will relent somewhere down the road and treat his fans to another novel or two? o

17

INTERVIEW

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

The tale of two brothers

18

By Arlene McKanic Abraham Verghese’s first novel, Cutting for Stone (Knopf, $26.95, 560 pages, ISBN 9780375414497, also available on audio), with its huge cast of characters and exotic locales—including the Bronx—has a richness that recalls Conrad or Forster. Set mostly in and around Addis Ababa and New York, the story follows the life of Marion Praise Stone.

His mother, a nun, died giving birth to Marion and his twin Shiva, and their Anglo-Indian father fled the country after the catastrophe. As a result, the twins are cared for by Hema, an irascible but hugely loving Indian born-doctor, and the saintly Ghosh, another Indian-born physician who spends years pining for Hema even as they raise the twins together. Rosina is the boys’ nanny and her daughter Genet is their playmate and “sister,” while Matron is the stern but loving head of both the family and the “Missing” (the Ethiopian mispronunciation of Mission) hospital where the family lives and ministers to the needs of the poor.

Marion, the narrator, shares a nearly mystical connection with his twin: in fact, they were born joined at the head. Though both boys are handsome and intelligent, Shiva is an oddity; one is tempted to describe him as a high-functioning autistic savant.

Both brothers, predictably, go into medicine. Marion becomes an excellent if unheralded surgeon, but Shiva, with no formal medical training, becomes a pioneer in fistula repair, a skill desperately needed Ethiopia.

Yet Shiva’s inability to read social cues leads to a long estrangement between the brothers and eventual disaster for not only the two of them but also for Genet, whom Marion grows to love.

Such is Verghese’s talent that minor characters like patients, interns, Ethiopian soldiers and even the emperor’s spoiled little dog are compelling. Trained as a doctor (his memoir about working with AIDS patients garnered considerable acclaim), his depictions of surgery are graphic without being macabre, and he’s also excellent at juxtaposing the intimate life of a family with the larger crises happening in the outside world. Cutting for Stone is a brilliantly realized book that the reader wants to live in, if only for a while. o Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Upstairs, downstairs

Debut novelist takes on the South’s troubled past

By Rebecca Bain tereotypes seem almost inevitable when someone tries to a the stupidest questions I ever heard. She got a confused, disgusted portray the relationships that existed 50 years ago between look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it. black people and white people in the South. Usually they I turn back to my washing, so she don’t see me rolling my eyes. swing from the extremes of Mississippi Burning to Driving Miss “Oh no, ma’am, everthing’s fine.”

Daisy. So it’s a bit surprising—and refreshing—that Kathryn Skeeter may have had her consciousness raised a tiny bit, but Stockett, who wasn’t born until years after that time, manages it takes a long while before she can treat Aibileen as a person, to capture something close to reality rather than a colored person. Likewhile avoiding most of the pitfalls in wise, it takes a lot for Aibileen to her first novel, The Help. learn to trust Skeeter.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, A key element of the book is StockThe Help is told through three voices: ett’s use of language. The rhythms of Aibileen, an older black woman who the dialect are nearly flawless, due in has been taking care of white families no small part to the author’s refusal since she was 13; Minny, a younger to use the “gonna,” “cain’t,” “shoblack woman who finds it difficult nuff,” spellings too many writers fall to curb her sharp tongue around her back on when trying to establish a white employers; and Skeeter, a privisense of regionalism. Stockett credits leged white girl fresh out of college, this to her creative writing teacher at who wants more from life than marthe University of Alabama. riage to the first presentable young “She taught me a lot of things, but man her mother can produce. she taught me one rule and that was, Stockett, a Mississippi native who as long as it’s a word in the dictionary, now lives in Atlanta with her husband you can use it. So I had to be really and five-year-old daughter, says the creative in figuring out how to write idea of writing the book first came idiom. As long as it didn’t set off the KATHRYN STOCKETT to her as an antidote to homesickSpell-Checker, that was the rule—I ness. She was working for a magazine could use it.” consulting firm in New York City, but Not all of the characters discrimifrequently found her thoughts turnnated against in Stockett’s novel are ing to the South and to Demetrie, the black. Celia Foote is a white girl from black woman who cared for Stockett the wrong side of the tracks who when she was growing up. Finally she married well, but can’t break the barasked her bosses if she could take a rier her background presents. Stockmonth off to write about these memett felt she was important to the story, ories. She laughs when she rememtoo. bers the response.

“Just because you’re white and “They said, ‘You’re not in Missisgood looking and rich doesn’t mean sippi anymore, Kitty.’ They thought you’re going to walk in the door of that people in Mississippi were a little the Junior League,” she says. “I felt more leisurely about jobs. I said, no, like if I was going to be talking about really, I don’t want to be paid. I just Southern women, I couldn’t leave out want to take a month off because I want to hunker down and the fact that sometimes, they love to snub their own kind.” write this story. And something happened—it was so nurturing While it was a daunting task to tackle stereotypes and successand wonderful to hear Demetrie’s voice again. I think that’s re- fully make her characters human, it took even more courage to ally what drew me to the story, to hear her talking in my head 15 write about this time and these issues as a white woman—someyears after she had died.” thing Stockett said she never forgot.

Although Stockett wasn’t born until 1969, seven years after the “You have to be careful what you say and how you say it, beevents depicted in her book, she said she not only had a wealth cause people are really sensitive about this. We loved them [the of information provided by the stories Demetrie had told her, black household workers] and they were part of our family but we but also from her parents and her 98-year-old grandfather. didn’t ask them to sit down at the table with us. That just wasn’t “Demetrie worked for my grandmother and my grandfa- done. Not that they were dying to sit down with us anyway, but ther, starting in the mid-50s, and my grandfather has the most there was a pretty well defined set of rules. And you knew what the remarkable memory. He doesn’t just remember details, he re- rules were and you knew if you were breaking them.” members dates. He remembers the temperature on that day; he’s Breaking rules forms the core of The Help, an idea summakind of a savant that way. So I had a pretty good research tool rized in what Stockett says is her favorite sentence of her first right there in the living room with me.” novel: “Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realStockett re-creates an environment that will be all too familiar ize, ‘We are just two people. Not that to the people who lived through it: a time when “colored” people much separates us. Not nearly as could cook food for white folks, but couldn’t sit down and eat much as I’d thought.’ ” o with them. When a colored maid could wash the family’s dishes, Rebecca Bain writes from her home in but had to eat from her own plate because of the “germs” she Nashville. might pass to her employers.

And heaven forbid that the black maid use the same bathroom as her white “family”! This is the event that opens the novel and that first opens Skeeter’s eyes to the injustice of this terThe Help ribly skewed system. After listening to her friend, Hilly, present

By Kathryn Stockett her plans for a “Home Help Sanitation Initiative” to their bridge Amy Einhorn/Putnam group, Skeeter follows Aibileen, the maid, into the kitchen. $24.95, 464 pages “Do you ever wish you could . . . change things?” [Skeeter] asks.

ISBN 9780399155345 Also available on audio And I can’t help myself. I look at her head on. Cause that’s one

S

© KEM LEE

DEBUT FICTION

In the voices of three very

different women, Stockett recalls the rigidly defined

roles for blacks and whites in 1960s Mississippi.

BEHIND THE BOOK

Take my advice: write what you know

By Amy Dickinson y new book, The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and and making my share of mistakes. I took the back roads of life, through marriage and the Town That Raised Them (Hyperion, $22.99, 240 pages, ISBN divorce and raising my daughter as a single parent. I got here with the help and support 9781401322854), is an affectionate memoir of my experience as a single of the people in my little world.

My agent was skeptical when I told her I wanted to write about my mother. The book spans the 18 years I spent raising my daughter, daughter, aunts and cousins, my sisters and mother. We are ordinary Emily, with the help of my family. people whose lives, nonetheless, have been blessed with incident. I told I didn’t set out to write a memoir, however. My intention was to her I wanted to write about people and livestock and the little comwrite a how-to book, full of tips, hints and useful information. munity I come from.

Because I’m a syndicated advice columnist, I’m used to telling My agent asked me to write a chapter. She said, “I want to see if there people “how to”—how to cure a heartache, how to confront a friend is any there there.” or how to manage an obnoxious mother-in-law. Due to the success The first chapter I wrote detailed the loss and longing I felt when of my column, writing an advice book seemed like a natural fit. My my own father abandoned our family farm, leaving his four children agent and various editors referred to the advice book project as a to run our failing dairy. And then I wrote another chapter, about the “slam dunk.” fumbling hilarity of coping with the livestock he had left behind.

