BookPage April 2011

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a p r i l

2011

america’s book review

BIG TOP Sara Gruen’s bestseller hits the big screen

Also inside Take a taste of Friendship Bread Passion runs dry in The Uncoupling

paperback picks penguin.com

Burning Lamp

Dead in the Family

Navarro’s Promise

Shattered

In this second novel of the Dreamlight trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick, psychic power and passion collide when a legendary curse ignites a dangerous desire.

The only bright spot in Sookie Stackhouse’s life is vampire Eric Northman. But he’s under scrutiny by the new vampire king. Though the doors to Faery have been closed, there are still some fae on the human side—and one of them is angry at Sookie...very, very angry.

The breed guaranteed Mica no harm would come to her, but they never anticipated her sensual fascination with Navarro, or his unstoppable need to claim her as his mate, in both body and soul.

While investigating the cold-case disappearance of a baby girl 28 years earlier, attorney Lisa Grant begins to believe that she herself was the missing toddler. That makes Lisa’s life a lie, and whoever erased the truth isn’t through with her.

9780515149258 • $7.99

9780425239780 • $7.99

9780441020157 • $7.99

9780451233547 • $7.99

The Skorpion Directive

Taken by the Prince

Texas Blue

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon®: Combat Ops

When Micah Dalton captures one of his watchers—mysterious operative Veronika Miklas—he has inadvertently uncovered a secret that could shatter America’s strategic global alliances.

And Dalton will have to push himself to the very edge in a desperate attempt to save his honor and his life.

Only Victoria knows that Saber Lawrence is a renegade prince plotting to seize control of his country. But when Saber kidnaps Victoria to ensure her silence and vanquish her reserve, he finds that the proper English governess is not so easily seduced, unless Saber’s willing to surrender something of his own—his heart.

Gambling man Lewton Paterson wants to marry into a respectable family. After fleecing a train ticket, Lewt makes his way to Whispering Mountain. But seducing a well-bred woman is hard, and Lewt realizes that to entice a McMurray sister, he’ll need to learn a thing or two about ranching—and love.

The U.S. Army’s Special Forces are known for their highly specialized training and courage behind enemy lines. But there’s a group that’s even more stealthy and deadly. It’s composed of the most feared operators on the face of the earth—the soldiers of Ghost Recon.

9780515149265 • $9.99

9780451413048 • $7.99

9780425240472 • $7.99

9780425240069 • $9.99

The #1 New York Times bestseller “This could be one of the most important pieces of fiction since To Kill a Mockingbird.” —NPR.org “Thought-provoking…one of the best debut novels of the year.” —USA Today “[A] wise, poignant novel…You’ll catch yourself cheering out loud.” —People Magazine “Graceful and real, a compulsively readable story.” —Entertainment Weekly

FINALLY IN PAPERBACK

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BERKLEY

A Member of Penguin Group (USA)

9780425232200 • $16

contents

april 2011 w w w. B o o k Pa g e . c o m

features

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13 darien gee The “culinary chain letter” that sparked a novel about friendship and love

cover story

sara gruen

Her acclaimed novel Water for Elephants moves off the page and onto the silver screen— and into moviegoers’ hearts

16 francisco goldman A widower’s poignant lament

Cover photo © iStockphoto.com/martirja

17 philip kerr Meet the author of Field Gray

18 baseball The past, present and pleasures of our national pastime

19 christian living 20 poetry A time to celebrate new and noted poets

24 anna jean mayhew The lessons of a Southern childhood

28 ruta sepetys Giving voice to a generation of survivors

31 children’s poetry Three new picture books instill a love of poetry in young readers

31 chris van allsburg Meet the author-illustrator of Queen of the Falls

departments buzz girl author enablers book clubs audio whodunit well read romance cooking lifestyles

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read all our reviews online at bookpage.com All material © 2011

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21 Fiction

top pick:

From the word of God to a journey of faith

04 04 06 06 08 10 11 12 12

reviews

Individual subscriptions are available for $30 per year. Send payment to: BookPage Subscriptions 2143 Belcourt Avenue Nashville, TN 37212

The Uncoupling

by Meg Wolitzer a l s o r e v i e w e d : The Free World by David Bezmozgis; The Love of My Youth by Mary Gordon; Night Road

by Kristin Hannah; Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson; The Peach Keeper

by Sarah Addison Allen; The School of Night by Louis Bayard; The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice; The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew; Swim Back to Me

by Ann Packer

25 NonFiction top pick:

The Wilder Life

by Wendy McClure a l s o r e v i e w e d : A Covert Affair by Jennet Conant; Fire Season by Philip Connors; One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman; Lost and Found by Geneen Roth; The Long Goodbye

by Meghan O’Rourke; Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell; Great Soul by Joseph Lelyveld

30 Children’s top pick:

Where She Went

by Gayle Forman a l s o r e v i e w e d : Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney; The Emerald Atlas

by John Stephens

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3

columns

Buzz Girl chills and thrills

Our publishing insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers

apocalypse now Just when you thought there was nothing new under the (dead) sun of post-apocalyptic literature, Tom Perrotta (Election, Little Children) comes up with an addition to the popular genre with The Leftovers.

On sale from St. Martin’s on August 30, the novel takes us to Mapleton, New Jersey, where only 100 people were taken from the town during a Rapture-like event, leaving the remaining members of the community feeling inadequate and a bit confused. Perrotta is known for his ironic take on modern life, and the idea of adding a supernatural twist to his oh-so-real suburban stories is tantalizing.

couric’s corner

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Breaking news! On April 12 Katie Couric will publish The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives with Random House.

The book is a collection of advice and anecdotes from Couric and her famous friends, including Mario Batali, Michael Bloomberg, Thomas Friedman, Malcolm Gladwell, Helen Mirren, Condoleezza Rice, Meryl Streep and others.

Couric says she was inspired to write the book after reaching out to friends while gathering inspiration for a commencement speech she gave couric last spring. She plans to donate the profits from her book sales to Scholarship America, a nonprofit scholarship and educational support organization.

Chevy Stevens’ Still Missing was one of our favorite suspense novels of 2010. It’s a disturbing, sexy pageturner with a fantastic hook: What if a Realtor got abducted during an open house? (We get chills just thinking about it!)

Great news for other Stevens fans: On July 5, St. Martin’s will publish Never Knowing, a companion book to Still Missing. According to Stevens, “Never Knowing isn’t a direct sequel, but it does have the same therapist, Nadine, who we met in Still Missing.” Sign us up for more creepy reading!

Eugenides on marriage It’s been nine long years since Jeffrey Eugenides’ smash hit Middlesex, and readers have been clamoring to know what the Pulitzer Prize winner would do next. Well, now we know: The Marriage Plot goes on sale October 11 from FSG. In an interview on FSG’s Work in Progress blog, Eugenides says, “I don’t quite know how to describe it.

A college love story? Maybe. It begins on graduation day, in 1982, and involves three main characters. The book deals, among other things, with religion, depression, the Victorian novel and Roland Barthes.”

We can’t wait for this novel.

bestseller watch Release dates for some of the guaranteed blockbusters hitting shelves in April:

5 44 Charles street

By Danielle Steel

Delacorte, $28, ISBN 9780385343145 Steel is back doing what she does best in this charming tale of a single Manhattan woman forced to take boarders in her chic West Village townhouse.

12 chasing fire

By Nora Roberts Putnam, $27.95, ISBN 9780399157448 The queen of romantic suspense explores the sexy, dangerous world of elite firefighters in her latest novel.

19 the sixth man

By David Baldacci Grand Central, $27.99 ISBN 9780446573108 When an alleged serial killer is on trial and his attorney turns up murdered, former Secret Service agents King and Maxwell have their work cut out for them.

author enablers by kathi kamen goldmark & Sam Barry

Practical advice on writing and publishing for aspiring authors

FOOLISH QUESTIONS Dear Author Enablers, I haven’t had much education.

I’d like to be a riverboat captain or head west to make my fortune. But I also want to be a writer. Can a career in journalism lead to success as an author? Am I trying to do too many things? Should I go back to school?

S. C. Hannibal, Missouri Although writing workshops can add to your craft as a writer, life experience provides the vivid material that informs great literature. Make sure you keep a notebook with you on that riverboat. Many successful writers began their careers as journalists; it might help to come up with a memorable byline. Keep your ears open—perhaps something will come to you on your adventures.

Good day, Ye Author Enablers of Her Majesty’s Court, I have set mine eyes upon becoming a playwright. I am as yet just getting started, but am beset by difficulties. I have no proper dictionary, and betimes I find myself inventing words. ’Tis almost as if I am creating my own language! Also, dar’st I claim the thoughts of another by borrowing the plot line from a classic work and setting the characters in this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England?

W. S. Stratford-upon-Avon Haven’t you heard of Kleenex? Or Freakonomics? English wouldn’t be the vibrant language it is today if not for inventive sorts like you. As for “borrowing” a plot line, people have been doing that since time began. (Think West Side Story.) Just make sure you credit the source and that you are creative enough to add something to the legacy.

Dear Author Enablers, I’m an aspiring novelist but find that no one wants to publish my work because I’m a woman. I’m thinking of writing under a male name. I also enjoy dressing like a man. My family thinks this is odd, so please settle our contretemps.

Amandine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin Nohant-Vic, France

If you think a new name could help expand your readership, we’re in favor of choosing a nom de plume, as you French folks like to call it. Certainly having a shorter name might help people remember you when they are in the bookstore. We’ve always liked “George.”

Regarding clothing—lots of people cross-dress in San Francisco, where we live, so it’s no big deal to us.

Dear Author Enablers, I am a Spanish writer with novel ideas, and I find the genres available—epic poems, romances, folk tales—to be rather limiting. I’d like to write a fictitious prose narrative of substantial length and complexity portraying characters and presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes. Do you think this idea will work? Is it commercial enough? I don’t even know what to call it.

M. de C. Toledo, Spain We are concerned that your attempt at introducing this novel form of writing may be risky. The public knows what it likes and prefers the familiar. However, if your writing is of the highest quality and you have the determination, we think you should give it a whirl. Who knows—you might be a groundbreaker.

Dear Author Enablers, I am a serious poet. My sister Vinnie just pointed out that much of my work can be hummed to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Should I ever speak to her again? Should I go into the songwriting trade?

E. D. Amherst, Massachusetts Life is too short to worry about what other people think of you. Get a harmonica and sing along.

Letters to the Author Enablers take a strange turn around April 1. The columnists will be back to their practical endeavors next month, so send your inquiries to authorenablers@gmail.com.

See History Come Alive Produced with the Smithsonian Institution and released in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, The Civil War takes a unique visual look at one of the most defining moments in our country’s history.

Maps, portraits, photography, and key artifacts from the Smithsonian’s unrivaled Civil War collections help bring the war to life and make this a must-have for anyone interested in the history of the Civil War.

The BookPage/DK Civil War Sweepstakes Enter for a Chance to Win! 1. One (1) Grand Prize of a $300.00 History Channel gift card and a library of history books published by DK (Total Approximate Retail Value (“ARV”) of Grand Prize = $450.00) 2. Ten (10) Runner-up prizes of a copy of The Civil War, published by DK (ARV of each prize = $40.00).

No purchase necessary. Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, ages 18 and older. Entries must be received no later than April 31, 2011, 11:59:59 PM Eastern Time. Winners will be selected on or about May 15, 2011. Void where prohibited by law.

Go to www.bookpage.com/ and click on The Civil War Sweepstakes banner for complete details and Official Rules.

us.dk.com

5

columns This month’s best paperback releases for reading groups

MUSIC MAN Jennifer Egan’s raucous new novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad (Anchor, $14.95, 352 pages, ISBN 9780307477477), offers a perceptive look at today’s music industry by focusing on the career of a man who’s seen it all. Bennie Salazar was in a punk band years ago in San Francisco. Now a record producer in New York, he serves as the center of Egan’s narrative, which is structured as a group of loosely connected vignettes about Bennie’s career and

book clubs

audio

by julie hale

by sukey howard

the form of a tough guy named TwoTie. At Indian Mound, a place where loyalty and honesty are in short supply, fortunes can change overnight, and Tommy’s luck doesn’t last long. In Gordon’s hands, the track is brought to vibrant life, populated with groomers and gamblers, coaches and owners. Her many narrative gifts include an ear for jargon, an instinct for pacing and a style that’s lyrical without being heavy-handed. This is a masterfully crafted novel that’s satisfying on every level.

A Room of Her Own In the opening chapter of Bird Cloud (Simon & Schuster Audio, $29.99, 8 hours unabridged, ISBN 9780743597241), Annie Proulx’s first book of nonfiction in 20 years, she admits that “observational skills are part of who I am.” She uses those skills to make this chronicle of building her dream house—with its attendant nightmares—into something much more complex.

It’s as though she’s walking through the rooms of Bird Cloud, her home on 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie, opening some doors a crack, throwing others wide.

She lets us glimpse her early life, when her family moved at least 20

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS

the California music scene that nurtured him. The book flashes back to Bennie’s wild past, conjuring a range of voices and characters from that era—groupies, street kids, would-be musicians—then returns to the present, highlighting the changes that have taken place (for the worst, mostly) in the music business. Egan develops a wonderful cast of characters along the way.

There’s Sasha, a kleptomaniac who works for Bennie, and Scotty, a fellow musician who’s now a recluse.