I was pondering the challenges of writing my how-to book during As I was writing the book, Emily graduated from high school in Chia trip I took from my home in Chicago to visit family in Freeville, the cago and I made the decision to move back to Freeville permanently. little farming village in upstate New York where generations of my Once again, I was surrounded by my family—the women Emily refers family have grown up and grown old. to as “the Mighty Queens.”

While there, I went to the village school—the same one I attended I wrote about blind dates and my work life. I wrote about my faith as a child—to watch my niece’s kindergarten play. On the very same and personal failings. I wrote about sending Emily to college and saycreaky wooden stage where I poured out my own pint-sized aspiraAMY DICKINSON ing goodbye to the person I had raised and was now launching into adulttions as a kindergartner, I watched my niece and her classmates act out and reflect the story of our lives in this small community. The kids were dressed as hood. I wrote about “the Mighty Queens,” those women who had supported us, championed our successes and wept with us during our difficult times. chickens, pigs and Holstein cows. They sang and danced in a make-believe barnyard.

During the course of working on the book, my dear aunt Lena died and we buried her It was adorable.

I looked around. The audience was populated with people, in our family plot in Freeville. I reconnected with the people in my hometown who are many of whom I’ve known all my life. I sat in my folding chair, all characters in my life story. I fell in love with a man I had known since childhood. And flanked by my daughter, sister and mother in the old auditorium finally, my story felt complete.

In my work giving advice to other people, I often feel that the two hardest questions my grandfather and other men in the village had helped to build.

Given my surroundings, I couldn’t help but think about the arc for any of us to answer are, “Who am I?” and “What do I want?” I’ve struggled with those of my own life. My how-to book idea went away in that moment questions myself—but finally, through telling my own story, I found the answers. o and I decided instead to write my own story.

In my work as an advice columnist, people often challenge me Amy Dickinson succeeded the legendary Ann Landers as the advice columnist for the by asking how I know what I know. I’m not a counselor. I don’t Chicago Tribune in 2003. Her column, “Ask Amy,” is now syndicated in 200 newspapers. have an advanced degree. I got here the hard way, by living my life She is also a regular panelist on the NPR quiz show, “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.”

M

Independent Voices for an Independent World Breast Cancer: The Little Book of Hope

Did Man Create God?

This book works to assist recently diagnosed breast cancer patients in understanding and getting through the procedures ahead of them through hope, guidance, and humor.

In this winner of the USABookNews Award for Religion and Science, internationally renowned physician, human geneticist and neuroscientist, Dr. David Comings, proposes that spirituality is genetically hardwired.

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20

Dougie Learns to Ride

I Want to Live!

Take a journey with Dougie as he learns to ride without training wheels. Dougie loves to learn new and exciting things that he can share with kids across the globe.

I Want to Live! is an honest depiction of a young teen’s reality and view on life, as she takes you through the journey of what teens face today.

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Woman: A Practical Guide to Loving the Skin You’re In

Texas Hold’em

This book will take you on the journey of recapturing inner peace and sanity. This book shares everything from beauty secrets to ways to increase self-esteem and gain more self-acceptance.

Tony Korfman takes you into the major Las Vegas strip casinos he has played at, while providing laugh-outloud situations that have had poker pros immediately seeking therapy.

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BLACK HISTORY

Exploring the African-American identity

By Ron Wynn ost of us who remember when state-imposed segregation was the norm rather than the exception (particularly in the South) remain amazed by the election of Barack Obama as our country’s president. Thus it’s quite appropriate that the question of racial identity and what it truly means is the dominant theme for this year’s survey of books for Black History Month.

There’s no better place to begin than the visually stunning, authoritative volume Freedom in My Heart: Voices From The United States National Slavery Museum (National Geographic, $35, 256 pages, ISBN 9781426201271), edited by Cynthia Jacobs Carter. With amazing, rare photographs underscoring and reaffirming tales of triumph and achievement chronicled in its 10 chapters, the book begins where the nightmare of enslavement started, in Africa. Rather than simply linger on that horror, however, the opening section has valuable information about that continent’s proud heritage and anthropological importance while also showing how the vicious African slave trade developed. The book continues with stories about rebellion and intimidation, tracing the emergence and evolution of a culture steeped in the African past and shaped by the American present. Freedom in My Heart covers familiar names and obscure figures, venerable institutions and little-known sites in various states while deftly examining slavery’s initial and lingering impact.

M

Finding a place in society

Voices lifted

If any modern television or film producer conceived a story as elaborate and incredible as the one depicted by Martha A. Sandweiss in her remarkable book Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press, $27.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9781594202001), they would have a hard time finding any studio willing to back it. Sandweiss, a professor of history and American studies at Amherst College, has uncovered the true feats of pioneering scientist, author and brilliant public speaker Clarence King. This same man led a second life as black Pullman porter and steel worker James Todd. He managed for decades to keep these two existences separate, hiding in the process a loving wife and five biracial children. King/Todd darts back and forth between stardom and near poverty, privilege and deprivation, for reasons that still

Finally there’s the epic poem The Children of the Children Keep Coming: An Epic Griotsong (Simon & Schuster, $19.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9781416566465) from onetime pro football player, Harlem gallery owner and financial backer of Essence magazine Russell Goings. Goings’ piece offers praise, optimism tempered by an understanding of past horrors and upcoming challenges, and the upbeat, rousing vocabulary that’s helped instill in generations not only of black Americans, but oppressed people around the world, the self-esteem and pride necessary to persevere no matter the circumstances. o Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

POLITICS

FICTION

A new generation of black leaders

Slavery seen from another angle

BY EDWARD MORRIS The disclosure that Gwen Ifill’s The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama was in the works—just days before the author was scheduled to moderate the one debate between vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden—drew a storm of protest from right-wing pundits. Columnist Michelle Malkin asserted that the book was proof positive that Ifill was “in the tank” for Obama and, thus, too tainted to host the event. Fox News analyst Greta Van Susteren fretted about Ifill’s “appearance of impropriety.” Their alarms were misplaced: The Breakthrough is not a valentine to Obama or a hymn to his political views; Ifill merely reports what she sees as she surveys the profusion of young black politicians now serving in elective offices from city halls to the White House.

The young pols Ifill spotlights here, apart from Obama, are Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick; Alabama congressman Artur Davis; Illinois congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.; New York governor David Paterson; former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford Jr.; Missouri congressman William Lacy Clay Jr.; Florida congressman Kendrick Meek; the mayors of Newark, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Columbus The Breakthrough (Ohio), Washington, D.C., and Buffalo; and various other By Gwen Ifill up-and-comers. Even those who ascended to offices their Doubleday parents formerly held, she says, acknowledge the need to $24.95, 288 pages move beyond identity politics and appeal to a wider elec- ISBN 9780385525015 torate. Moreover, they all are impatient with the notion of Also available on audio moving up through long apprenticeships in conventional party politics. They decide on their own when they’re ready to run.

Besides interviewing these office-holders (and dutifully chronicling their known blemishes), Ifill also gathers the speculations of civil rights leaders, academics, former opponents and pollsters on what all this ferment means. The cauldron from which most of this talent bubbles up, she shows, is more likely to be Ivy League law schools than demonstrations and picket lines. Ifill also probes the race-gender issue that sur22 faced in the Obama-Clinton tilt, as well as the lingering question, “Is he/she black enough?” o FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

aren’t completely clear despite Sandweiss’ research and storytelling acumen. Not even the deceptive path taken by critic Anatole Broyard or the decision by Walter White to be a champion for legions who distrusted his light-skinned looks compares to this constant juggling and personality switching. The fact that King/Todd did all of this long before there was any hint of radical change coming in America (the late 19th and early 20th centuries) makes what he did even more astonishing and Sandweiss’ work in uncovering it more noteworthy.

By contrast, author and academic Jennifer Baszile’s challenges come in supposedly more enlightened times. The Black Girl Next Door (Touchstone, $25, 320 pages, ISBN 9781416543275) spotlights Baszile’s struggles growing up in an integrated (actually largely upper-class white) California neighborhood and trying to understand who she was, how she felt and what she wanted to do with her life. Constantly pushed to excel by parents anxious not to be judged by stereotypes they fought to escape, Baszile deals with identity problems among the elite and educated. She also describes the turf wars and clashes she experienced as she became the first black female professor at Yale, and how switching surroundings from an affluent community to the Ivy League’s supposed ivory tower didn’t mean she would automatically find happiness, fulfillment or professional respect.

By Lauren Bufferd Novelists and historians are often tempted to play the ‘what-if’ game, but few of these attempts result in anything as inspired as Blonde Roots, Bernardine Evaristo’s newest novel and her first to be published in the U.S. Evaristo turns everything we thought we knew about slavery upside-down: in her book, Europeans are enslaved and Africans are the owners.