At once humorous and earnest, antic and tender, this is an inventive look at an aging artist and the passions that fueled his career.

at the races

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Winner of the National Book Award, Jaimy Gordon’s latest novel, Lord of Misrule (Vintage, $15, 304 pages, ISBN 9780307946737), is a rich depiction of horse-racing culture set in West Virginia in the 1970s. Tommy Hansel, a trainer at Indian Mound Downs, hopes to swindle the competition through a con involving four different horses.

When Tommy is joined at the track

by Maggie, his attention-grabbing girlfriend, she’s quickly noticed by everyone, including gangster Joe Dale Bigg. Drawn to the dark side of racing, Maggie soon finds herself in need of protection, which arrives in

The top choice, hands down, of BookPage readers for best new title of 2009 will finally be available in paperback on April 5. With more than two million copies sold, The Help has been so successful in hardcover that publication of a paperback edition was delayed several times. Adding to the excitement surrounding this insightful Southern novel is a much-anticipated movie based on the book, scheduled for August release and starring up-and-comer Emma Stone. Set in Mississippi in the 1960s, the story of how smart, resourceful socialite Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan joins forces with two black maids, Minny and Aibileen, to write a book about the lives of Southern servants is a poignant and ambitious work of fiction. Through the alliance of this unlikely trio, Stockett examines the big shifts taking place in 1960s society. The novel’s crisp prose, fresh characterizations and inventive storyline all seem the work of an old hand, but this unforgettable novel is Stockett’s debut.

The Help

By Kathryn Stockett Berkley $16, 544 pages ISBN 9780425232200

fiction

times, and her family history—her father’s French-Canadian background, her mother’s solid New England roots. She shares her love and deep knowledge of the plants and animals in this part of Wyoming: golden eagles, bluebirds, elk, deer, marauding cows and more. A master of evoking place, her unique mix of the spare and the lyrical is at its most powerful here. Proulx reads the opening chapter, taking you into her world, and Joan Allen continues, never breaking the mood.

“Exitus Acta Probat” They should never have been in that secure room in the National Archives, but Beecher White, a bright young archivist, wanted to impress Clementine, a girl he’d had a crush on in eighth grade and hadn’t seen in years. And when a cup of coffee spilled and they panicked, dislodging a hidden 18th-century book from its hiding place, they should never have opened it. But they did, and it opened a Pandora’s box of intrigue, deception, conspiracy and counter-conspiracy. In less than an hour, the guard who had let them into “the vault” was dead and Beecher was in mortal danger. That’s for openers in The Inner Circle (Hachette Audio, $39.98, 14 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781607886761), Brad Meltzer’s

latest cleverly plotted, historically detailed, race-paced thriller that supposes an undercover ring of spies devoted to every president since George Washington. I was rooting for Beecher all the way, happy to know that he’ll be back as this series (a first for Meltzer) progresses. Scott Brick, always an able narrator, is at his best, giving Beecher compelling dimensions and ratcheting up the tension.

Audio of the Month The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, one of Japan’s best-selling novelists, is a superb example of a literary thriller: offbeat, haunting, tense and troubling.

Protecting her teenage daughter from her reprobate ex-husband, Yasuko, a single mother and former bar hostess, kills him. Her neighbor, Mr. Ishigami, hears it all and immediately comes to their aid, constructing an airtight alibi for mother and daughter and disposing of the body. So the question isn’t who did it, but why Ishigami, a math genius living an isolated life, would use his prodigious logic to protect Yasuko, whom he barely knows. Told with cool simplicity—no subplots, no digging into the protagonists’ pasts—Higashino’s “just the facts, ma’am” style belies his brilliant evocation of Ishigami as he enters into a cat-and-mouse battle of wits with a former acquaintance, a supersmart physics professor who is the only man able to fathom the depths of the mathematician’s devotion.

David Pittu is an amazingly skillful narrator, brushing the dialogue with an almost imperceptible hint of an accent, subtly building suspense as the inevitable end looms.

The Devotion of Suspect X

By Keigo Higashino Macmillan Audio $29.99, 9 hours unabridged ISBN 9781427211958

thriller

LISTEN to the L ATEST BESTSELLERS this Spring!

“Stunning...Cumming’s knowledge of the spy business, his well-crafted prose, and his intensely engaging plot makes this a breakthrough novel.”

SWEET VALLEY IS BACK!

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“This stand alone work will mesmerize...and hold them spellbound until the final word.

Jodi Picoult fans may crown a new favorite author.”

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what terrible secret has torn jessica and elizabeth apart?

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READ BY THE AUTHOR

E AL S ON /26 4 “High-octane… Cain intercuts her quick-paced chapters, which spin each narrative strand with expert restraint... This is the mood that Cain has mastered: the dread of knowing something is off, but not being able to see it clearly.”

—The New York Times Book Review

Visit macmillanaudio.com to listen to excerpts. Become a fan on Facebook.

77

columns

Whodunit

by Bruce Tierney

Gunther faces a postwar reckoning One could easily be forgiven for consigning Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series to the war novel genre, or perhaps even historical fiction, but the simple fact is that Kerr crafts some of the finest mystery novels in contemporary fiction, noir classics set against the multiple backdrops of WWII’s far-reaching stages. The latest, Field Gray (Putnam, $26.95, 448 pages, ISBN 9780399157417), finds the definitive anti-hero in postwar (but pre-revolution) Cuba, working for American crime boss Meyer Lansky.

But not for long—Gunther will be summarily kidnapped and extradited to Germany, then interrogated at length, all in the name of bringing one Erich Mielke to justice.

Told partly in flashback, Field Gray recounts the fictional interactions

of Gunther, a former soldier in the SS, and Mielke (a real-life character who was the longtime head of East Germany’s feared state security agency, Stasi). Although there is no love lost between the two, in some strange way they repeatedly come to each other’s rescue, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the Allies,

who want Mielke’s head on a platter.

And how better to accomplish that lofty goal than by dangling Bernie Gunther as expendable bait? Painstakingly researched and beautifully written, as always, this is a fine addition to a fine series.

Two heart-stopping stories guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat!

woman in white The Fauborg, a landmark Beverly Hills restaurant, is closing its doors for good. Over the years The Fauborg has served as watering hole for, among others, noted psychologist/sleuth Alex Delaware and his girlfriend, Robin Castagna, so it is only fitting that the pair show up for one last night, to send the place off in style. Most of the patrons are regulars, save for a newcomer at the bar, a waifish, enigmatic young woman in white who repeatedly checks her watch, unintentionally capturing Delaware’s attention. It will be a moment he’ll not soon forget, as mere hours later, the young woman will be brutally murdered, her body savagely mutilated. The case will fall to Milo Sturgis, Delaware’s cop buddy of long standing, and Delaware will (naturally) be brought on board as a consultant.

This is a formula that has worked for many years for writer Jonathan Kellerman, and it continues to work with no sign of a letup in his latest mystery, Mystery (Ballantine, $28, 336 pages, ISBN 9780345505699).

Sturgis and Delaware play off one another like an old married couple (I mean that in a good way), and the plotting is tight from start to finish.

Mystery is another solid entry in one of the longest-running series in suspense fiction.

problems for the Picketts

On sale now!

8

C.J. Box moves from strength to strength with each new installment in the saga of Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, the 11th and latest of which is Cold Wind (Putnam, $25.95, 400 pages, ISBN 9780399157356). Not one, but two killings rock the Pickett family within days of one another: Joe Pickett’s father-in-law Earl Alden, a wind-energy entrepreneur whose body is found dangling from the spinning blade of one of his giant windmills; and Alisha Whiteplume, the longtime love interest of Pickett’s “best-friend-forever-slashnemesis,” Nate Romanowski; both murdered by person or persons unknown. The prime suspect in the Alden case is none other than Missy Alden, Earl’s wife and Pickett’s despised mother-in-law. Despite his ongoing loathing of the woman, Pickett grudgingly agrees to lend a hand toward proving her innocence.

It won’t be long until he regrets that decision, on more levels than he can count. I would say that C.J. Box is at

the top of his form, but the top just keeps moving ever upward. Cold Wind is a nonstop thrill ride not to be missed!

Mystery of the Month Whew! What a group from which to pick a Mystery of the Month! But pick one I did, and the honors go to Swedish author Henning Mankell, for the stellar The Troubled Man. Billed as “the final volume in the Kurt Wallander series,” The Troubled Man takes its title from the brooding future father-in-law of Wallander’s daughter Linda. Hakan von Enke is a retired submarine captain, one with a secret buried deep beneath the black northern sea dating back to the days of the Cold War. Shortly after his first cognac-fueled chat with Wallander at a family gathering, von Enke disappears without a trace while taking his morning walk through a nearby park. Days later, his wife disappears as well. The sole clue: an uncharacteristically messy desk drawer, in an office otherwise quite orderly.

Wallander finds himself drawn to the case, to the point of taking time off from work to investigate the disappearances. He is suffering problems of his own, however: His memory is failing him at crucial moments, leaving him frustrated and more than a bit apprehensive about his ability to continue as a police officer. One tends to expect a surprise ending at the end of a mystery, perhaps even more so at the end of a series of mysteries, but the conclusion of The Troubled Man is both unexpected and profoundly moving. Years from now, this book will be required reading in mystery writing classes, a genre novel that indisputably transcends the genre.

The Troubled Man

By Henning Mankell Knopf $26.95, 384 pages ISBN 9780307593498 Audio, eBook available

thriller

All Good Things Must Come To An End...

After 7 years and 19 amazing adventures, it is time to bid the courageous femmes farewell in this 20th and final novel of the immensely popular Sisterhood series.

Bid the Sisterhood goodbye and tell us what you will miss most!

Visit facebook.com/kensingtonbooks.com

On Sale 3.29.11

The Sisterhood— Sweet Justice.

Win a Sisterhood Bag! Visit kensingtonbooks.com /fernmichaels

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9

columns

WELL READ by robert Weibezahl

The price of a mother’s love A disoriented elderly woman is separated from her husband in a crowded Seoul subway station and disappears. Her grown children, distraught and guilt-ridden, scour the city for her, a search that awakens memories and ignites questions about who their mother really was beneath the humdrum surface of her life. This is the intriguing premise of Kyung-sook Shin’s novel Please Look After Mom, a huge bestseller in the writer’s native South Korea that is fast becoming an international sensation as well.

It is easy to see the source of this global popularity, for not only is Shin’s absorbing novel written with considerable grace and suspense, but she also has managed to tap into a universality: the inequitable relationship between a mother and her children. As the story unfolds, told from four different perspectives, we learn far more about this woman than her children, or even husband, will ever know. And we

bear witness to the lifetime’s worth of sacrifices she has made for all of them, at the expense of her own happiness and sense of self.

Park So-nyo is a vestige of a fading time and place, an A family’s illiterate peasant search for who has lived her entire 69 a missing years of frugal mother subsistence in brings up the countryside.

Everything has mysterious been for the sake questions. of her children; without fail, she surrendered any personal need or desire for the good of the family.

Seoul, where her children now live, is a foreign land, a maze of indistinguishable buildings filled with strangers. When she disappears, the children—none of whom initially bothered to meet her at the train station—spring into action, offering a reward for anyone who can

help find their mother. There are occasional sightings, often in parts of the city where one of them once lived or worked, but their mother continues to elude them.

The eldest daughter, a writer, begins to remember peculiarities in her mother’s recent behavior, and for the first time acknowledges the old woman’s increasing health issues, including a doctor’s report that she has had a stroke. The eldest son remembers how his mother seemed to exist solely to ensure his success in life. Her husband, who was chronically unfaithful during their enduring marriage, begins to see his wife for the woman she is, rather than for what he might have hoped she would be. Finally, in a beautiful coda, the spirit of the woman herself reveals a rich emotional life she kept hidden with her customary self-effacement.

In much of the book, Shin employs an unconventional second-person narrative, a choice that brilliantly heightens the selfrecrimination the characters come

to bear.

Elegantly translated by Chi-Young Kim, the novel retains a strong Korean feel, filled with beguiling particulars of a culture alien to most Western readers.

And yet, it speaks to us through its shared humanity, underscoring collective truths that transcend nationality.

Please Look After Mom

By Kyung-sook Shin Knopf $24.95, 256 pages ISBN 9780307593917 eBook available

translation

NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

has captivated millions of readers with her heartwarming stories of the ties that bind.

Now she introduces Jenna Stevens, who’s about to discover that sometimes the only way to move forward is to go back home again.…

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2/23/11 10:25:51 AM

romance c o l u m n b y c h r i s t i e r i d g way

Poignant family secrets Dorothy Garlock tells a story unique to America’s past in Keep a Little Secret (Grand Central, $13.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780446540148). In 1939, 20-year-old Charlotte Tucker takes a teaching position in a small Oklahoma town and moves into a room in the house of successful rancher John Grant. John is a member of the school board, but he hints to Charlotte that he has another motive for offering her a place to live. What secret is the older

travels back to Hell, putting their survival at risk.

Characters from previous books cross the stage and the interaction between the warrior brotherhood provides a humorous note. At the core, though, it’s a sexy story full of danger as two people from warring factions fight against their pasts and for their love.

Romance of the Month

man keeping? Other characters on the ranch have hidden purposes as well. Twins Owen and Hannah Wallace are in the area searching for the father who abandoned them.