The picaresque story is told in spirited fashion by Doris Scagglethorpe, a young girl plucked from her family’s modest cabbage farm by the sea and sold into slavery. Renamed Omorenomwara, she barely survives the journey to the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa. She is sold to Chief Katamba, who brands her, but also educates her enough to keep her as a house slave. Doris longs for the gray skies of home and escapes, only to be recaptured and sent to a remote plantation where she works in the sugar cane fields.

The vital culture of the field slaves, whose memories of a shared European homeland permeate their religious practices, chants and foods, engages her, but she still plots her escape. During her journey, Doris encounters a colorful group of characters, from abolitionist natives to stalwart Blonde Roots Welsh field workers and the few free whites whose customs

By Bernardine Evaristo and slang imitate those of the dominant Africans.

Although the plot is brisk and the tone lively, the story Riverhead 288 pages is almost secondary to Evaristo’s imagined world. The Af- $24.95, ISBN 9781594488634 ricans don’t only own the Europeans—geography and language are also shaped by their rule. Africa becomes Aphrika, Caucasians are “wiggers” and “Auld Lang Syne” is a field holler. Evaristo pokes fun at stereotypes; the dissolute young master, his accommodating mistress, and the trusted overseer may be familiar from a century of literature and decades of topical films, but here, the parallel disconcerts as much as it entertains. In addition, the book lacks any calendar dates—references to technology, fashion and transportation range freely over the centuries, which adds to the delicious sense of dislocation. Though the fast-paced narrative may seem light, Evaristo’s message goes deep in this delightful yet sobering novel. o

CHILDREN’S BOOKS For this first-time author, hope is the thing with feathers

BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO ousecleaning often results in unpleasant surprises—astonishingly large dust bunnies, lower back pain and the like. For Kathryn Fitzmaurice, however, a tidying session led to something else entirely: a decision to leave her teaching career and focus on writing full time.

In an interview from her Southern California home, where she lives with her husband and two sons, the author tells BookPage that her grandmother, science fiction writer Eleanor Robinson, “passed away 21 years ago and left me a huge box of unfinished work. She wrote on the box, ‘Give these to Kathy—she’ll know what to do with them.’ ”

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“Children still believe that things can really happen. They have hope and faith built into them.”

For many years, Fitzmaurice says, “I’d go by it and think about Kathryn trying to follow in her footsteps. I kept putting it off because I fitzmaurice was afraid to really see if I could it.” Then, three years ago, “I was cleaning out the house and, looking at that box, I thought, I want to try it!”

Although quitting her teaching job was “a really scary decision,” it was a sound one: Fitzmaurice soon signed a two-book deal, and her first novel for young readers, The Year the Swallows Came Early (HarperCollins, $16.99, 288 pages, ISBN 9780061624971), lands in bookstores this month.

A few weeks after the book’s release—March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, to be exact—hundreds of cliff swallows will arrive at the San Juan Capistrano Mission from Goya, Argentina; they will remain in California until their October return flight.

“That’s 7,500 miles one way,” Fitzmaurice marvels. “They’ve been doing it for centuries, fulfilling their inner biological destiny. It’s one thing that’s always the same, a promise that will never be broken.”

Unbroken promises are something that Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson (named for the author’s grandmother) longs for as The Year the Swallows Came Early begins. The seventh-grader witnesses her father’s arrest, only to learn that her mother called the police.

Although Groovy’s small family is a loving one, her father’s carefree yet unreliable nature has finally led him to do something that could jeopardize Groovy’s future.

Groovy is a thoughtful child who dreams of attending culinary school. She practices cooking at home and at the nearby Swallow restaurant, where she joins her schoolmate Frankie in working for his stepbrother Luis.

Fitzmaurice skillfully captures the sound and feel of children’s conversations—the banter between Groovy and the brothers, with its underlying fondness, feels genuine and sweet. So, too, do Groovy’s interactions with the sassy Marisol, a neighbor girl who is determined to become a famous artist and is supportive of Groovy’s dreams of a life filled with creative pursuits.

That sense of possibility, of a world wide open, infuses the book; even as the characters are hurt or confused by the strange, sometimes incomprehensible turns their lives are taking, they cook and draw and look forward to the swallows’ arrival.

The author says she enjoys writing for the middle-grade age group (8 to 12) because of that sense of wonder. “I love it, because children that age still believe things can really happen.

They have hope and faith built into them . . . not that you necessarily lose that after age 12, but I love the spark at that age where everything is possible, still.”

One possibility that’s central to The Year the Swallows Came Early is that of forgiveness. As Fitzmaurice notes, “Forgiveness is hard, and sometimes you have to do it again and again. It can slip away.”

She adds, “I would hate to sound didactic. But maybe, if someone could see it’s possible to make the choice to forgive someone vs. to keep on being angry—it’s so exhausting, and it takes away from the good things in your life even if you’re not aware of it.”

With forgiveness, as with writing, Fitzmaurice says, “You can’t push it—you have to wait until it’s there.” She writes between 4 p.m. and 1 a.m., in an office that has on its shelves volumes by or from her grandmother, including a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems.

“In the front cover, she wrote, ‘Dearest Katherine, Emily Dickinson is a revered poet. Perhaps one day the same will be said of you. Love, Grandmother Eleanor.’ I made a copy and framed it,” Fitzmaurice says. “It shines from the wall, giving me hope and a map toward someone The Year the Swallows I can maybe become Came Early someday.” o

By Kathryn Fitzmaurice Linda M. Castellitto HarperCollins, $16.99, 288 pages housecleans and writes ISBN 9780061624971 Ages 8 to 12 in North Carolina.

‘Three Cups of Tea’ author shares his story with young readers

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Robin Smith I am officially the last person in the country to read Three Cups of Tea. It’s not because I wasn’t intrigued by the story of Greg Mortenson and his foundation that builds schools for children in mountainous Central Asia, it’s just that I never got around to it.

There it was, on everyone’s reading list, in stacks at my local bookstores, and it looked so Good for Me. By the time I got serious about tackling the book, I felt like I had already read it. Thankfully, two new adaptations for young readers and listeners arrived, and I got my chance to learn the whole story. I’m sorry it took me so long.

In case you are not one of the two million readers who have purchased the original book, Three Cups of Tea is the inspiring story of a mountaineer who was rescued by the people of Korphe, a small village in Pakistan, and the vow he made to bring a school to them. Mortenson’s deeply affecting account, co-written with David Oliver Relin, takes the reader from the fundraising efforts to the actual building of the school in Korphe, and eventually to 57 more schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan through his Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace.

Two editions of the story have just been released for young readers—a picture book, Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg & Three Cups of Tea (Dial, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780803730588), and a version for middle-grade readers, Three Cups of Tea: The Young Reader’s Edition (Puffin, $16.99, 240 pages, ISBN 9780803733923), adapted by 24 Sarah Thomson. While the longer book, with its excellent glossary and color pictures, will be of interest to older students, especially those who are interested in organizing

penny drives at their schools and churches, it’s the picture book that wowed me.

Susan L. Roth teams up with Mortenson to create a stunning picture book. Made of fabric, cut paper and found objects, her collages are both childlike and complicated.

I have long been a fan of her work, which is the perfect medium for Mortenson’s story of a school built with the ingenuity and energy of the mothers, fathers and even the children in Korphe. The first full-page spread shows the villagers smiling out at the readers, eager to read and eager to learn inside a school, not outside using sticks.

When the physical work of building the school begins, Roth switches her collages to a different scale: six small panes showing the mothers carrying water to mix the cement, the fathers laying the stones, and the children wedging little stones into the cement. Children, who love to create collages, will be amazed that such complicated pictures can come from just scissors, paper and glue. Photographs of Korphe follow in a four-page scrapbook that will answer the question many kids ask—“is this a true story?” The picture of the Korphe men carrying two-by-fours on their backs for 18 miles and the triumphant flag blowing in the wind in front of the new school will inspire even the most cynical.

Every school looking for a community service project— and every parent who wants to convey the message that one person can change the world—should buy this affecting book. Children love stories about other children, and this one will help American kids understand a part of the world that they know largely through news reports of war and destruction. o Robin Smith cuts paper and fabric with her second-grade students in Nashville.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS Stories from the road to freedom

MEET Jeff Kinney

By Alice Cary o commemorate Black History Month, here are four excellent new picture books— two biographies, plus two fictionalized accounts of escaping to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Most children today are well-versed in Martin Luther King Jr.’s tremendous struggles and accomplishments. A beautiful new picture book, Coretta Scott (HarperCollins, $17.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780061253645), focuses on his wife. The text is a poem by awardwinning poet, playwright and author Ntozake Shange, accompanied by glorious artwork from Kadir Nelson.