While Owen finds himself romantically drawn to Charlotte, he’s afraid his feelings will get in the way of the revenge he wants—and that his revenge will keep him from having Charlotte. When dangerous events occur on the ranch, everyone is at risk. Will Charlotte and friends survive? Young love and exciting drama combine in this touching story from a not-so-distant era.

Love under fire Gena Showalter returns to her paranormal world of gods, angels, demigods and demon keepers in The Darkest Secret (HQN, $7.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9780373775491).

There are demon-assassins too, the “Hunters,” who are pledged to kill the warrior Lords of the Underworld who carry inside them the evil demons freed from Pandora’s Box. Amun is the keeper of the demon of Secrets, and after a visit to Hell is hosting yet more vile creatures—and suffering for it. When a captured Hunter, a beauty named Haidee, is brought to the same fortress where Amun resides, they discover that her presence calms the wicked horde within. So, although they’re sworn enemies, these two discover a connection—that swiftly turns passionate. In order to save Amun from his torment, the pair

Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier by Lisa Dale is about facing regrets and righting old wrongs. Thea Celik spent her childhood with the handsome Sorensen boys in Newport, Rhode Island, and married older brother Jonathan, though she’d once loved Garret. Years later, her marriage has fallen apart, but she’s still strongly tied to the Sorensens through her daughter and her love for her former in-laws. Jonathan moves in with bachelor Garret, re-establishing a bond between the two men long missing: When Jonathan and Thea wed years ago, Garret distanced himself from family, claiming that Thea was the wrong woman for his brother . . . without ever admitting his hostility was because he thought she was the right woman for him. As Thea negotiates her new life, old secrets and longings are revealed. Had she played it too safe by marrying the dependable Jonathan? Should she have given up her family business and gone after some other dream?

The questions become more complex once Thea and Garret lay to rest the ghosts of their pasts and other emotions arise. Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier is a tender story that ultimately attests to the power of forgiveness and true love.

Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier

By Lisa Dale Berkley $15, 368 pages ISBN 9780425239957 eBook available

Contemporary

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It Happened One Season

by Stephanie Laurens, Mary Balogh, Jacquie D’Alessaandro and Candice Hern A handsome hero returns from war, battle-scarred and world-weary. But family duty calls and he must find a bride. A young lady facing yet another season without a suitor never expects to find herself the object of his affections. We asked our readers what story they would most like to see and these four bestselling authors responded. The results are spectacular—each story is as unique as a lover’s first kiss.

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11

columns

cooking

lifestyles

by sybil PRATT

b y j o a n n a b r i c h e tt o

Seeing is Believing “What should I make for dinner?” To answer that perpetual quandary, the editors of Food Network Magazine spent 606 hours cooking and consumed 225,000 calories taste-testing. The result, Food Network Magazine Great Easy Meals (Hyperion, $24.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9781401324193), was well worth their effort and will make your everyday dinner efforts a breeze. Every single recipe is served up with a full-color photograph,

Behind the Beauty Biz accent.

Wild Arugula tossed with good olive oil and topped with shaved Parmesan is superbly simple. Mussels are oven-roasted and perked up with red chilies and cilantro.

Perfect risotto, guaranteed if you follow Waxman’s “treasured tips,” is adorned with sweet peas and pea shoots. His version of Spaghetti alla Carbonara, made with only guanciale, egg yolks, olive oil and Parmesan, is velvety perfection. Leg of Lamb Braised for Seven Hours, great for a party, needs only a little tending while it cooks, and Waxman’s Tiramisù is a triumph.

Have a burning beauty question? Odds are, an unexpectedly entertaining cohort of cosmetic scientists has already answered it in Can You Get Hooked on Lip Balm?

(Harlequin, $16.95, 208 pages, ISBN 9780373892341). Compiled by the anonymous creators of TheBeautyBrains.com, a popular beauty blog, the book deftly fields hundreds of consumer questions and concerns—from common to quirky—about beauty prod-

Cookbook of the Month and the standard table of contents is followed by stamp-sized photos of each dish within each chapter.

When you check out the Soups & Stews, you might be taken with the mint-spiked, golden-hued Thai Corn Chowder. Then, when you flip to the recipe, you’ll see suggestions for using any leftover mint in other recipes. If Spinach-Orzo Salad with Shrimp, one-pan Skillet Lasagna or Pork and Fennel Ragoût is right for tonight, you’ll find three ideas for sides right on the recipe pages.

I was really impressed with the 50 nifty 10-Minute Desserts, especially the creamy Peanut Butter-Banana Mousse and the Pears with Chocolate Sauce. Open the book, take a look, then cook.

Italian, California-Style

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Can a boy from Berkeley trained in French haute cuisine, with a “Californian’s penchant for idiosyncratic cooking philosophy,” create earthy Italian food? If that boy is Jonathan Waxman, renowned chefowner of Manhattan’s iconic Italian brasserie Barbuto and star of TV’s “Top Chef Masters,” the answer is a resounding “Sì, certo!” Italian, My Way (Simon & Schuster, $32, 304 pages, ISBN 9781416594314) is Waxman’s take on la cucina Italiana, with over 120 recipes inspired by the dishes he’s created for Barbuto.

A champion of simplicity and a cook with strong opinions, Waxman combines authenticity with innovative flair—Italian with a California

Andrea Reusing’s Cooking in the Moment is the latest entry in the ever-growing genre of cookbooks dedicated to fresh, local, seasonal cooking. Reusing, chef-owner of the award-winning Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a true believer in eating locally, reveling in what’s fresh and fabulous as the year moves through its cycle.

She sees seasonality as a reason to celebrate each season, rather than a limitation. And celebrate she does in 130 recipes that are a mix of childhood favorites, quick-to-make standbys and party favorites for a crowd—as simple as Broiled Ripe Figs with Warm Ricotta and Honey, as sophisticated as Roast Moulard Duck with Kumquats and Saltcured Chilies. Reusing’s charming vignettes put readers in the midst of her moments, from the joys of spring’s first jade-green broccoli, to salt-marinating ripe summer vegetables, to making her grandmother’s savory, snow-day-perfect Pot Roast with Gravy. Her enthusiasm is infectious, her approach, inviting.

Cooking in the Moment

By Andrea Reusing Clarkson Potter $35, 272 pages ISBN 9780307463890

SEASONAL

is aimed at kids nine and older, many adults who fortunately never grew up will find these creatures appealing, especially “crafters, toy collectors, techies and gamers.” Each character is introduced with a backstory or bio, giving it a unique place in an imaginative alternate universe.

The coolest feature is the section of blank templates ready for users to decorate and name. Readers are encouraged to share pictures of finished DIY models with the quickly growing community of papertoy enthusiasts at nicepapertoys.com, the first papertoy social network.

Top Pick For Lifestyles uct claims and safety. They tease fact from fiction (and advertising hype) so we don’t have to. Broad categories (hair, skin, makeup and cosmetic industry) organize specific queries such as: Why does gray hair look and feel different? Why does shampoo stop working? Can saliva cure acne? Is there a difference between hand and face moisturizer?

The book even tackles such oddities as “why armpit hair doesn’t grow down to your knees” and “should you worry about urine in your makeup?” As for the titular question about the allegedly addictive qualities of lip gloss, you’ll find the answer in chapter six. Shop smarter and look and feel better armed with consumer confidence borne of hard science and sharp wit.

Make Your Own Fun Making toys out of paper is officially a craze. Not origami papertoys, which have been popular for hundreds of years, but a new genre that combines influences like origami, kirigami, paper dolls, Uglydolls and Pokémon, all with an exuberant sense of creepiness.

In Papertoy Monsters: 50 Cool Papertoys You Can Make Yourself (Workman, $16.95, 124 pages, ISBN 9780761158820), papertoy pioneer Brian Castleforte and 24 top designers make it easy for anyone to create fabulous fiends. Each colorful, creative design is perforated and ready to pop out, fold and glue: no cutting needed. Although the collection

Now you can have your yard and eat it, too. Garden designer and selfdescribed “plant fiend” Ivette Soler cultivates a compelling case for a garden that’s both decorative and delicious in The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden. Soler argues that the carpet-like turf lawn beloved by most of America is simply not a sustainable model. It hogs labor, fuel and water (and too often, toxic fertilizer and herbicide), and it is boring. Instead, use that front yard sun to grow food, beautifully. Herbs, fruit and vegetables can add texture, color, form and variety to your yard as well as to your dinner. Even corn can have curb appeal! Learn how to assess your site, convert all or just a bit of the lawn, build the bones (hardscape, privacy and irrigation), integrate existing material and select the ornamental edibles that will yield the best design and harvest.

The result is a revolutionary “front yard that is sustainable, beautifully designed, and edible: a modern day victory garden.”

The Edible Front Yard

By Ivette Soler Timber Press $19.95, 216 pages ISBN 9781604691993

Gardening

features

behind the book

by Darien Gee

A recipe gives rise to a novel

I

Faulkners of Mississippi

n 2009, my then-eight-year-old daughter brought home a few slices of Amish Friendship Bread on a paper plate. “It’s so good,” she insisted. Then she pulled out a Ziploc bag of starter and a page (a page!) of instructions. Now if you’ve never seen (or smelled) a bag of fermenting batter, well, let’s just say that it’s something you don’t ever forget.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that this was essentially a culinary chain letter, a “bake and share” routine that grew exponentially as you passed the starter on to not one, but three more people. I could see people running in the opposite direction, a bit like I wanted to do at that moment.

Still, my daughter held the plate in front of me, patient. I broke off a corner of the bread and chewed it slowly. It was good, moist and sweet with a sugar-cinnamon crunch.

Maybe I was having a sugar rush of my own, or maybe it was because I had a few minutes of peace and quiet, but a vision of a woman came into my mind, reluctantly holding up a bag of starter and regarding it with a frown.

She was lovely, and she was sad.

I didn’t know what had happened, just that she was stuck in the dayto-day motions that mimicked life when in fact she hadn’t felt alive in years. I saw her own young daughter, her husband, the home they shared together.

I knew right then that I wanted to find out more. I put the bag of starter in a mixing bowl, the instructions tucked inside, and placed it on the counter. I called to my daughter

Friendship Bread

By Darien Gee, Ballantine, $25, 400 pages ISBN 9780345525345, audio, eBook available

and told her we would be baking Amish Friendship Bread in 10 days.

That night I sat down at my computer, the image of the woman still fresh in my mind. I started writing, and the story of Julia Evarts started unfolding, but still I didn’t know what was going on. Later that night, I saw a quarter flying through the air and landing in the palm of someone’s hand.

That hand belonged to Julia’s sister.

I liked Livvy instantly—her “I started to optimism, her see all the bubbly perconnections, sonality. But I sensed that saw how something had the bread happened between her and was linking Julia, that they people were no longer together in talking though they had once ways that been very, very surprised me.” close. I continued to write, and more central characters started to show up, all with stories of their own—Madeline, a lonely widow who opens a tea salon on a whim; Hannah, a former cello prodigy whose marriage is ending; and Edie, an ambitious journalist who is desperate to make her mark.

I started to see all the connections, saw how the bread was linking people together in ways that surprised me. Characters appeared for only a moment but left an indelible impression.

I filled any available moment, day or night, writing. My husband had read the first few pages and agreed that there was something there. We came up with a schedule that let us juggle the kids, work and writing. I figured the story was either there or it wasn’t, and it was my job to write until it became clear either way.

All this time, my daughter and I were following the instructions

Growing up with the extraordinary

that came with the starter. For 10 days it was the same thing—mash the bag—a task her brothers were more than happy to help with. We added flour, milk and sugar on the sixth and 10th days, and watched the starter bubble up happily. I still have that same starter, almost two years later.

I’ll admit that I was looking forward to baking the bread that first time. There’s something about squeezing the bag for 10 days that has you counting the days until it’s time to bake. When I realized that we wouldn’t have any starter left once we divided the batter and shared it among our friends, I kept a bag for myself. Ten days later, we were baking again.

It continued like this as I wrote the book, sharing the starter with friends and neighbors. I experimented with new Amish Friendship Bread recipes, all the time fortifying myself with the bread that was at the heart of Friendship Bread, my novel.

Amish Friendship Bread is so much more than a simple recipe; it’s about friendship and community, about sharing what you have with others and expressing gratitude for the good things in your life. I’m reminded of this every time I gather with my family in the kitchen, the bowl of Amish Friendship Bread starter on the counter, waiting for our next baking day.

Darien Gee is the author of Friendship Bread and founder of the Friendship Bread Kitchen (friendshipbreadkitchen.com). You can find the full recipe for Amish Friendship Bread at bookpage.com.

“Dean Faulkner Wells has written a memorable family story, full of the intimacies of place and cherished connections, that not incidentally sheds unexpected, humanizing light on her august uncle, William Faulkner.”

—Thomas McGuane “Marvelously evocative, intimate, and deeply moving.”—John Berendt “It is not only charming, poignant, and witty, it is a priceless contribution to America’s rich literary history.”

—Winston Groom, author, Forrest Gump

Also available as an eBook

13

interviews

sara gruen

by Deanna Larson

A BELOVED NOVEL HITS THE SCREEN

T

he bright, infectiously enthusiastic Sara Gruen couldn’t be further from the seedy circus subculture portrayed in Water for Elephants, her blockbuster novel that’s getting the Hollywood treatment in an eagerly anticipated new movie.

The story of Jacob Jankowski, an orphaned veterinary student who runs away with the circus and falls in love with sequined star Marlena, thrums with tension and violence, and odd unexpected moments of kindness and unsentimental love, too. The book’s scope and bittersweet atmosphere made it a natural for a feature film adaptation, and the project landed a top-notch cast, including stars Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson. The movie opens in theaters around the world on April 22.

Water for Elephants, which has sold more than 4 million copies to date, was a surprise hit by a littleknown author when it was first published in 2006. As excitement for the movie builds, sales of the book are skyrocketing once again, with more than 800,000 copies shipped by publisher Algonquin within the last month.

“It was a very visual experience to write,” Gruen says of the novel.

“Strangely, it felt like I was watching a movie. I get to a place where I don’t feel like I’m creating, but recording and capturing it. I’m smelling and hearing all of these things. I feel physically there.”

“My biggest fear as a writer is bor-

ing my readers,” Gruen says. “One of my philosophies as a novelist is to ratchet up the tension wherever possible.”

The story is packed with tension and contrasts, from the central love story of Jacob and the married Marlena and their deep connection with abused circus animals, to the camaraderie of a desperate band of strangers doing dirty and often undignified and difficult circus work.

“It was a very fraught time,” Gruen says of the early 20th-century traveling circuses. Both humans and animals were pushed to their limits to sell more tickets and line the pockets of the circus owners. The story features a pachyderm heroine named Rosie and other nameless and victimized animals that act as a kind of wordless Greek chorus to the events happening under the canvas.

Growing up in Canada, Gruen hadn’t even been to a circus before researching the book, but its details feel utterly authentic, especially the human-animal interactions.

“Animals play such an important role in my real world,” says Gruen, who is active in rescue efforts and lives with horses, dogs, cats and other creatures—along with her husband and children—in North

Author Sara Gruen meets elephant cast member Tai on the set of Water for Elephants.

14

Carolina. “If I’m going to spend eight hours a day in a fictional world, I would like to have an animal there as well.”

Despite the sometimes ugly history of circus animals, Gruen made sure that their filmic counterparts were treated well when she signed the movie contract. A stampede and other crucial scenes were produced with a green screen in the film, Gruen says, and she made sure that American Humane Society guidelines were followed on set. She insisted that no apes were used, since they suffer the most from being used in the entertainment industry, according to Gruen (whose most recent novel, Ape House, portrays a fictional ape laboratory).

Gruen and her entire family have cameos in the movie. Her big moment comes when Robert Pattinson (as Jacob) brushes past her during a tense scene with a runaway circus animal. “I’m the astonished woman watching an elephant [Rosie] steal produce!” she says.

Grateful for her “once in a lifetime experience” of spending a few days on a Hollywood set, Gruen was also “absolutely blown away” by the “fabulous” script for the film,

by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard LaGravenese.

“He combined a few scenes and combined a few characters and it works,” Gruen says. “There are places where it veers away from the book, but then it comes back. I’m really excited to see it.”

The filmmakers invited Gruen to see the tents of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth set at the end of the production.

“When we drove up over the berm, and there was the Benzini Brothers, I was speechless,” she says. “I still

can’t really describe it—just knowing that it was all in my head five years ago . . . it was amazing.”

Gruen and her family are attending the film premiere April 17 in New York City. “Nobody’s going to be looking at the author, but I’ll be there,” she says. “My husband threatens to wear a 20-year-old suit, my oldest son wants to wear a gorilla suit, but me—I want to look glamorous.”

Gruen will have to gear up for the additional wave of popularity that the film will no doubt bring.

“It’s still sinking in,” she says of her runaway bestseller, a favorite of book clubs across the country. “I am absolutely flabbergasted. I have no idea why it resonated the way it did.”

For a writer who estimated the chance of getting published at two percent but got a phenomenon instead, this traveling literary circus shows no sign of pulling up stakes and leaving the station any time soon.

water for elephants

By Sara Gruen, Algonquin, $7.99, 464 pages ISBN 9781616200718, audio, eBook available

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A riveting depiction of Southern life in the throes of segregation, and the impact it makes on a young girl’s journey to adulthood… and the woman who means the world to her.

interviews

FRANCISCO GOLDMAN

by Alden Mudge

A NNA JEAN M AYHEW Mourning a wife, gone too soon

U

“Beautifully written...a real page-turner.”

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FOR CONTESTS, GIVEAWAYS, AND MORE VISIT KENSINGTONBOOKS.COM

ntil very recently, Francisco Goldman’s Brooklyn apartment was as he describes it in his deeply moving novel, Say Her Name.

His late wife’s wedding dress hung from a clothes hanger and butcher’s twine in front of the bedroom mirror. Below that was an altar composed of her belongings.

And at the foot of the altar, Goldman writes, were “her shiny mod black-and-white-striped rubber rain boots with hot pink soles.”

Goldman’s wife, Aura Estrada, died in a body-surfing accident in Mexico on July 25, 2007. A talented writer and literary scholar, she was 20 years younger than Goldman and had just turned 30. The couple had been married “26 days shy of two years.” Say Her Name is Goldman’s expression of his love for Aura and his devastating guilt and grief over her death.

“Grief is very trippy,” Goldman says. “I say trippy, but I don’t mean it’s fun. You can’t believe the dreams you have. You’ll never dream like that ever again in your life. You hallucinate. You’re out of your mind.

You know what’s happening and you try to understand it. And you can’t believe how bad you feel. It is not fun, but it is riveting.”

“Riveting” is also a very good description of Goldman’s book. The narrative opens a year and a half after Aura’s death. “That’s when I really did have what the shrinks call complicated grief and post-traumatic stress and minor psychotic episodes,” Goldman says. In writing about this period, he says he “didn’t mind saying shocking things. I wanted to be brutally honest in this book and not pretty anything up.”

But if Say Her Name were merely an account of Goldman’s grief and his occasional grief-induced bad behavior, the book would not be as large-hearted as it turns out to be. Drawing on Aura’s childhood diaries, Goldman sets out to explore how she became who she was—and how he became who he was.

“Those diaries awoke another kind of love in me, almost a parent’s love,” Goldman says. “In part I was trying to understand what drew us together. How did I get to be this way and how did she get to be that way? We both had difficult childhoods in different ways. I was sort of a hard-shelled boy and didn’t take it as much to heart. She was just so enmeshed with her mother, and she struggled against it.”

After Aura’s death, her mother blamed Goldman for the accident.

She withheld Aura’s ashes. She kicked him out of the apartment Aura owned in Mexico City. She hinted at prosecution. Goldman relates all this yet still remains respectful of Aura’s mother.

“Because I love Aura, I have to love this part of her,” Goldman explains. “It was a dangerous thing for me, that whole conflict. There were times, as I say in the book, when I felt angry at all the room it took up in my mourning. But in order to make my peace with Aura’s death— not that there will ever be full peace, but to integrate it into myself in the right way—I had to be able to honor her love for her mother, because that was such a central narrative in

her life.”

“It was easy for me to write about how much I loved Aura, but it was a real leap to see how Aura saw her mom. One of the most important elements of fiction writing—or even nonfiction writing—is the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and see the world from a perspective unlike yours.”

So is this fiction or nonfiction?

“We don’t ask a poem whether it’s a fictional poem or a nonfictional poem,” Goldman says. “And I think this book works like a poem. There are many reasons it’s a novel, the most basic being that some things are made up. I always had the idea that at the end my book would kind of merge and disappear into the novel [Aura was working on]. That’s not quite what happens, but it makes that gesture in a big way.”

And in giving Aura’s imagination—as well as her impish humor, her anxieties, her academic and creative struggles, her writing, her love—room to play, Goldman, remarkably, vividly, brings her to life.

“She was the funniest person I ever met,” Goldman says. “She had such a quick mind, a quick wit. You could not win an argument with her. This book was most of all a way of keeping close to Aura.”

Goldman says he was meditating on her death one day when it struck him that “the biggest fear of the dying is to be forgotten. And the biggest fear of someone who has loved a dead person is to forget that person. Time erases everything but it can’t erase a person’s name. Your name is always your name.”

With Say Her Name, Goldman ensures that readers will always remember Aura Estrada’s name.

Say Her Name

By Francisco Goldman, Grove, $24, 288 pages ISBN 9780802119810, eBook available

meet PHILIP KERR

the title of your new Q: What’s

book?

N OW I N PAPE R BAC K the New York Times Bestseller

“Get ready to laugh and cry.”

would you describe Q: How

the book?

—KATHRYN STOCKETT, author of The Help

Q:

If you could take any one characteristic of protagonist Bernie Gunther for yourself, what would it be?

B can tell a lot by looking at someone’s shoes. What do Q: your ernieshoes say about you?

Q: If you could live in any decade, which would it be and why?

s besTseller New York Time

D o r o t h ea Benton F r an k L ow c o u nt r y S u m mer

Q: W hat are three things you can’t live without? n d c r y .” P to la u g h a el “G e t re a doyc k e T T , a u t h o r o f T h e h

—k aThr

Q: What would you like to be remembered for as a writer?

YN sT

Available in trade paperback, mass market, and e-book.

“Lovable... laugh-out-loud.”

—CASSANDRA KING, author of Queen of Broken Hearts

“Sexy and hilarious.”

Q: W ords to live by?

—PAT CONROY, author of South of Broad

“A delightful summer read.”

—Denver Post

FIELD GRAY

Philip Kerr is an award-winning British suspense writer whose books have been compared to the works of Raymond Chandler, John le Carré and Graham Greene. His latest thriller is the seventh in the Berlin-based Bernie Gunther series, Field Gray (Putnam, $26.95, 448 pages, ISBN 9780399157417). Read our review in this month’s Whodunit column.

And look for Folly Beach.

Coming soon in hardcover.

Find Dot on Facebook

www.dotfrank.com An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers www.harpercollins.com

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Discover

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baseball

By John C. Williams

Baseball’s original sins

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he towering baseball book of the season is a revisionist treatment of the sport’s earliest days, while two other titles suggest the continuing relevance of this past to baseball’s present.

Invention vs. evolution After three decades of research, John Thorn has published a major history on the sport’s origins, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (Simon & Schuster, $26, 384 pages, ISBN 9780743294034). It has long been known that Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball, as was once claimed. Now we learn that Doubleday’s more believable replacement, Alexander Cartwright, didn’t have that much to do with it either. Cartwright played on the Knickerbocker club that is routinely credited with staging the first modern baseball game in 1845; but Thorn argues that his role has been overstated, much to the neglect of other Knickerbockers who helped develop the rules. Thorn’s overall point is that no one “invented” the game of baseball; rather, it evolved over a long period of time. By insisting that baseball has one father, we have forgotten all its grandfathers, most fascinatingly in the Massachusetts version, where the field was 360 degrees and there was no such thing as foul ground.

In support of leisure In light of Thorn’s history, it is interesting to read the perspective of a much later commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, in the reissue of 1989’s Take Time For Paradise (Bloomsbury, $15, 128 pages, ISBN 9781608192243). This slim volume is best described as an academic meditation on leisure (albeit with baseball as Exhibit A): Aristotle, Shakespeare and Milton are cited, but there’s not one mention of any particular player. Giamatti’s particular focus is on baseball’s communal nature, though he does attempt to grapple with technological change and the way it atomizes spectators. Gambling, which so concerned early baseball owners, is not mentioned at all—strange,

perhaps, considering that Giamatti was the man who agreed to banish Pete Rose. He is more concerned here with cheating, which he considers to threaten the integrity of the game. Giamatti died suddenly in 1989, so he did not live to see the era of rampant steroid use.

One wonders how he would have dealt with the issue considering his strong words here.

The business of baseball Way back in the deadball days, owners owned multiple clubs and cannibalized the rosters to create one super team and multiple ane-

mic ones. This had a way of depriving the fans of competitive baseball. In The Extra 2% (ESPN, $26, 272 pages, ISBN 9780345517654), Jonah Keri introduces us to Vincent Naimoli, the original owner of the Tampa Bay Rays, who achieved the same result, but in a more modern fashion: He squandered money on overrated talent. Naimoli managed to gain even more detractors by instituting policies seemingly intended to alienate fans. Enter a new team of Wall Street wunderkinds, who used a rebranding effort to change the club’s image, fan-friendly policies to put people in the seats and new statistical metrics to put a winning squad on the field. Voila— the Rays became AL champs. This book will inevitably be compared to Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, but it imparts a broader sense of what it takes to run a successful sports franchise, off the field as well as on.

The Extra 2% provides an entertaining case study, and an interesting vantage point from which to consider baseball’s business past.

christian living

By Howard Shirley

Easter reflections on faith

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he number three is a common element in the Christian faith: the Holy Trinity, the three crosses at Calvary and, of course, the three days of the Easter story. So perhaps it is appropriate that this Easter season, we take a look at three new Christian books— one a study in tradition, one a challenge to seek the truth and the last a search for love.