Shange’s poem provides a lyrical yet focused look at Coretta Scott’s life and spirit, with lines like: “over years / learning and freedom / took hold of Coretta’s soul / till she knew in her being / that the Good Lord intended freedom for the Negro.” An additional page of biographical explanation and a photograph at the end fill in additional details.

Nelson’s oil paintings are rich and vibrant, portraying not only the story but the passion, dignity and difficulty of Coretta Scott King’s life. Coretta Scott is a masterful encapsulation of an important life—perfect for young children as well as elementary students.

Another fascinating but largely unknown story is told in The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby (Lee & Low, $17.95, 40 pages, ISBN 9781584302742) about jockey Jimmy Winkfield, who lived from 1882 to 1974. Crystal Hubbard’s detailed, well-paced text, illustrated by Robert McGuire, starts with a foreword about horse racing, which in this country began with many slaves as jockeys.

Winkfield was born into a family of sharecroppers in Kentucky, the youngest of 17 children. He went on to win back-to-back Kentucky Derbies in 1901 and 1902, and narrowly missed winning a third in 1903.

Hubbard’s crisp writing makes each of these races come alive. She explains how black jockeys were forced out of racing for a while, and how Winkfield then trained and raced horses in Poland and Russia for many years. When Winkfield returned for a Kentucky Derby banquet in 1961, he and his daughter were not allowed to enter through the front door. Hubbard’s picture book biography is a superb addition to any library for young readers.

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The journey north

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (Amulet, $12.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9780810970687), is the third book in Jeff Kinney’s #1 best-selling ­series about the trials and tribulations of middleschooler Greg Heffley. Kinney, who works as the design director for an Internet publishing company, lives in southern Massachusetts with his wife and two sons.

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

I Want To Be Free (Putnam, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780399243424) is a thoughtful, inspiring story about two young runaway slaves, written in poem-like text by Joseph Slate, author of the popular Miss Bindergarten books. The story is based on a Buddhist tale as told in Rudyard Kipling’s novel, Kim, but Slate’s version is set in America during the days of slavery. The tale starts with a young slave announcing, “Before I die, I want to be free. / But the Big Man says, ‘You belong to me.’ ” The slave manages to escape and avoid the slave hunters and their dogs, but cannot remove the iron shackle on his leg. During his escape, he risks his life to save a young boy whose mother has died—and who eventually helps him remove the shackle. Caldecott-winning artist E.B. Lewis’ watercolors are dark and powerful, setting the mood for this amazing journey. I Want To Be Free is not only a riveting picture book about slavery and freedom, but also a transcending parable about the magical rewards of helping others in the face of danger.

Most Loved in All the World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17, 40 pages, ISBN 9780618419036) is another riveting, heartbreaking story about slavery. The narrator is a young girl, the daughter of a slave who toils in the cotton fields and returns from the Big House with whip marks across her back.

Mama makes her daughter a quilt and whispers what it means: “A log cabin means a place is safe. This star is the brightest in the sky; it’s for you to follow. The moss should only be growin’ on the side of the tree in the direction you are headed.” Her mama adds that the little girl on the quilt is happy because she’s the “most loved in all the world.”

Mama then takes the girl out in the night and hands her over to people who will lead her to freedom, but stays behind herself so she can help others escape.

Author Tonya Cherie Hegamin offers a fact-filled note at the end of the book about mothers, slavery, freedom, quilting and the Underground Railroad, and includes a list of suggestions for further reading. This excellent book also showcases strong artwork (acrylic paint and textile collage) by artist Cozbi A. Cabrera, well known for making handcrafted cloth dolls. Her art conveys not only the details of this Underground Railroad story, but the beauty and handwork of the quilting, so central to this story. o Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

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INTERVIEW

VALENTINE’S DAY

Helping Juliet find her Romeo

Looking for love: books for every dater

By Alison Hood ove, it is said, is the magic that turns our world. But sometimes that world’s axis seems to tilt, revolutions wobble and love goes awry. Since February is the time when we pay special court to Cupid, BookPage asked one of the world’s leading experts on love and attachment, Dr. Helen Fisher (Why We Love), to discuss how personality typing, based on human brain chemistry, can help us find—and keep—an enduring love. “This research is new ground for me,” Fisher admits during a phone interview from New York City. “I have attempted to explain other aspects of love, but this work touches the human heart where it lives.” And where the heart lives—or more specifically, gets fired up—is in the brain.

By Carla Jean Whitley ith so many dating books out there, it seems there’s a guide for just about everyone. Here’s a look at five of this year’s offerings. By the time you make your way through this relationship gauntlet, you’ll be equipped to find a date this Valentine’s Day—and perhaps find love by the next!

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An anthropologist sets out to discover whether personality types influence who we love.

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Fisher, a biological anthropologist and research professor at Rutgers University, has a passion to understand human connection—a fascination partly driven by her own biology as an identical twin. Her new book, Why Him, Why Her? Finding Real Love DR. HELEN FISHER

by Understanding Your Personality Type (Holt, $25, 336 pages, ISBN 9780805082920), embodies that penchant, having its genesis in the Internet. In 2004, Match.com executives contacted Fisher for input on a new website that would help people find long-term partners. They asked, “Why do you fall in love with one person rather than another?” She answered that no one really knew; however, in light of the crucial evolutionary choice that mating represents, Fisher surmised that this important decision could not be ruled by mere human whim. “I suspected that psychologists . . . had not looked for the underlying biological mechanisms that direct our romantic choices.”

Does personality actually influence who we love? Fisher decided to find out. She examined the biology associated with personality traits, namely, the powerful chemical systems of dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen. Out of this scrutiny, four basic personality types emerged (the Explorer, Builder, Director and Negotiator), as well as the underpinning for a new book and a consultancy with another website, Chemistry. com, for which she designed the personality typing questionnaire.

Are you impulsive, a risk-taker? Perhaps you’re an Explorer. Traditional? Orderly? Then Builder might apply. If you’re exacting and competitive, have a seat in the Director chair.

Do you value compassion and creativity? Then you could be a Negotiator. Fisher’s book entices readers to take her personality test and know themselves better. Most of us are a blend of primary and secondary types and, according to a mate choice survey Fisher conducted with Chemistry.com members, certain types attract—and repel—one another. “Two Builders might bicker over the right way to mop a floor,” she says, “but if they can do damage control, they’ll be fine. But a romance between two Directors? Not so good.” No worries, though, as the book includes an in-depth analysis of each match combination plus sage advice, in a chapter entitled “Putting Chemistry to Work,” on naturally balancing the strengths and flaws unique to each pairing.

A good match, says Fisher, depends upon much more than genetics, though we do “inherit much of the fabric of our mind.” We are not, however, helpless victims of our DNA; there are myriad factors, which Fisher dubs “The Funnel,” that guide attraction: timing, proximity and familiarity, physicality, needs and values, and your love map, which is “a largely unconscious list of traits you will eventually seek in him or her.”

Since I had a love expert on the line, I had to ask for Fisher’s take on our new president and first lady. “I am totally fascinated by them!” she exclaims. She figures (and, hey, Dr. Fisher is good—she had this reviewer pegged instantly as a Negotiator-Explorer) that they are both Explorers with differing secondary types that work beautifully together.

“Michelle, I believe, is an Explorer-Director to Barack’s Explorer-Negotiator, and is the ‘rock’ of the family.”

“Men and women are very different in many ways, but the good news is that we were built to work together.” And Fisher is enthused about the power of the Internet—hence her work with Chemistry.com—to facilitate romantic togetherness, especially in these days when a sense of local community seems to be waning. “How we look for love is changing,” she says, “and I hope that I’m helping people find someone to love.” o 26 Alison Hood, a confirmed Negotiator, hopes to become more of an Explorer this year.

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Decoding men Women always claim men are so hard to understand—but could that be because we’re reading into them the complexity we see in ourselves? Jeff Mac thinks so. In Manslations (Sourcebooks, $14.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9781402214288), the stand-up comic offers something of a you’re-too-smart-for-your-owngood (that’s us, ladies!) handbook to understanding men. With Mac as your guide, it’s suddenly easy to interpret what the man in your life is saying. Do his words and actions contradict each other? There’s truth in the old axiom, Mac says: “listen” to the actions and you’ll find mixed signals aren’t so mixed after all.

Unsure whether he likes you? Again, Mac breaks it down: if he’s getting physical and keeping you around even when he’s not, you’re golden. Mac is like your best wellmeaning but often blunt guy friend—one who’s happily involved and therefore willing to share insight into relationships. Ladies, we’re wrong when we assume men are hard to understand, and that’s perhaps the most useful manslation of all.