400 years of tradition Verily, Verily: The KJV—400 Years of Influence and Beauty (Zondervan, $18.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9780310320258) examines possibly the most traditional part of the American church—the venerable King James Bible. Written by Jon M. Sweeney, Verily, Verily begins with a fascinating history of the translation, revealing how it was motivated by politics as much as by faith, begun in large part to establish King

James I’s authority over the English state and church. And far from the “infallible” status attached to it in 19th-century America, Sweeney shares how the KJV was revised and corrected several times during the first 200 years of its existence, partly due to typos but also due to errors in translation and changing word meanings. (Sweeney includes a helpful glossary of obscure words that have challenged understanding of the translation even from the early days.) Sweeney’s work is not a criticism, but rather a loving

homage, acknowledging both the translation’s flaws (some unintentionally humorous) and its soaring beauty, as both poetry and inspiration. Written with an easy, readable style, Verily, Verily is an enjoyable journey through a glorious tradition.

Christ saying and doing something far deeper than simply providing a free pass into an eternal country club?

Gently written, yet fundamentally provocative, Bell’s book seeks to break free from a cookie-cutter faith into a more intimate understanding of who Christ is and what He offers to the world. More than anything, Love Wins is a refreshing and liberating call to connect with a God who truly is love—love without limits.

One woman’s journey The search for God’s love is also at the heart of Naomi Zacharias’ haunting memoir of discovery and faith, The Scent of Water: Discovering What Remains (Zondervan, $16.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9780310327370). Her deeply personal account moves back and forth from a time of personal loss, interwoven with stories from her ministry with at-risk women and children around the world. In language that is both beautiful and brutally honest, Zacharias exposes

the harsh reality and almost unspeakable pain that runs through the dark corners of the world: prostitution, sex slavery, physical abuse, corrupt courts and cultural extremes that treat women as property and children as expendable. Yet even as she reveals these horrors, and struggles with her own inner revulsion, Zacharias shares moments of great hope, sprung from the compassion of a real and loving God—a compassion that she finds she needs as much as the victims she works to help.

Her words tear at the heart and illuminate the soul, and challenge Christians everywhere to look past the surface things that repel us, to see the souls underneath— souls loved by God as equally as our own, souls who need to be reminded not of their flaws but rather of their beauty. In a world where “ministry” most often seems to mean throwing words at others, Zacharias demonstrates the power of listening, loving and working without judgment or expectation—the true compassion of Christ.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Asking life’s big questions Even tradition can be a trap, if one does not examine it. In his first book, Velvet Elvis, pastor Rob Bell challenged conventional evangelical approaches to Christianity, pointing out how traditional attitudes often get in the way of truly following Christ. He returns to that theme in Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne, $22.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9780062049643), tackling assumptions and interpretations that are more a product of culture than of the words and actions of Jesus.

Bell combines probing, Socratic questions with an examination of what Scripture really says about Heaven, Hell, the soul, judgment, righteousness, mercy and love. Do our traditional views reflect the reality of what Jesus taught? Or was

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ome people don’t believe that April should be devoted to rejoicing in ars poeticae. An early advocate of National Poetry Month, the late poet William Matthews, disagreed. Furthermore, he reminded practitioners that “the work of the body becomes a body of work.” Nothing of poets lives on except their lines.

Memorable lines are bewilderingly ubiquitous in FSG’s centennial birthday gift of Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems ($16, 368 pages, ISBN 9780374532369). Enough has been written about this extraordinary writer to hide her entire adopted country of Brazil from the map, but who mentions Bishop’s wonderful sense of humor? Consider one of the gem-like mottos in “Songs for a Colored Singer,” i.e. Billy Holiday: “I’m going to go and take the bus / and find someone monogamous.”

Like Matthews and Bishop, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins recognizes the value of humor, music and sensuous pleasures, all fleeting, but none more so than that which springs from writing itself. Collins’ poems often close on a down note, making the rest of the poem resonate in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible; and his most recent book, Horoscopes for the Dead (Random House, $24, 128 pages, ISBN 9781400064922), contains a microcosmic example.

Reflecting on the “little time nearly every day” spent “on a gray wooden dock,” Collins concludes with the disappearance of nearly everything, not to mention himself: “gone are my notebook and my pencil / and there I go, too, / erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.”

Another important event this month is the publication of Robert Pinsky’s Selected Poems (FSG, $26, 224 pages, ISBN 9780374258603).

Previous National Poetry Month columns enumerated his many and

varied efforts on behalf of poetry not his own, so the very appearance of this carefully honed volume shines all the more brightly. In one of the entries, “Gulf Music,” Pinsky has written arguably the best poem about Katrina by choosing instead the 1900 Galveston hurricane as his subject. No one even knows the precise number of people who lost their lives in that unnamed horror, and the disjunctions of “Gulf Music” mirror perfectly its anonymous chaos and clashes: “After so much renunciation / And invention, is this the image of the promised end? / All music haunted by the music of the dead forever.”

The latest work from Major Jackson, Holding Company (Norton, $24.95, 91 pages, ISBN 9780393070804), possesses a treasure of notable poems and qualities.

The collection is composed of strict 10-line curtal sonnets. Pre-empted by another reviewer in terming these poems “dark” and “wrenching,” I’d venture much further: Holding Company is the best book of Jackson’s career, combining lyricism and wide-ranging intellect not unlike Pinsky’s with something all his own. Lines nearly vibrate off any page in Holding Company—think of the levels of meaning contained in the title itself—but here are four particularly riveting ones: “Sartre said: man is condemned to be free. / I believe in the dead who claim to believe in me— / says, too, the missing and forgotten. Day darkens / on. I hear our prayers rising. I sing to you now.” Sing amen, somebody.

reviews The Uncoupling

FICTION

Bewitched in the bedroom Review by Megan Fishmann

At Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Stellar Plains, New Jersey, not much seems out of the ordinary one long winter. Rob and Dory Lang— married English teachers—manage to keep the spark alive in and out of the bedroom after 20 years of marriage. Their 16-year-old daughter Willa spends most of her time as an avatar online, as most teens in their community tend to do. The principal is having a quiet affair with the beautiful—yet hardly monogamous—guidance counselor. Everything remains relatively routine—until the arrival of the new drama teacher. And it is with her decision to put on the classic Aristophanes play Lysistrata (in which the women of Greece go on a sex strike in order to stop a war) that everything in Stellar Plains changes.

In Meg Wolitzer’s The Uncoupling, the introduction of a classical text where women deny men sexual pleasure sets in motion a “spell” erasBy Meg Wolitzer, Riverhead, $25.95, 288 pages ing all desire from the local townswomen (including the teens). In this ISBN 9781594487880, audio, eBook available fascinating scenario, Wolitzer displays what happens to couples and their sex lives as this mystic force takes hold of the once relatively happy town.

We watch as the Langs’ marriage turns from one of affection into bitterness, where sex is replaced by food and The Cumfy (a take on the Snuggie). We watch as Willa—who previously had her first sexual experience with the theater teacher’s son—is gripped with fear that a long-distance relationship in college will never survive. We watch the principal’s wife enter the picture, shaming the guidance counselor. All across town, the spell weaves its way into the bedrooms and hearts of women.

Wolitzer—perhaps best known for her novel The Ten Year Nap—masterfully charts the peaks and falls of desire that naturally come with age. Brutally honest, and incredibly surreal, Wolitzer is able to perfectly tap into the female psyche by displaying to male and female readers alike what actually happens when the lights go off and the covers are turned down.

THE FREE WORLD

By David Bezmozgis FSG $26, 368 pages ISBN 9780374281403 eBook available

literary fiction

With his first novel, a story of dislocation and yearning for both the old and the new, David Bezmozgis fulfills the promise he displayed in his 2005 collection, Natasha and Other Stories, and joins the growing list of talented young writers like Gary Shteyngart and Lara Vapynar portraying the experience of Jewish emigration from the former Soviet Union.

Set in 1978, just as the first wave of departures was about to crest, The Free World tells the story of five months in the lives of three generations of the Krasnanskys, of Riga, Latvia, as they await their relocation from Rome to a new

permanent home. The patriarch, Samuil, is an imperious former bureaucrat and World War II veteran of the Red Army who resents the circumstances that brought about the family’s departure, while his sons, Karl and Alec, quickly adapt themselves to the vagaries of Western capitalism, sometimes in less than savory ways. Despite their Jewish heritage, none of the Krasnanskys is motivated by a passion for their religion or its culture, and the notion of settling in Israel is unthinkable to them.

What Bezmozgis, himself a Latvian emigrant to Canada at age six, captures best is the sense of rootlessness that afflicts the Krasnanskys, each in unique ways. Samuil dwells on memories of his brother, killed in the war, while Alec’s wife Polina carries on a moving correspondence with her sister, who has remained behind. In Rome, they and the rest of the family join the mass of immigrants passing interminable hours in overheated waiting rooms at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or waiting for their turn at the pay phone to call

North American relatives they hope will extend the invitation that will pave the way for an early departure from their Italian limbo.

Though one of his characters dismisses the Krasnanskys’ lot as the search to find “a happier miserable,” Bezmozgis understands that the yearning for freedom is a universal human desire. In his portrayal of one unremarkable, but decidedly sympathetic family, he’s produced an appealing portrait of that longing.

—Harvey Freedenberg

the love of my youth

By Mary Gordon Pantheon $25.95, 320 pages ISBN 9780307377425 eBook available

literary fiction

Those of us who are of a certain age sometimes find ourselves

wondering, “Am I still the person I once was?” Nothing can bring this question to mind more quickly than seeing a friend from the past.

This question—and the issues that result—are examined beautifully in Mary Gordon’s seventh novel, The Love of My Youth, in which childhood sweethearts meet again after more than 30 years and immerse themselves in discussing a shared past.

Miranda and Adam are both in Rome, brought there by family and business obligations. Both are in their late 50s, happily married, with grown children. Once a gifted pianist, Adam attended conservatory and now teaches music at a small college. Miranda, whose politics and social conscience were profoundly affected by the Vietnam War and the women’s movement, pursued a career in epidemiology.

Rome holds passionate memories for both of them, since they lived there together briefly after college.

Their reunion, at the apartment of a mutual friend, is awkward, but they are intrigued enough to meet again and plan a series of daily walks. As they take in the city’s glorious museums, parks and restaurants, they find they still have much to share.

Aspirations, dreams and disappointments are cautiously revealed.

Miranda and Adam’s early romance, love affair and painful breakup are examined in three flashbacks that detail the intimacies of their relationship and masterfully capture the tumultuous social changes of the 1960s and ’70s.

Each of them guards a long-held interpretation of what led to their breakup, as well as feelings of guilt and remorse. Meeting again forces them to re-examine the past and take steps on the path to accepting themselves as they once were.

Gordon’s novels often feature personal dramas set against a backdrop of political or religious change. She is sensitive to the subtlest differences of class and religion, and the most satisfying aspects of The Love of My Youth are Gordon’s interpretations of how the differences in Adam and Miranda’s backgrounds impact their relationship. The novel is also filled with small resonating details, from the architectural beauties of urban Rome to Adam and Miranda’s anxious glimpses of their aging bodies in front of hotel mirrors. The Love of My Youth is as much about how we feel about our

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reviews past and the choices we made and make, as it is about the love story between two young people.

—lauren bufferd

NIGHT ROAD

By Kristin Hannah St. Martin’s $27.99, 400 pages ISBN 9780312364427 Audio, eBook available

fiction

In Night Road, best-selling author and book club favorite Kristin Hannah gives us a tale of two families, closely linked though opposite in many ways, suddenly torn apart by one heartbreaking mistake.

By the time Lexi Baill is 14—her father disappeared, her mother a drug addict—she has lived in seven different foster homes and gone to

“Brilliant…Jance…has crafted a mystery that Hillerman would be proud of and that her fans will love.”

—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

FICTION six different schools. Kids like her, she knows, are “returnable, like old soda bottles and shoes that pinched your toes.” She’s finally adopted by her grandmother’s sister Eva, who lives in Port George, Washington, where Lexi starts high school.

Also starting high school are Mia and Zach Farraday, twins from a wealthy family on nearby Pine Island. Their mother Jude is the quintessential overbearing, overprotective mother—and she would do anything for them. So when Mia, who is shy and not nearly as popular as the good-looking, athletic Zach, becomes friends with Lexi, Jude opens up her home to her as if Lexi were her third child.

Even in their senior year, when Zach and Lexi realize they have fallen in love, the three remain as close as ever, Zach devoted to his sister, and Mia and Lexi the best of friends. Then college decisions loom over them—Mia wants desperately to attend USC and for Zach to come with her, but Lexi is only able to afford the local city college.

Zach is torn, but his impending separation from Lexi becomes trivial following a tragic accident as the three return from a graduation party, and the lives of all are changed forever.

Hannah keeps her readers totally engaged throughout this moving novel, which shifts from a story of young love to an exploration of Jude’s grief, guilt and rage—and ultimately her ability to forgive what happened long ago on Night Road.

—Deb Donovan

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG

By Kate Atkinson Reagan Arthur $24.99, 400 pages ISBN 9780316066730 Audio, eBook available

mystery NOW IN PAPERBACK

Brodie, at this point a somewhat reluctant sleuth, he has returned to his hometown to track down a client’s birth family, only to discover that she is connected to a 30-yearold murder.

His best lead is retired Leeds cop Tracy Waterhouse, a woman who is so lonely that she dreads the day the Polish builder completes work on her kitchen remodel. Maybe that’s why she impulsively gives her home improvement nest egg to a known prostitute and drug dealer— in exchange for a small child called Courtney, whom she assumes is the hooker’s daughter. Tracy soon discovers this is not the case, and that there are others besides Brodie who are on her trail. Discovering why, and how, the two cases are connected is for the reader to discover, but as usual it’s an intricate web.