Get over it Patti Novak won’t spoon-feed you. Get Over Yourself! (Ballantine, $24, 256 pages, ISBN 9780345510068), written with Laura Zigman, is filled with advice on how to move from being dateless to committed, but Novak, the star of A&E’s 2007 series “Confessions of a Matchmaker,” is just the guide—you’re the active participant. The book’s worksheets and quizzes show women ready to dig in and do the hard work of getting ready for love how to process their own desires and needs, and think about why they are where they are. That’s not always easy, especially when Novak tells you that it is you, after all! It sounds harsh, but she guides you through common self-protective behaviors to help you recognize actions that are holding you back and then heal the hurt beneath them. As you work through the past to change your future, the pressure you place on each date will diminish—and success will come.

Back in the dating pool What do you do when, after years of marriage or a committed relationship, you find yourself single again? It’s been years (perhaps decades) since you left the 20-something’s singles scene— how has it changed? How have you?

In Getting Naked Again (Springboard Press, $24.99, 288 pages, ISBN 9780446582490), Judith Sills, Ph.D., who appears frequently on the “Today” show, serves as the newly single woman’s tour guide to the now-unfamiliar world of dating. This isn’t your daughter’s book, she says, and dating is no longer as clear-cut a process as it is for your daughter. Her goals are likely easy to define: she’s dating to find love, marriage and children. But you’ve already had all of those things. What’s your goal? Your relationships with single men, married friends, your children and even yourself may have changed when you found yourself alone. But with Sills on your side, you can learn how to make the most of being single again.

You can hurry love If you were ready to find love, like, yesterday, pick up How to Make Someone Fall in Love with You in 90 Minutes or Less (Workman, $11.95, 330 pages, ISBN 9780761151623). Love is an emotional progression, not a time-sensitive development, Nicholas Boothman argues, and he’s going to tell you how to find it in 90 minutes or less. As a former fashion photographer, Boothman developed a knack for presenting people in their best light, and he’ll help you capitalize on love at first sight.

After all, it’s how he fell in love with his wife of more than 30 years. Throughout the book he breaks down preparation and action into practical steps. You’ll quickly discover whether someone is your “matched opposite,” a person who shares your values but has a personality different enough to keep life interesting and fun.

Take Boothman’s ideas into account next time you meet someone with whom you have chemistry, and you may well fall in love within an hour and a half. Now staying in love? That’s another book—and a lifetime commitment! o Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and dates in Birmingham, Alabama.

SUSPENSE

In J.D. Robb’s latest futuristic thriller, murder is personal

Visit us online at www.bookpage.com

When Eve’s police issue vehicle is boxed in at a traffic stop and deliberately T-boned by a large van, Roarke’s blood runs cold. Has Coltraine’s killer turned his sights on Eve? The details of the futuristic New York City setting and familiar faces in the supporting cast of characters remind the reader just how minutely Robb has crafted and populated this series. This 28th installment in the wildly popular series is sure to delight dedicated fans and garner new ones for the

indomitable duo of Eve and Roarke. o Lois Faye Dyer writes from Port Orchard, Washington.

Promises in Death

By J.D. Robb Putnam $26.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780399155482 Also available on audio

Signet, $9.99, 9780451226112

Signet Eclipse ,$7.99, 9780451226167

Jove, $9.99, 9780515145823

Berkley, $7.99, 9780425226339

PAPERBACK PICKS PARANORMAL

FICTION

The Ghost War A powerplay in China causes deadly repercussions that will result in chaos around the globe. Even as deep-cover operative John Wells does what he does best, a mole within the CIA is preparing to light the final fuse that will propel an unsuspecting world toward open war and annihilation.

Kiss of Fate For millennia, the Pyr, shape-shifting dragon warriors, have commanded the four elements and guarded the Earth’s treasures. But now the final reckoning between the Pyr and the Slayers—who would eradicate both humans and the Pyr who protect them—is at hand.

L.A. Outlaws Allison Murrieta is an L.A. celebrity and a modern-day Jesse James who loves a good armed robbery. In this town, it pays to be bad. She has a compulsion to steal, a knack for publicity, and the conscience to give all the loot to charity. But no one’s ever been hurt—until now.

Jove, $9.99, 9780515145816

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THRILLER

Coyote’s Mate In the sixth installment of this paranormal series, New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh takes readers into the dangerously sensual world of the genetically altered Breeds—and the humans who fill them with insatiable desire.

But can they survive their own heat?

Berkley, $7.99, 9780425226346

PARANORMAL

ROMANCE

ROMANCE

PARANORMAL

HISTORICAL

The Runaway McBride James Burnett, a widower, has given up hope of finding love. For eight years, he’d suppressed thoughts of Faith McBride’s abandonment. Now visions of her imminent death start to haunt him. Only James can save her from a killer—but can Faith trust the one man who destroyed her faith in love?

Shattered More than a year after his affair in Baghdad with Army doctor Kirby Campbell, Army pilot Shane Garrett is trying to rebuild his life stateside.

Kirby is also stateside, but when she learns a friend is being held hostage in Central America, she works with Phoenix Team to organize a rescue.

Sizzle and Burn In this latest Arcane Society novel by New York Times bestselling author Krentz, a member of the Society must recruit a reluctant woman to use her psychic gift against a powerful enemy. A woman who hears voices and a man who sees visions seek a killer who may elude them both.

So Enchanting Witchling Amelie Chase has been banished to a Scottish hamlet and entrusted by her benefactor to Fanny Walcott. But the village is cramping Amelie’s style, anonymous notes are threatening her life, and two handsome travelers arrive with tantalizing links to the pasts of both women.

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Lois Faye Dyer What began as a way to cope with being snowed in with her two young sons one winter has turned into a multimillion dollar career, though J.D. Robb—a pseudonym for mega-selling author Nora Roberts—couldn’t have known where that creative solution to boredom would lead her.

A voracious reader, the Maryland native decided to try her hand at fiction writing during those snowy days in 1979 and she hasn’t stopped since, with more than 100 novels to her credit and countless appearances on the New York Times bestseller list.

The In Death series was born of necessity in 1995, when the prolific Roberts had stacked up a surplus of titles awaiting print.

Intentionally moving outside the romantic suspense genre, Roberts created a gritty, urban-set, three-book story arc featuring police Lt. Eve Dallas and the mysterious billionaire Roarke. The two would work jointly—and, at times, at odds—to solve unspeakable crimes in New York City, circa 2060. Her publisher agreed to take a chance on the groundbreaking concept, publishing the books under the J.D. Robb pseudonym at Roberts’ request. (Roberts used the first initials of her sons’ names for “J.D.” and “Robb” is a diminutive of “Roberts”.)

The J.D. Robb titles quickly hit bestseller lists and gained critical acclaim, both from book reviewers and fellow writers. The information that “J.D. Robb” was really Nora Roberts was originally a well-kept secret, but the series found immediate popularity, the publisher eventually revealed the woman behind the pseudonym, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In Robb’s newest futuristic thriller, Promises in Death, New York City police Lt. Eve Dallas has a murder to solve that strikes too close to home. The victim is a fellow cop and the lover of Eve’s good friend Li Morris, the city’s chief medical examiner.

Was Det. Amaryllis Coltraine murdered with her own weapon because of a case she was investigating? Did she have personal enemies who wanted her dead? Or is her death somehow connected to the mysterious man with whom she shared a serious relationship in Atlanta two years earlier?

During the investigation, Eve begins to unravel the tangled threads of Det. Coltraine’s hidden past, and even Roarke is surprised at the revelations. Previously, he and Eve had collaborated on a case that led to the conviction of master criminal Max Riker, who is currently incarcerated in an off-planet penal colony. Neither Roarke nor Eve expected their lives would intersect with Riker or his crime organization again, yet their current investigation seems inextricably linked to the dethroned crime boss. Is it possible Riker has found a way to operate his criminal empire from behind bars—to the extent that he is capable of ordering a hit on a cop in New York City?

And as if answering all these questions to solve the complicated case isn’t difficult enough, it quickly becomes clear that someone doesn’t want her digging deeper.

27

HISTORY

Bridging the seas

By James Summerville The 51-mile link between the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean across the Panamanian isthmus stands as one of the great engineering feats of all human history, comparable to the Great Wall of China or the Apollo moon landings. In The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal, labor historian Julie Greene asks: Was it the princes or presidents who did those things? What about the compass bearers, the joiners and those who fed the horses and cooked the meals?

The central figures in Greene’s story—the “builders” referred to in her title—are the 35,000 ordinary people who traveled to Panama, and, from 1906 to 1914, raised new towns, built houses, ran railroads, operated commissaries, set up a constabulary and judiciary and, above all, moved dirt. Greene examines how the U.S. government, determined to build the canal as fast as possible, managed this force of working people from all over the world.

“The engineering and constructional difficulties melt into insignificance compared with labor,” she quotes chief engineer John Stevens as saying. Indeed, Greene finds that project director Col. George W. Goethals tried to apply the The Canal Builders ideal of Progressivism: that by regulating environments one By Julie Greene could improve human behavior. While the jungle gave way Penguin Press before steam shovels, this social engineering faltered and $30, 448 pages often failed. Goethals could not control appetites for drink, ISBN 9781594202018 Also available on audio sex and money; eliminate racial or ethnic prejudice; make people fair or honest; or come close to perfecting the human character. The undeniable success of the project even left an indelible stain on the Republic of Panama, which the U.S. had brought into being: that country’s sovereignty over its own territory was not retuned to it until 2000, when the U.S. ceded the Canal.

The great adventure might have taught Americans to take people and nations not as we might wish them to be but as they often are: perverse, selfish, nationalistic. Yet somehow the overtopping idealism and magnificent vision inspired this multitude to build the great Canal. o James Summerville writes from Dickson, Tennessee.

ART HISTORY

Geo. Washington’s cultural legacy

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Roger Bishop George Washington sat for at least 28 different portraits. As he became one of the best-known men in the world, he was increasingly in demand as a subject and though the process of “sitting” was uncomfortable for him, he recognized the importance of paintings—and by extension, engravings, etchings, woodcuts and mezzotints—to his new republic. In the delightful The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art, Hugh Howard develops the idea of Washington as a patron of the arts and examines how art and the painting of portraits developed in the United States.

Howard first introduces us to two artists who never painted Washington, Benjamin West and John Smibert, but who were crucial influences on those who did. However, it is Washington portraitists Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, Edward Savage and Gilbert Stuart who are among Howard’s main interests. With quiet authority, he relates their quite different life stories and their struggles to reconcile their passion for painting with the necessity of earning a living. Their interactions with Washington and their approaches to him as a subject are told with verve and an The Painter’s Chair intimacy that makes their personalities come alive on the page. Stuart’s work is the best known to us today, especially By Hugh Howard his 1796 portrait of Washington, which is regarded as the Bloomsbury $30, 320 pages best—and is reproduced on our dollar bill. Unlike Peale and ISBN 9781596912441 Trumbull, who served in the military during the American Revolution, Stuart was not caught up in the cause. He left for London in 1775, returning in 1793 with a plan to paint a portrait of Washington that would make him a fortune and ease his persistent financial woes.

Howard also shows how during Washington’s lifetime America changed from a group of colonies with little artistic culture to a new nation with art displayed in public buildings and galleries. As a much-painted cultural icon, Washington played a large role in those changes. “He was,” as Howard notes, “a man who always agreed, admittedly with an air of resignation, to sit for yet another portrait.” o 28 Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Book clubs New paperbacks for reading groups The Silver Swan

By Benjamin Black Benjamin Black (the pen name of award-winning Irish author John Banville) delivers another captivating noir narrative featuring pathologist Garret Quirke. Set in Dublin in the 1950s, The Silver Swan is the sequel to Black’s best-selling mystery, Christine Falls (2007). When Quirke is unexpectedly reunited with an old college chum named Billy Hunt, the encounter is hardly a lighthearted one. The body of Billy’s wife, Deirdre—apparently a suicide—has been found in Dublin Bay, yet Billy asks Quirke not to do an autopsy on Picador her. Suspecting that there’s more to the case than meets the $14, 304 pages eye, Quirke looks into Deirdre’s past only to find that she led ISBN 9780312428242 something of a double life. Under the name Laura Swan, she ran a beauty salon called The Silver Swan. Her involvement with the establishment came as the result of a business deal made with a mysterious Englishman named Leslie White. As Quirke learns more about the beautiful Deirdre, he finds that she was caught in a net of drugs and illegal sex—a net that threatens to entrap his own young daughter, Phoebe. This is a disturbing tale, cannily constructed by Black, in which the suspense is perfectly modulated. Brilliant, sensitive and a bit melancholy, Quirke himself proves a fascinating and worthy protagonist. He’s a quiet hero the reader naturally takes to, and a formidable match for Dublin’s criminal element.

A reading group guide is included in the book.

His Illegal Self

By Peter Carey The latest novel from the Booker Prize-winning author is another rousing tale of discovery that takes the rough landscape of Australia as its primary backdrop. The narrative opens in New York City, where seven-year-old Che Selkirk lives with his American grandmother. Che’s parents, free-spirited radicals at Harvard during the 1960s, have been absent since he was a toddler, but he hopes they’ll return one day. When a strange young woman named Dial comes to Che’s apartment unexpectedly, he’s convinced she is his mother. The two soon Vintage hit the road, and Che’s disappearance from the city makes the $14.95, 288 pages ISBN 9780307276490 news. Meanwhile, Dial, who is actually an escort designated to take Che to see his mother, doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. Eventually, the two end up in a commune in Australia—a crude encampment with no running water populated by a group of feuding hippies. Well out of his element, Che is forced to find his way in unfamiliar surroundings. With the preternatural intelligence and spunk that only small children possess, he succeeds in doing so, coming to grips with his identity along the way. Carey writes with amazing authenticity from the perspective of Che, and the conclusion he has cooked up for this beautifully rendered adventure story is sure to knock readers for a loop. A reading group guide is available online at readinggroupcenter.com.

Things I Want My Daughters to Know

By Elizabeth Noble With her fourth novel, Noble—the best-selling author of The Reading Group—offers a touching narrative about the nature of motherhood and the importance of family. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Barbara Forbes—mother of four very different daughters—knows that she doesn’t have much time left to devote to her precious girls. During her last days, she writes each of them a letter filled with advice on life, love and matters of the heart. After Barbara’s death, the girls read her words, finding comfort and strength in Harper them. Lisa, the oldest daughter and an inveterate nurturer, is $14.99, 400 pages encouraged to let someone care for her instead. To Jennifer, ISBN 9780061686597 a distant and delicate young woman caught up in a troubled marriage, Barbara leaves advice concerning relationships. Amanda, something of a nonconformist, learns a surprising family secret from her letter, while Hannah, a defiant teenager, is cautioned by Barbara and warned that she needs to mature.

This wise and tender story spans a year in the daughters’ lives, as they struggle to deal with the loss of Barbara and find hope in her unique legacy. The narrative is moving and poignant, yet it never sinks into sentimentality. Sure to resonate with female readers, Noble’s stirring novel is wonderfully affirmative and beautifully written. A reading group guide is available online at harpercollins.com. o —JULIE HALE

WORLD FICTION

The ripples of dissent

By Deborah Donovan Muddy River, a small provincial Chinese city, is the setting for this intense and thoughtprovoking debut novel from Yiyun Li, who was raised in Beijing. The year is 1979, 10 years before the violent protests at Tiananmen Square. The seeds of discontent have already been planted in Muddy River—The Vagrants opens with the execution of a young woman, Shan Gu, formerly a supporter of Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution, now a vocal counterrevolutionary.

Li deftly examines the effects of Shan’s execution on her engrossing cast of characters, whose lives are interwoven both by proximity and by emotional bonds. Shan’s father, a teacher, has spent years apologizing for his daughter’s actions, telling himself “a child’s fault is the father’s fault.” Her mother mourns her only child deeply and harbors a dangerous belief that Shan had a right to vocalize her convictions.

Across the city live Kai, a former actress, now the Katie Couric of Muddy River, and her husband, the son of powerful government employees. Kai attended school with Shan, and has recently become involved with the counterrevolutionary group, unbeknownst to her husband or in-laws.

Aware of the burgeoning “Democratic Wall” movement in Beijing, this group distributes leaflets in Muddy River and The Vagrants organizes a petition in protest of Shan’s execution. Each of By Yiyun Li Li’s characters is swept up in this counterrevolutionary epi- Random House demic in a variety of ways; she poignantly portrays how the $25, 352 pages ripples from the execution of one villager ultimately affect ISBN 9781400063130 them all.

Li received numerous awards for her 2005 short story collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and a Whiting Award. Her debut novel is both a stunning encapsulation of China in the decade before Tiananmen Square and a perceptive portrayal of individuals who took part in those historic events, willingly or otherwise. o Deborah Donovan writes from La Veta, Colorado.

SUSPENSE

Classic inspiration for spine-tingling chills

FEBRUARY 2009 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Michael Alec Rose John Harwood’s second novel ought to be read aloud, through the reek of cigar smoke, port wine, yuletide logs and leather bindings. The Séance, like its predecessor The Ghost Writer, takes up the bookish thread of classic British supernatural fiction as if it had never been cut by modernity. Fortunately, Harwood writes so well that an uninitiated reader can perfectly enjoy his tale of atmospheric mystery and dread without catching all the gothic and Victorian allusions. With the right key, however, The Séance offers a first-rate passport into the strange and chilling realm of literature where Harwood plays and with such postmodern abandon.