There are some lighter moments for the brooding Brodie this time around. Most of these feature “The Ambassador,” an abused terrier Brodie rescues in a park whose fierce loyalty and simple love is a welcome change from the complicated relationships with the women in his life. And there’s another P.I. in town named Jackson—but is he friend, or foe?

Overall, though, the mood here is dark and contemplative, not unlike that of her now-iconic hero.

Atkinson continues to explore the ramifications of violence, especially violence directed at women and children. Her work does not portray a cozy fictional world; rather, it shines a light on the harsh side of this one. Started Early, Took My Dog is a satisfying treat for fans of intelligent mystery.

—T r i s h a P i n g

THE PEACH KEEPER

By Sarah Addison Allen Bantam $25, 288 pages ISBN 9780553807226 eBook available

fiction

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Kate Atkinson’s Started Early, Took My Dog opens with an epigraph from the old rhyme “For want of a nail,” an adage that exemplifies the attention to the large consequences of small actions that has become the hallmark of Atkinson’s richly woven literary mysteries.

In the fourth outing for Jackson

Willa Jackson may have moved back home to Walls of Water, North Carolina, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be there. She handily isolates herself running a shop

along the touristy strip of town that specializes in organic sportswear.

In her neatly arranged (and boring) life, Willa hardly has to see any of the girls she went to high school with, including most especially Paxton Osgood, a rich do-gooder whose uppity fakeness and manicured nails set Willa’s teeth on edge.

Unfortunately for Willa—but fortunately for readers—her past refuses to stay tucked away. The renovation of an old mansion, the Blue Ridge Madam, causes Willa’s and Paxton’s paths to cross at last.

In a twist too zany to be believed outside of the genre of Southern fiction, the women’s grandmothers were the dearest of friends and harbor a horrible secret, which has remained hidden beneath the peach tree in the garden: It’s the body of a dead man, and the two old women know how it got there. As the young protagonists unfold the mystery, they are offered a chance at friendship that neither realized they needed. Along the way they become entangled in new romances and create a few secret-worthy stories of their own.

Sometimes you just get a hankering for a novel that lets you kick up your feet, pour a glass of peachflavored iced tea and relax. Sarah Addison Allen’s The Peach Keeper is just such a read. Funny characters, great storytelling and winsome humor make this book feel like a vacation between two covers.

— K e l l y B l e w e tt

THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT

By Louis Bayard Holt $25, 320 pages ISBN 9780805090697 eBook available

Literary thriller

When disgraced Elizabethan scholar Henry Cavendish becomes executor of his friend Alonzo Wax’s estate, he thinks his biggest problem will be paying off his impractical friend’s debts and cataloguing his vast collection of manuscripts and books. But instead, Henry is approached by an antiquarian with a sinister reputation who’s searching for the other half of a fragmented

FICTION letter, from Sir Walter Raleigh to his lesser-known friend, scientist Thomas Hariot. Bernard Styles is certain that Wax had the letter—and that it’s the key to the mystery of the School of Night, a group of scholars that is said to have included the likes of Marlowe and Shakespeare, in addition to Hariot and Raleigh.

Despite some doubts, Henry agrees—Styles is offering a lot of money, after all—but after Wax’s vault is robbed and a close friend is murdered, Henry starts to rethink his commitment to sharing the letter with Styles and decides to uncover its secrets himself. He meets a mysterious woman, Clarissa Dale, who has a special interest in the School of Night, and together the two set out to solve the mystery.

The story of their quest alternates with the 17th-century tale of Hariot himself, a man of science whose isolation is breached by a maid whose mind is a match for his own.

In The School of Night, author Louis Bayard makes a slight departure from distinctive histori-

cal mysteries like The Black Tower and The Pale Blue Eye (which has just been optioned for film) toward the post-Da Vinci Code genre of past-meets-present thrillers with a literary angle. He makes the change adroitly—both storylines are neatly paced, with intriguing plot twists that keep the pages turning. Fans of authors like Matthew Pearl and Rebecca Stott shouldn’t miss Bayard’s latest offering.

—T r i s h a P i n g

THE SILVER BOAT

By Luanne Rice Pamela Dorman $25.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780670022502 eBook available

fiction

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote “you can’t go home again,” but the

McCarthy sisters in Luanne Rice’s newest novel, The Silver Boat, learn that not only can you, but sometimes you must in order to truly find yourself.

After years of avoidance, sisters Dar, Delia and Rory meet up once more at their family’s beach house in Martha’s Vineyard in order to make peace with their past before finally putting up for sale the one place where they’ve ever felt truly happy. Returning to the scene of their childhood antics brings the disparity between the women they now are and the girls they once were into sharp focus for all three sisters, forcing them to question the choices they’ve made and the lives they are living.

As they divvy up the assets and furniture in the house, Dar, Delia and Rory come across old letters that dredge up memories—as well as provocative questions—about their grandmother, mother and Irish-born father. To discover the truth that lies in these old missives, the sisters set off for Ireland, where

their ancestral roots run deep, hoping that they might finally come to terms with what it means to be a family.

With 26 bona fide hits to her name, New York Times bestseller Rice hardly needs another in order to prove her mettle as an author, yet The Silver Boat shows she is not resting on her laurels. Plumbing the depths of sisterhood, family and loss, Rice has crafted an emotional opus centering on three dynamic, engaging and resilient women.

Rice’s writing effortlessly conveys the way family can bind as well as buoy us, reminding us that when the sea of life gets too choppy, by setting our prows toward the places that made us, we will find a safe harbor.

The Silver Boat is another winner from one of America’s most beloved authors.

— St e p h e n i e H a r r i s o n

Read more reviews at BookPage.com

BRUNONIA BARRY’S Mesmerizing Novel Now in Paperback

After a childhood of trouble, Zee Finch has her life in order: she’s one of the most respected psychotherapists in Boston and about to marry the ideal man. But the shocking death of Zee’s most troubled patient brings to the surface secrets in Zee’s own life, and she’s finally forced to confront the truth behind her mother’s death and the unfinished story she left behind.

“Masterfully woven with a cast of unforgettable characters set loose in a world so specific and real…a gripping quest for truth that kept me reading at the edge of my seat to the very last page.” —Lisa Genova, New York Times Bestselling author of Still Alice “Like her hit debut The Lace Reader, Barry’s second novel features an involving, intricately woven story and vivid descriptions of historic Salem.”—Booklist Follow Brunonia on Twitter: @BrunoniaBarry Become a Fan on Facebook: Brunonia Barry

www.themapoftrueplaces.com

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q&a

ANNA JEAN MAYHEW

southern discomfort

W

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You grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. Did you draw on any specific personal experiences when writing The Dry Grass of August ?

Yes. My sister and I attended the Daddy Grace Parade with a woman who was working for our family at that time. And, as in my novel, on the bus downtown, my sister and I rode in front and the woman who worked for my family rode in back. I went to Myers Park High School and was in the marching band. I swam at Charlotte Municipal Pool, and I grew up on Queens Road West in a house within walking distance of Freedom Park. The major facts of the book are pure fiction, but some experiences were too good not to use.

This novel took you 18 years to complete. What was it like dedicating yourself to a creative project for such an extensive period of time?

The book was never out of my mind for long. I was working full time—for some years more than full time—but I stuck with it, developed my style, became a better writer. I was obsessed with accuracy. I began my novel before there was public access to the Internet, and my early research slowed me down; I did it via books, magazines from the 1950s, encyclopedia yearbooks for 1954, etc.

Were there any other pieces of writing that you drew inspiration from?

I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird so many times that before I submitted my book for publication, I had to double-check to be sure I hadn’t inadvertently plagiarized anything. I’ve read extensively from Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Ernest J. Gaines, Josephine Humphreys, Lewis Nordan, Truman Capote, Lee Smith, Zora Neale Hurston and Flannery O’Connor. I’m glad I finished the first complete draft of my book by the time other books came out that dealt with blacks and whites in the South

© Kent Murray

ith a debut novel that’s being compared to the best in Southern literature, author Anna Jean Mayhew tells us how her own experiences have influenced her fiction.

on the cusp of the civil rights movement.

Obviously the issue of race is still one that is deeply felt across the United States; what made you decide to focus on the 1950s when it came to telling this story?

Brown v. Board of Education— the single most important civil rights case of the 20th century— was decided unanimously for the plaintiffs on May 17, 1954, ending the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Emmett Till was murdered in August of 1955, and the Montgomery bus boycott started in early December. Before all these events, there was an attitude among many Southern whites that they were superior and blacks were inferior. I tried to show how jeopardized that frame of mind was by the effect of Brown v. Board.

Jubie is only 13 years old, a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

How did you manage to so authentically capture the voice of someone who is so young?

It’s been a long time, but I once was a 13-year-old girl. Early in the writing of the novel Jubie’s voice was not consistent, and that kept coming up in critiques.

So I made it a point to be around adolescent girls as much as possible. Your question gets it precisely right: “on the cusp of womanhood.” Maybe subconsciously that’s why I chose that age, with my recollections of a confusing mix of knowledge— becoming aware that life’s not fair—and helplessness: the inability to really change things.

What is the best advice you can give to aspiring writers?

Write.

reviews THE DRY GRASS OF AUGUST

By Anna Jean Mayhew Kensington $15, 352 pages ISBN 9780758254092 eBook available

debut fiction

When a new novel gets compared to some of the biggest hits of the last 10 years like The Help and The Secret Life of Bees, its author has some awfully big shoes to fill. Throw in comparisons to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and the stakes are raised so high that readers may be skeptical that any book could be so good. Reading is believing, however, and once you’ve experienced The Dry Grass of August, you’ll swiftly see that Anna Jean Mayhew’s debut novel deserves all the early praise it’s getting.

The Dry Grass of August tells the story of Jubie Watts, who gains wisdom beyond her 13 years of life during the summer of 1954. Along with their colored maid Mary, the Watts family takes a road trip down to Florida, looking for the chance to escape from the pressures of dayto-day life in North Carolina. Alas, as the trip progresses, it gets harder to ignore the color of Mary’s skin.

In the wake of a violent and hateful crime, Jubie is exposed to injustice and intolerance of which she had been blissfully unaware, and hairline cracks in the Watts family shatter open, bringing shameful secrets to light. For Jubie, nothing will ever be easy again, and she learns that growing up means seeing the world beyond basic black and white.

If the best authors are the ones who write what they know, then Mayhew clearly used her own experiences to great advantage. A lifelong native of North Carolina, Mayhew spent her girlhood in Charlotte during the 1950s and witnessed firsthand the upheaval and conflict of racial segregation and integration. Jubie’s story thrums with a provocative authenticity, and even the most stolid reader is sure to respond to this heartbreaking tale of lost innocence. Although revisiting such a fraught yet recent moment in U.S. history produces moments of discomfort and pain,

FICTION the power, bravery and beauty of Mayhew’s narrative is beyond contestation and well-deserving of a wide readership.

—Stephenie Harrison

SWIM BACK TO ME

By Ann Packer Knopf $24.95, 240 pages ISBN 9781400044047 Audio, eBook available

Short stories

In her previous best-selling novels, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words, Ann Packer proved her agility at inhabiting people who live through unspeakable events: What happens when a restless young woman’s fiancé becomes a quadriplegic on a fun day at the lake? What happens when a model mom’s kids are her life, and then her daughter attempts suicide? These are complicated scenarios without easy resolution, but Packer’s characters are fully developed with emotions that feel authentic.

The stories in Swim Back to Me, Packer’s new collection, are equally powerful. They focus on situations that make us uncomfortable to varying degrees—from the disorienting feeling of misjudging a co-worker, to the adolescent recognition of being ditched by a friend, to the excruciating pain of losing a child.

Packer conveys the dark pleasure of a grieving mom lashing out at the woman inadvertently responsible for her son’s death—and how daring this act feels. (“Blood sloshed around inside Kathryn’s head. The skin around her mouth tingled.

Time passed, a second or a minute or ten.”) She captures the precipice between the expectant joy and wariness of a first-time dad. She tracks the jarring sensation of a teen recognizing that a friend’s parent, and his own parents, have flaws.

Those disappointed that Packer chose to publish stories instead of another novel needn’t worry: The narratives in Swim Back to Me add up to a satisfying whole that will linger in the mind.

—Eliza Borné

reviews

NONFICTION FIRE SEASON

The Wilder Life

Revisiting a childhood classic Review by Amy Scribner

I still remember when my elementary school librarian pointed out that the Little House series was shelved in the fiction section. It blew my 10-year-old mind. Did that mean that Laura Ingalls Wilder—whose braids and spunk I spent the better part of my childhood emulating—hadn’t really almost starved during the long winter, or fought with nasty Nellie Oleson, or fallen in love with Almanzo?

The answer is complicated, as Wendy McClure discovers in The Wilder Life, her sweetly obsessive quest to find what she calls Laura World. After the death of her mother, McClure finds herself picking up the series that so captivated her as a child, and that captures the essence of what it means to be a family. “The books were comforting,” McClure writes, “but they started to unravel something in me.”