And so, dear reader, here is a brief inventory of The Séance’s sources—a whirlwind tour of the book’s ingenious exploitation of the genre’s traditional plot devices. If you decide to investigate the original works, please proceed with care. Once you cross this threshold, any possibility of real ghosts will pale by comparison to the genuine terrors of these imagined ones: 1.) An uncanny piece of armor inspires mortal fear (Hor- The Séance ace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto).

By John Harwood 2.) A young woman is threatened in an isolated house by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt an evil tormentor (Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, Ann Rad- $25, 336 pages ISBN 9780151012039 cliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho).

3.) A bizarre and blasphemous electrical experiment Also available on audio wreaks havoc (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein).

4.) A man deranged by love for his wife exploits her special condition to explore the permeable boundary between life and death (Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher).

5.) The legal matter of a strange bequest leads our heroine on a dangerous path of selfdiscovery (Mrs. Riddell, passim).

6.) A dark and charming man of great intelligence and cruelty seduces a beautiful woman in order to feed his desire for immortality (Bram Stoker, Dracula).

The catalogue of references could continue with a social history of spiritualism in the late Victorian period and arrive at last at the great ghost stories of Montague Rhodes 30 James, the point from which Harwood launched his debut novel. It is a scary and joyful ride. Hold on tight. The horses are about to run wild through the dark wood. o

COOKING A perfect ‘10’ When Sheila Lukins, co-author of the iconic Silver Palate Cookbook and author of many more celebrated cookbooks, put together a list of her very favorite foods, she settled on 32—some with seasonal ingredients, some classic types of dishes, some “all-out” passions. Then she came up with the grand idea of choosing her 10 favorite variations for each favorite food and voilà, Ten: All the Foods We Love and Ten Perfect Recipes for Each (Workman, $19.95, 416 pages, ISBN 9780761139829; also available in hardcover). I doubt many us could improve on Sheila’s favorites or on the 10 recipes included in each of these 32 chapters. Even if you might want to add a personal preference or two, you’ll find many more for your own recipe reperBY SYBIL PRATT toire. Lukins is a fabulous innovator, quick to see the how changing a main ingredient gives a classic new, needed zing: sweet, spicy Curry Butternut Mash; Buffalo Shrimp (not chicken wings) with Blue Cheese Sauce and a few crisp veggies; Pork Marengo with a sprinkle of mint; deep-flavored Pot Roast Paprikash; Lobster Cobb Salad; Asparagus, Caviar, and Chopped Egg Spaghettini; an Apple Vichyssoise served hot or cold.

Lukins is as chatty and chummy as always, serving up great header notes, thorough directions and helpful boxed asides with menus and advice on ingredients and prep. You can’t get that perfect “10” in Olympic gymnastics anymore, but you can get it for a cookbook and my vote here is a perfect 10!

Food of the gods Theobroma cacao, the scientific name for chocolate, means “food of the gods” and most of us would agree that chocolate, in all its many forms, is truly ambrosial and utterly divine. Hot, cold, light, dark, brown, white, sweet, bitter, solid or liquid—it’s the passion and pleaser of millions worldwide. Two new, fittingly sumptuous cookbooks have come on the scene that pay proper homage to this magical substance. Jacques Torres, former pastry chef at Le Cirque and dean of pastry at the French Culinary Institute in New York, owns his own chocolate factory in Brooklyn and retail outlets in Manhattan. Jacques Torres’ A Year in Chocolate (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $35, 200 pages, ISBN 9781584796428) has 80 recipes for holidays and special occasions from Valentine Sweethearts (two kinds of creamy mousse sandwiched between crisp cookie hearts), Chocolate Marshmallow Eggs and Chocolate-Covered Matzo for festivities soon at hand to Chocolate Sticky Buns, Pain au Chocolat, Poached Pears with Chocolate Fondue and a Bûche de Noël. Some of Torres’ fabulous creations are quite challenging, but his instructions are detailed, often broken down into doable parts and the accompanying photos are downright inspirational.

You will need to read carefully, check out the special equipment and ingredients and allow yourself plenty of time—but the results will be stunners and beyond luscious.

The Golden Book of Chocolate (Barron’s, $29.99, 704 pages, ISBN 9780764161575), with more than 300 recipes, 300 photos and 700 gilt-edged pages, aims to cover the chocolate spectrum. Twelve separate chapters are devoted to sweet chocolate goodies and one to some unusual savory dishes like Shrimp with Chocolate Sauce. The first recipe is for venerable Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies and the last for a Basic Chocolate Sponge, but in between you’ll find Chocolate Cheese Cake Bars, Chocolate Millefeuille, Chocolate Zabaglione, Chocolate Marquise, White Chocolate Lime Pie, Grand Marnier Truffles and more than enough to satisfy a chocoholic’s wildest dreams.

A master class with Martha the Magnificent Martha Stewart is the mega-maven of modern living, a guiding light on cooking, entertaining, gardening, decorating and weddings. In Martha Stewart’s Cooking School (Potter, $45, 480 pages, ISBN 9780307396440), she offers a serious how-to: a full culinary curriculum that will give the skills and confidence to go forth and cook anything and everything. With more than 200 recipes and 500 instructional color photographs, this is Martha to the max! o

WEDDINGS

For today’s couples, green is the new white

By Joanna Brichetto etting married is big business in America. The wedding industry accounts for an estimated $70 billion to $125 billion chunk of our economy, most of which is spent on things destined to be used once and discarded. The dress, the invitations, the party favors, gift-wrap and alas, sometimes the gifts themselves are one-use-only commodities. The less visible aspects can be wasteful, too: consider how much gasoline it can take to get guests to the wedding—especially a “destination wedding” to which every single person must travel from somewhere else. Lately though, more and more couples are uncomfortable with the disposable nature of a typical wedding. A growing trend of couples looking for alternatives to waste, toxicity and consumption has created a real demand for more information about how to make a wedding greener. Three new green wedding guides handily meet the demand with invaluable insights, ideas, vendor suggestions and resources.

The Green Bride Guide: How to Create an Earth-Friendly Wedding on Any Budget, by Kate L. Harrison (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $14.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781402213458) makes it clear that going green does not have to mean going broke. The author is an expert in environmental law and policy and knows the ins and outs of greening-up any and all components of a wedding. Whether the bride’s limit of eco-consciousness is a vintage gown and paperless invitations or, at the other end of the spectrum, an entire event with a zero carbon footprint, this manual can help. Each topic (such as Engagement, Location, Invitations, Attire, Flowers, Reception, Gifts and Honeymoon) is divided into type and price, which makes it easy to know at a glance what will or will not be realistic.

Budget need never be sacrificed to inject a lot or a little green, nor does style, creativity, comfort or fun. A handy addition is the set of worksheets at the back of the book: these can simplify the interview process when trying to decide between caterers, venues, florists and jewelers—especially with vendors who do not advertise themselves as being green.

The Everything Green Wedding Book: Plan an Elegant, Affordable, Earth-Friendly Wedding (Adams Media, $15.95, 304 pages, ISBN 9781598698114) is by Wenona

G

Napolitano, a self-described tree-hugging wedding planner. The book starts with “top ten reasons to choose a green wedding,” and it would be a rare bride or groom who doesn’t relate to at least one of the compelling motivations. Any level of ethical and environmental awareness can make a real difference. How? Keep in mind these four watchwords when planning: organic, sustainable, renewable and fair trade. From rings to registries, bouquets to buffets, all elements can be considered according to at least one of these four criteria. Luckily, Napolitano has already done the work, which makes it a comparatively simple task to locate choices, set priorities and meet goals. A nice touch is the extra set of chapters devoted to green life after the honeymoon.

Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $35, 207 pages, ISBN 9781584797128) is Pulitzer Prizewinner Mireya Navarro’s expanded follow-up to her wildly popular New York Times article on earth-friendly weddings. This how-to guide is lovely enough to be a coffee table book, with luscious photos alongside nittygritty components of green planning. She offers examples of how real couples make real choices within an almost limitless range of decisions and details. Thoughtprovoking sections include flower alternatives, locally provided foods, charitable gift registries, ecotourism and guest travel options. Particularly striking are ideas about how to offset the total CO2 emissions incurred by transportation and hotel use. Whatever the level of commitment, however, the author advises planners to keep a sense of balance about the overall picture: compromises are bound to be necessary at some level, but every effort is worthwhile. Overall, this serious and stylish guide is inspiring and practical, and it proves beyond any doubt that green can be gorgeous.

Each of these three books shows readers that going green is not an all-or-nothing enterprise. With the generous information here, couples can individualize each aspect and component of wedding planning to suit any taste, budget and environmental concern.

Two people really can make a difference. o At a recent wedding, Joanna Brichetto rescued her friend’s organic, vegan lemon cake from disaster.

SCIENCE

Growing up and growing old

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By Rebecca Steinitz In this era of hands-on parenting, the mothering memoir has become a bookshelf staple; as our population grows older, the adjacent shelf of aging parent memoirs is also getting crowded. What makes Sybil Lockhart’s contribution to both shelves stand out is the fact that she is not just a loving mother and daughter, she’s also a neurobiologist who writes with exquisite clarity about the brain.

Lockhart’s memoir, Mother in the Middle: A Biologist’s Story of Caring for Parent and Child, is an account of the half dozen years during which her two daughters were conceived, gestated, emerged and grew—and her mother descended into Alzheimer’s. Lockhart describes the frustrations of being torn between the caretaking demands of the two generations, but she also pays close attention to the parallel processes of development and deterioration happening right in front of her.

Mother in the Middle breaks no new ground on topics like maternal love, marital stress and becoming a writer.

But when Lockhart turns to the brain and the nervous system, which, happily for the reader, she does frequently, Mother in the book enters a world that will be new for many and en- the Middle lightening for all. Her discussions of subjects like neurons, By Sybil Lockhart embryonic development, what Alzheimer’s does to the Touchstone brain, and the biological nature of memory are riveting (to $25, 256 pages the surprise of this non-scientific reader). In precise, ac- ISBN 9781416541554 cessible language and illuminating images, she elucidates words, phrases and concepts we encounter everywhere from high school biology class, to the doctor’s office, to the daily news.

At the end of Mother in the Middle, Lockhart is no longer in the middle. Her mother is gone and her children are no longer as needy, she and her husband have reached a new and happier stage in their relationship, and she has come into her own as a writer.

In the last pages of the book, she sells her childhood home and moves forward into the future, accompanied by a comforting sense of her mother’s presence. We can only hope that future includes more dazzling science writing. o Rebecca Steinitz is a writer in Arlington, Massachusetts.

31

WORDNOOK

By the editors of Merriam-Webster

Follow your nose Dear Editor: In this season of colds, it has occurred to me to wonder where we get the word for that harbinger of illness—the sneeze. Can you help?

D. G. Bismarck, North Dakota Up until about 500 years ago, English speakers didn’t sneeze. Our medieval ancestors weren’t any more healthy than we are today, but instead of sneezing, they fneezed.

In Old and Middle English, there were a handful of words that began with the letters fn-. For the most part, these words had something to do with the nose or with breathing.

Because this combination of sounds was so rare, words beginning with fn- were susceptible to change or to competition from another word. This was especially the case in late Middle English. Middle English fnesen, meaning “to sneeze,” was altered and gained a temporary rival.

This rival came in the form of nesen, a word of Scandinavian origin. Nesen began to appear in English during the 14th century, and even today neeze may still be heard in some Scottish dialects of English.

The more successful change, however, proved to be the alteration of fn- to sn-. Snesen began to appear in the late 15th century. It is possible that this change was encouraged by the similarity between the printed and written forms of f and s at the time. Evidence for this may be seen in the earliest known occurrence of sneeze, for in 1493 Wynken de Worde printed snese where William

IT’S A MYSTERY Patricia Cornwell

ACROSS 1. Main character Kay ____ 9. Color of Kay’s hair 15. In ____ and Unusual a man is executed but his pattern of killing continues 16. Often broken during CPR 17. Kay’s sidekick policeman Pete ____ 18. Brownish gray 20. Evil Carrie in Point of Origin (2 wds.)

22. The building where Kay did her job 24. Yukon Terr. in postal lingo 25. Young dog 26. Descriptive of Kay’s criminals, who like to inflict pain 28. 17-Across or an outmoded, politically incorrect cop 31. TV franchise influenced by this series 33. Consumed 35. Aircraft destination time

S O L U T I O N

Caxton had printed fnese at the same place in the same text 10 years earlier.

Digging deep Dear Editor: Could you tell me where and how the phrase all petered out originated?

R. B. Medford, New Jersey The origins of the verb peter, meaning “to become exhausted,” are obscure. The most popular theory is that the word originated in the gold-mining camps of the western United States in the first half of the 19th century. In fact, the earliest written evidence we have of the term, from 1846, quotes a speaker who seems to be a miner lamenting the ups and downs of his career in the colloquial language of his time: “When my mineral petered why they all Petered me. If so be I gets a lead, why I’m Mr. Tiff again.”

Two methods of mining were used in these camps.

When we think of this era now, the image that usually comes to mind is that of a prospector crouched over a stream with his pan, sorting through silt to find flakes of gold. This was known as placer mining, and it was in some ways the easiest type of mining. After nature had eroded or leached the gold out of the rocks, all that remained to the miner was to separate the gold from the eroded dirt. However, in order to reach the gold still buried in solid rock, the miners also used a method known as lode mining, setting off explosives inside the rock to break it up and reveal the gold.

The explosive used in lode mining contained a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter (potassium nitrate). Since it contained saltpeter, the explosive was commonly known as peter among miners. According to this theory, when a vein of gold had been worked to exhaustion and there was no point in blasting further, it was said to have “petered out.”

Old hat Dear Editor: Now that the snowy season is here, my children have been spending a lot of time tobogganing. We were wondering if you could tell us where the word toboggan comes from.

T. M. Manchester, Vermont The word that we apply to the long runnerless sled with the upturned nose, toboggan, came into English over 170 years ago by way of Canadian French, but its ultimate derivation is from an Algonquian word similar to the Micmac tobagun. This Micmac word means “drag made of skin.” In fact, the original toboggan was an American Indian sled made of poles tied together with thongs.

In some parts of the country, toboggan is perhaps more familiar as the name of a stocking cap than as a kind of sled. Its use in this sense presumably reflects the wearing of such caps by tobogganers. Our earliest evidence showing toboggan used in referring to a cap is from 1902.  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.

36. Tricky card game?

38. Observe, as Kay will do with details 40. Film speeds, such as 100, 200, 400 41. Run away with a lover 43. Choke 46. Kay’s secretary 48. City where Kay was a coroner 50. You are, she ____ 51. ____ and the Sunshine Band 52. Kay’s ex-husband 53. I ____, I ____, so it’s off to work I go 54. Drinkers org.

56. TV’ s “Daniel Boone,” ____ Parker 58. Kind of belly button 59. Kay’s niece 61. Ms. Faye Bakker Messner 64. Mistakenly, as Kay was ____ accused in Postmortem 66. River and city in southern Sudan 67. Device that impacts on Kay’s beau Mark James?

70. Kay’s clients decompose or ____ 71. Used to measure brain activity 73. Prosecuting officer who uses Kay’s evidence 74. Cancel or reverse 75. Large flightless New Zealand bird 76. Sally Field won an Oscar for Norma ____ 77. Visual used by Kay, photographic or X-ray 79. Not BC 80. Eleven in Roman numerals 81. Victims in All That ____ are couples 82. State where Pete was originally a cop

DOWN 1. Leftover for a pet 2. Wheel-chaired Superman (initials) 3. Procedures done by Kay 4. Hindmost 5. Sink stoppers 6. Cornered 7. Titanium 8. This female reporter’s sister was killed in 64-Across (poss.)

9. Bone mineral density (abbr.)

10. Kay met 67-Across while studying this 11. Gold (Sp.) 12. The most agile 13. Irrefutable evidence in Kay’s work 14. Very long time period 19. Web acronym for pick-up artist 21. Slap on the back, ____ boy!

23. ____ Ado about Nothing 27. Short for the country Kay is in, in Unnatural Exposure 28. “This is Your Life” host (initials) 29. Kay’s favorite ethnic food 30. Incidents under Kay’s investigation 32. Of Man or of Wight, for one 34. Toss 36. What Kay pours herself into 37. ____ Kill a Mockingbird 38. River through Paris 39. Bible ending 40. A football score, for short 42. Occupation of Kay’s beau Benton 44. Health maintenance org.

45. Loneliest number, as Kay well knows 47. Happened, as Kay determined when death ____ 49. Large pustule

54. Kay doesn’t confide in ____ 55. Penalty for mixed up words in a sentence?

57. Utter 59. Light weight (abbr.)

60. What Kay will do to unwind 62. Kay avoids publicity by avoiding the ____ 63. Where Kay grew up

65. 365 days 67. Kay uses these to determine time of death 68. Kay’s title 69. Victim in ____ of Evidence is an author 72. ____ whiz!

75. Olympia is its capital 78. Article used before a vowel sound