She and her husband Chris (who earns the title of Most Understanding

By Wendy McClure, Riverhead, $25.95, 352 pages and Supportive Spouse in History) embark on a journey to visit the places ISBN 9781594487804, audio, eBook available where Laura lived. They hit Pepin, Wisconsin, site of Little House in the Big Woods; Walnut Grove, Minnesota, made famous in the 1970s television series; and De Smet, South Dakota, where the family nearly died one brutal winter. They also make a memorable stop in Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura and Almanzo lived in their later years in a custom-built farmhouse.

Their only child, Rose Wilder Lane, built her parents a small rock cottage on the same property, then took over the farmhouse for herself. McClure calls the cottage Little House in the Complicated Family Dynamic.

It’s tidbits like that one that make The Wilder Life intensely enjoyable. McClure takes Laura World seriously, and gets just about as close as one can to Laura—yet somehow she can never quite get inside Laura’s head. Although the places are real, the people are long gone. And so it goes with childhood touchstones—fond memories you can never recapture, no matter whether you’re driving past your old elementary school or Laura’s log cabin. In The Wilder Life, McClure perfectly captures that haunting brew of wistfulness and nostalgia.

A COVERT AFFAIR

By Jennet Conant Simon & Schuster $28, 416 pages ISBN 9781439163528 Audio, eBook available

history

Jennet Conant is a genius at finding significant World War II-era stories that have largely gone untold or unnoticed in the more comprehensive chronicles of that period. As the granddaughter of James Bryant Conant, the eminent chemist, statesman and longtime president of Harvard University, she has had particular access to the behind-thescenes workings of history. From that access have come the dramatic and well-documented narratives Tuxedo Park, 109 East Palace and The Irregulars.

Now Conant is back with A Covert Affair, an equally readable account of larger-than-life Julia Child

and her husband, Paul Child—not as culinary pioneers, but in their earlier incarnations as informationgatherers and propagandists for the World War II intelligence network, the Office of Strategic Services.

Fascinating as these two figures are, though, the book’s real focal point is their good friend, the daring and alluring socialite and spy Jane Foster.

Julia and Jane were both from wealthy, conservative families in California; Paul, who was 10 years older than Julia, grew up relatively poor in Boston. Idealists all, they volunteered for the war effort and initially served together in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), working in league with the British. Later, in various configurations, they would continue their government services in Indonesia, China and Vietnam.

An impulsive do-gooder, Foster grew incensed that the Dutch, French and English were intent on reasserting their colonial claims in the East once the Japanese were driven out. After the war ended, she argued eloquently and publicly on behalf of the Indonesian resistance movement—one of many political

indiscretions that would come back to haunt her when the American government embarked on its witch hunt for Communists.

Conant devotes the last half of her book to showing how the Childs were caught up in Senator McCarthy’s red-baiting. Both were indignant at what they perceived as Foster’s persecution, and both spoke out in her defense, even when evidence filtered in that she might be more culpable in spying for Russia than she admitted. As Foster’s star was sinking, the irrepressible Julia’s was rising. After the war, she took cooking classes to impress hard-tosnare Paul—they were finally married in 1946—then expanded her studies when they were posted to France. By the time Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961 to near-universal acclaim, Foster was living in exile in Paris, embittered, separated from her old friends and contemplating the enormous costs of her political sympathies. Conant’s account of the three friends’ stories is another masterpiece of historical reporting.

— E d w ar d M o rr i s

By Philip Connors Ecco $24.99, 256 pages ISBN 9780061859366 Audio, eBook available

nature

When Aldo Leopold advocated “thinking like a mountain” in his 1949 ecological classic, A Sand County Almanac, he meant that removing any one element from an ecosystem (e.g., a predator like a wolf) has disastrous implications for its other residents: The population of deer explodes, denuding the mountain of shrubbery, which leads to erosion, and so on. In this stunning gift of a memoir, Philip Connors pursues both the ecological and spiritual aspects of thinking like a mountain through his vocation as a fire lookout in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico.

Leopold was instrumental in having this region declared America’s first protected Wilderness Area on June 3, 1924, a day that Connors holds as a “high holy day” in the four-month season he spends each year perched in a tower scanning the horizon for plumes of smoke.

Some fires caused by lightning will be allowed to burn, while those started by humans will be put out.

Connors explains that fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, burning grass and fertilizing soil—a recognition that has only come recently to the Forest Service.

With Fire Season, Connors joins a long and distinguished line of literary “freaks on peaks,” including Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac and Norman Maclean, each of whom spent a season as a fire lookout. Spending eight hours a day as an “eyeball in tune with cloud and light, a being of pure sensation,” allows Connors a meditative peace unavailable to the rest of us with our blinking screens and divided attention. “I want to lengthen, not shorten, my attention span,” Connors says, and his memoir offers a spirited defense of the virtues of indolence and poetry.

As he gains both pragmatic and mystical wisdom, Connors proffers an ecological manifesto for making our peace with fire. More importantly, he offers a profound (and at

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reviews times hilariously profane) perspective on the relationship between humans and the earth. Attuned to the plants, animals, terrain and weather patterns of his mountain environment, Connors assumes his rightful place as mere member of this ecosystem, a citizen rather than a conqueror of the wilderness. Passionate and funny, Fire Season is an exciting new addition to the canon of American nature writing.

—Catherine Hollis

ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE

By Diane Ackerman Norton $26.95, 336 pages ISBN 9780393072419 eBook available

MEMOIR

One morning more than five years ago, Diane Ackerman arrived

NONFICTION in the high-tech cove of the local hospital to find her husband, the novelist Paul West, trailing so many tubes that he looked like a jellyfish.

Fighting a systemic kidney infection, West had languished in the hospital bed for more than three weeks, but he brightened at Ackerman’s entrance. The couple playfully plotted his escape from the world of the sick and infirm and his return to their cozy world full of words and wonder at the marvels of nature in their rural New York home. Those bright hopes shattered when, after a long and arduous surgery, he suffered a stroke, losing all command of language, memory and muscular coordination—and needing her to nurse him back to wholeness.

Through her poignant memoir, One Hundred Names for Love, Ackerman guides us through the territory of anxiety and despair as she navigates the cartography of loss. As a poet and writer deeply in love with language, she feels viscerally the loss that her beloved must feel in the moments, days, months

From New York Times Bestselling Author

and even years after his stroke. After a couple of years, Ackerman feels as if she is becoming West’s coach, cheerleader, teammate, teacher, translator, best friend and wife all rolled into one. No one can play so many roles without burning out.

Yet in spite of her physical and mental fatigue, she lovingly continues to talk to, cajole and banter with West in the slow, demanding work of helping him to regain his use of language. A triumphant moment occurs when she asks him to make up some new pet names for her to replace the ones he has forgotten; almost immediately West calls her his “celandine hunter” and “swallow haven.” From those hours he begins to focus on his writing once again, recovering more steadily as he regains the ability to use language creatively rather than simply to name objects. Since his stroke, West has written his own memoir of the event (The Shadow Factory) along with essays and book reviews for publications like Harper’s.

Although Ackerman’s faith in West’s ability to regain language changed from moment to moment, her moving memoir captures her loving faith in the unerring power of words to heal her loved one’s broken soul and body.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

LOST AND FOUND

HEARTS ARE MENDED IN

By Geneen Roth Viking $25.95, 224 pages ISBN 9780670022717 Audio, eBook available

Rural Kentucky After moving to Kentucky, life has a whole new outlook for Titus Fisher. But can a heart once torn by love’s rejection find new life and choose between two women who are as unique as night and day?

SELF-HELP

—Heather Seggel

THE LONG GOODBYE

By Meghan O’Rourke Riverhead $25.95, 320 pages ISBN 9781594487989 eBook available

MEMOIR

Who will Titus choose, and will it be the right choice?

978-1-60260-681

-4

www.wandabrunstetter.com

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The surprise she encounters in Lost and Found is that her meticulous focus on food and eating contrasted with a gaping blind spot about money, “as if money were as deadly as the plague and even thinking about it would lead me to being one of the bad guys.”

The catalyst for this realization was catastrophic: Roth and her husband lost their life savings in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

After a period of mourning, she noticed that the cycle of bingeeating and starvation she had previously worked through had now been replaced by similar patterns of shopping and hoarding. Yet if anyone could make lemonade out of such difficult circumstances, it’s Roth, whose persistence and curiosity can help make sense of any addictive behavior. She opens up a conversation about money with exercises that she has used with retreat participants, along with some of their responses, and adds plenty of insight from her own soulsearching. She writes, “If I could believe that we didn’t have enough when we did and then lose it and believe that we did have enough— what or where is enough?”

Roth and her husband are now on the path back to fiscal solvency.

With Lost and Found, she has made a gift of wisdom to readers that may help them make the same journey.

Available Wherever Books are Sold

Anyone who has ever sat facing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with a grimness better suited to a chess match with Death himself knows Geneen Roth’s work. Roth has made a career teaching people to look within and question the motivations underlying their behavior around food, balancing ruthless self-inquiry with a gentle assessment of the facts uncovered. She’s logged couch time with Oprah, so it’s not surprising that many of her books, like Women Food and God, have been bestsellers.

Sad events and occasions for grief happen to everyone, and no two people react in identical fashion.

Poet and Slate culture critic Meghan O’Rourke, a gifted writer, responded to the death of her mother by putting the full extent of her emotions on paper, using vivid language and evocative prose to describe her experiences in The Long Goodbye.

O’Rourke thought she was preparing herself for her mother’s death during the final stages of

NONFICTION her bout with cancer. Seeing the damage the disease was doing, O’Rourke admits she thought her mother’s death would be a relief.

Instead, she discovered the loss completely rocked her, triggering a grief-fueled depression and complete withdrawal from everything she had previously loved.

Eventually it’s her prowess with and passion for words that helps O’Rourke dig out of the emotional abyss. She begins a chronicle of her life in the days after her mother’s burial, sparing no detail about her deepest feelings. Sometimes her descriptions are so graphic, some readers may find them uncomfortable, even excessive. But it’s also clear this process is not only providing a catharsis, but giving the writer insight into areas of her psyche she’d never touched. Eventually she comes to terms with the situation, acknowledging her life won’t ever be the same, but feeling strengthened by undergoing the ordeal and being able to write about it.

The Long Goodbye is far from an easy read. Anyone who’s lost a loved one will empathize with O’Rourke’s isolation from others and her intense misery. Indeed, they may opt to speed through or turn away from certain sections of the book, especially those that lay bare unflattering incidents, thoughts and actions.

But this memoir is also a testimony to the human spirit, to resilience, faith and determination. O’Rourke finally decides not to be defeated by her emotions, and she emerges a stronger, better person. Readers who understand and appreciate the lessons detailed in The Long Goodbye will feel renewed after reading it.

—Ron Wynn

UNFAMILIAR FISHES

By Sarah Vowell Riverhead $25.95, 256 pages ISBN 9781594487873 Audio, eBook available

history

Sarah Vowell’s subversive wit and heady take on history are well known from her previous bestsellers such as The Wordy Shipmates

and Assassination Vacation, as well as her work on Public Radio International’s “This American Life.”

Her latest book, Unfamiliar Fishes, delivers a romp through Hawaiian history beginning in 1819. The New England missionaries who arrived that year were some of the first “unfamiliar fishes” to come ashore bringing visions of change for the islands—welcome or not. “Hawaiians,” she tells us, “have a word for all the pasty-faced explorers, Bible thumpers, whalers, tycoons, con men, soldiers and vacationers” who disrespect their culture: haole.

Vowell writes with characteristic straightforwardness in describing one such haole, Walter Murray Gibson, who came to the islands in the 1860s with various schemes designed to spread Mormonism and immortalize himself. At 21, as a recently widowed father of three, he wrote, “I wanted to fly on the wings of the wind toward the rising sun.”

Vowell translates: “Which is a poetic way of saying he ditched his kids with his dead wife’s relatives and lit out on a life of adventure.”

There are many colorful characters throughout the book—King Kamehameha the Great, Henry Obookiah, Princess Nahi’ena— but one of the most fascinating is Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian queen, who traveled to America to appeal directly to Congress not to annex her country. Though fighting to stay queen of a sovereign nation, she visited George Washington’s tomb, writing in her memoirs admiringly about “that great man who assisted at the birth of the nation which has grown to be so great.”

Liliuokalani was the last graduate of Hawaii’s royal school, a place designed to Americanize the royal children. Another school established for the children of missionaries became a world-class institution that counts our current president as an alumnus. “I wonder,” Vowell muses, “what Liliuokalani might have thought witnessing President Obama’s inauguration when the marching band from Punahou School, his alma mater (and that of her enemies), would serenade the new president by playing a song she had written, ‘Aloha ’Oe.’ ” With observations like these, Unfamiliar Fishes will help readers appreciate our beautiful 50th state like never before.

Mohandas K. Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa. He arrived in 1893 “as an untested, unknown 23-year-old law clerk brought over from Bombay,” Joseph Lelyveld writes in his fascinating study, Great Soul. By the time he left, “he was well on his way to becoming the Gandhi India would come to revere and, sporadically, follow.”

What did Gandhi learn in Africa?

Everything from a theory of nonviolent resistance to ideas about proper nutrition. But Lelyveld’s particular interest is the evolution of Gandhi’s social vision, especially his efforts to overturn India’s caste system and to unite Hindus and Muslims, both of which he began to formulate while he was in Africa.

Lelyveld, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on apartheid in South Africa, traces the often problematic development of these ideas in Gandhi’s struggles in South Africa and, later, in India. A brilliant analyst, Lelyveld shows not the sainted Gandhi but Gandhi in the making. This is a Gandhi who was constantly renewing himself; who first outdistanced his family and then his followers; and who did not succeed. But, strangely enough, this view of Gandhi does nothing to diminish the man.

Although Great Soul follows Gandhi throughout his adult life right up until his assassination in 1948, this is not a full-fledged biography. Instead, Lelyveld intentionally ignores significant passages in Gandhi’s life—such as the details of the Indian independence movement—to highlight the specific themes he is pursuing. As a result, readers will not put down this book having gleaned a full knowledge of all that Gandhi accomplished. But they will definitely possess a deeper understanding of the complex human being behind those accomplishments.

—Linda Stankard

— Al d e n M u d g e

top shelf

this month’s top publisher picks

GREAT SOUL

By Joseph Lelyveld Knopf $28.95, 448 pages ISBN 9780307269584 eBook available

BIOGRAPHY PB 9780967948232 $15.95 DVD 9780967948256 $19.95 www.awalkforsunshine.com

A Walk For Sunshine Jeff Alt

An entertaining adventure hiking over 2,000-miles along the Appalachian Trail with bears, bugs, blisters, skunk bedmates, humor and inspiration. A “Book of the Year” Gold medal winner. Available as a DVD documentary.

Dreams Shared Publications

PB 9780983122104 $15.95 www.forchildrenwithlove.com

Coach Bob & Me Catherine Gibson

Coach Bob, confined to a wheelchair, is a well-respected high school football coach. Coach helps Stefan and his other students grow as athletes and individuals. Through him, Stefan learns that achieving your goals depends on how hard you want to work to accomplish them.

For Children With Love

PB 9781893670471 $20 http://tebotbach.org/publication.html#godseed

God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens

“A lovely, singing book, in both art and language— intricate beauties informed by informed passion.”

—William Kittredge “A beautiful mix of words and images, light and deep.”

—William Wiley Tebot Bach Press

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children’s books

A

t a time when teen fiction is dominated by vampires, werewolves and time travel, first-time author Ruta Sepetys has written a novel whose horrors are all too real.

Exposing the agonies endured by victims of Josef Stalin’s regime, Between Shades of Gray grips readers from the first page with its againstthe-odds survival story. Teenager Lina and her family are forced by the Soviet secret police to leave their home in Lithuania in 1941 and travel in a miserable, crammed train car to labor camps in Siberia, on the verge of starvation. They eventually end up north of the Arctic Circle, where they endure hardships so extreme that readers will be shocked to learn this novel is rooted in historical events.

During an interview with BookPage, Sepetys explains that her connection to this atrocity is personal. Her grandfather was an officer in the Lithuanian army. He was on execution lists when the

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Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1939, so he and his wife and son fled to Austria, then Germany, and eventually settled in America. The family members they left behind were deported to work camps and imprisoned.

As Sepetys writes in her author’s note, Stalin was responsible for more than 20 million deaths—including more than a third of the population of Lithuania. But the story of the Baltic deportations is not a well-known part of history.

During our conversation, Sepetys explains that, after World War II, people living in Soviet-occupied countries could not speak about Soviet crimes for fear of being punished.

“It’s as if the voice of an entire generation was swallowed,” Sepetys

says. “The story sort of went dark and now the people that still have ties to it are in their late 80s. A whisper is left and we’re just about to lose it.”

On her first trip to Lithuania, as an adult, Sepetys met family members and asked to see old pictures.

They had to tell her that they’d burned the photos when her grandfather fled—they couldn’t let anyone know they were related.

When she learned of this tragic history, Sepetys saw it as her responsibility to share the story with the world, and tell it as accurately as possible.

“My freedom and everything I have has cost me theirs. My freedom, in the U.S., because my father left, had cost them their freedom. And that’s very heavy, but it made me even more determined that I was going to do this.”

Her family warned that “the world just isn’t interested in this story,” but Sepetys refused to accept that advice. As it turns out, she was right. At the time of our interview, there had been 22 foreign sales of Between Shades of Gray, including one in Lithuania. “This is not about me at all; this is about their story and honoring the people and their experience,” she says.

Though she wanted to share Lithuania’s history, it was important that it be wrapped in fiction. When Sepetys talked to people about their experience during the Soviet occupation, many of her interview subjects had a condition.

“So many people told me, I’ll tell you what happened but you have to promise not to use my name.

They were so terrified. Fifty years had passed but the pain was still so raw,” she says. “Fifty years had passed but their hands were still shaking when they spoke.”

Sepetys honored their wishes by drawing on their experiences to create memorable characters. The two who will probably stick with teen readers the most are Lina, the 15-year-old main character, and Andrius, a boy she meets on the long, harrowing train ride to Siberia and with whom she shares a budding romance. The plot centers on the remarkable survival story of Lina and her family as they are

© J. Michael Smith

Surviving in the face of terror

RUTA SEPETYS

Interview by Eliza Borné

forced to travel to different labor camps in extreme conditions—including a camp that is literally at the North Pole.

Although Between Shades of Gray is Sepetys’ debut novel, she is no stranger to the creative process. She has worked in the music business for 20 years, currently as the owner of an artist management company based in Nashville.

Besides her day job, she is hard at work on her second book—the story of a murder set in 1950s-era New Orleans.

Sepetys feels that she has found a home with historical fiction. “History holds secrets, and around every corner there is some little-known story,” she says. “Through studying mistakes from the past, hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and create hope for a more just future.”

Between Shades of Gray

By Ruta Sepetys, Philomel, $17.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780399254123, audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up

SHIMMER

Alyson Noël

THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE

Riley Bloom is back! In this exciting follow-up to Radiance, Riley meets Rebecca, a young ghost whose overwhelming anger is keeping other ghosts trapped in a shimmering bubble. And Riley is the only one who can save them.

SPELLBINDER Helen Stringer

A girl who sees ghosts must find out why all of them—including her dead parents—have suddenly disappeared.

Jacqueline Kelly

In the summer of 1899, elevenyear-old Callie Tate comes up against just what it means to be a girl at the turn of the century.

Start your adventures here!

Check out these paperback favorites!

There’s more to the orphanage down the road from Christina’s house than she ever suspected.

Sinister things are in the works— and the secret of zoom is the most dangerous of all!

THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER David Whitley

THE BONE MAGICIAN

F. E. Higgins

After taking a job at the local undertaker, a boy sets out to learn how a “bone magician” raises the dead and discovers a dark mystery that puts his own life in danger.

THE SECRET OF ZOOM Lynne Jonell

THE SMALL ADVENTURE OF POPEYE AND ELVIS Barbara O’Connor

When something curious comes floating down the creek, Popeye and his new friend Elvis must enter the big world on the hunt for a small adventure.

ZITA THE SPACEGIRL Ben Hatke

Zita was an ordinary little girl, once—not that long ago, actually. Okay, yesterday.

But sometimes things can change awfully fast.

In the ancient city of Agora, where everything can be bought and sold, two orphans are fighting to survive.

Continue the journey with The Children of the Lost, book 2 in this gripping trilogy— in stores now!

IMPRINTS OF MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S PUBLISHING GROUP MACKIDS.COM

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children’s books

reviews

Rekindling a lost love

where she went

Review by angela leeper

In Gayle Forman’s best-selling If I Stay, Adam stood over the bed of his comatose girlfriend Mia, promising to do whatever it would take, even leaving or letting her go, if she’d just choose to live despite the accident that claimed the rest of her family. It’s three and a half years later in the equally compelling sequel, Where She Went, and Adam should be having the time of his life since his grunge band just scored a Grammy for Best New Artist and he knows that Mia is alive. Instead, he’s chain-smoking, popping pills for anxiety, moving in with an actress in L.A. and trying to figure out why Mia, after suffering through intense rehab in order to start at Juilliard on time, left for the East Coast and never came back.

Briefly in New York to tie up last-minute details before starting a grueling tour, Adam takes in a performance by now-rising star cellist Mia at Carnegie Hall. When she calls him backstage after the show, the two

By Gayle Forman, Dutton, $16.99, 208 pages spend the rest of the night on a whirlwind tour of the city, taking in Mia’s ISBN 9780525422945, audio, eBook available favorite sights. Chapters alternate between past and present, revealing Ages 14 and up more details about the days and months after Mia’s awakening, Adam’s mounting isolation after Mia’s departure—and the searing truth that erupts as they face each other once again.

As the two former young lovers reconnect, Adam realizes that Mia was not the only victim who suffered a loss, felt grief and anger or needed closure. Perhaps there’s still time to remember, forgive and love again— together. With beautiful yet achingly realistic storytelling, Where She Went is a page-turner, tearjerker and romance all in one, and the pace doesn’t let up until the final sentence. Have some tissues ready.

Grandma’s smile is missing.

She can’t find it anywhere.

But she knows just who to call . . .

“Randy Siegel and illustrator DyAnne DiSalvo perfectly capture the bond between children and their grandparents in this charming picture book” –PARADE magazine

Grandma’s Smile

By Randy Siegel Illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvo One of Examiner.com’s Top 10 Books of 2010 for Kids

“Long-distance grandmothers everywhere will sympathize with Grandma . . .”

–Kirkus Reviews

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Mackids.com

A Neal Porter Book/Roaring

Brook Press

An imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

bird in a box

By Andrea Davis Pinkney Little, Brown $16.99, 228 pages ISBN 9780316074032 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12

middle grade

It might seem impossible that one man could bring together an entire community, but Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber” of pounding punches and focused fighting, did just that. At the height of the Great Depression, Louis’ big fight warbled through just about every radio in America, and for the three kids in Andrea Davis Pinkney’s new novel, it changes their lives forever.

Bird in a Box is told through the voices of three youngsters in Elmira, New York, in the months leading up to the big fight. Hibernia, Otis and Willie, who come from different worlds, are thrown together by tough luck and the power of the True Vine Baptist Church. Each has lost someone, and each has a seemingly unobtainable dream. Their stories converge at the center of their world: the radio.

Through the voices of the children, Pinkney creates a triumphant tale of accidental friendships and repaired lives. An appendix adds interesting historical context on the “real people and real places” in the book. The stories of Hibernia, Otis and Willie, accompanied by the backdrop of the championship fight, will have young readers rooting for a win all the way to the end.

— C a t D . Acr e e

THE EMERALD ATLAS

By John Stephens Random House $17.99, 432 pages ISBN 9780375868702 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12

middle grade

The Emerald Atlas begins on a snowy Christmas Eve, when three toddlers are taken from their parents and placed in an orphanage in Boston. Ten years and 12 orphanages later, 14-year-old Kate (who promised her mother to keep her younger siblings safe that fateful night), 12-year-old Michael and 11-year-old Emma find themselves in the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans.

Perhaps they have one more shot at a real home when they are shipped off to the village of Cambridge Falls.

Their new orphanage is the grand estate of a mysterious Dr. Stanislaus Pym, and Kate, Michael and Emma are its only residents. While exploring their new abode, the children find an old green book that transports them to the past, where they find the missing children of Cambridge Falls, held captive by an evil countess. The trio learns that the Atlas is one of three Books of Beginning that possess the secrets of the birth of the universe—and that the Countess will do anything to find them.

With magic, humor and unforgettable characters, John Stephens’ remarkable debut novel follows Kate, Michael and Emma as they attempt to outwit the Countess, rescue the children and maybe even save the world in the process. Unanswered questions and two more books to locate ensure a sequel and more robust adventures ahead.

— ANGELA LEEPE R

CHILDREN’S POETRY b y A l i c e Ca r y

meet CHRIS VAN ALLSBURG the title of your Q: What’s

new book?

Rhymes for little readers

H

ere are three of our favorite new poetry books for children, selections that are bound to unleash the inner poet in many young writers.

Learning with verse Over the last few years I have particularly liked books that combine poetry with nonfiction, such as Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poems (Clarion, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780618903498). This book is a visual and literary feast, with eyecatching mixed-media illustrations

by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy.

Each page contains this duo’s illustrations, along with one of Zimmer’s imaginative poems and a short sidebar filled with interesting elephant facts, such as the recent discovery that elephants can communicate over extremely long distances with low tones that people can’t hear, and that they can feel these tones through their feet.

Many interesting topics are addressed, including elephants’ ivory tusks, their excellent memory and the term “white elephant.” The book’s title comes from the first page, in which we learn that some cultures once believed that elephants could control the weather.

This blend of poetry, nonfiction and art is literature and learning at its best.

Sibling revelry I have long been a fan of Kristine O’Connell George’s poetry collections, and her latest, Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems (Clarion, $16.99, 48 pages, ISBN 9780618428427), is a real winner.

Fourth-grader Jessica both loves and loathes her little sister Emma, and this is the essence of her “Emma Dilemma.”

Jessica voices her wide-ranging emotions through a series of poems that are spot-on for real situations and feelings, getting right at the

heart of what it means to be a sister, chronicling both its delights and its demons. Nancy Carpenter’s lively illustrations manage to capture every bit of the fun and fury.

There is drama here, too, when Emma tries to join Jessica and her friend in their treehouse and falls, breaking her arm and prompting Jessica to feel guilty that she hadn’t been paying closer attention to Emma. Kids of all ages will be both moved and entertained by this engaging poem-story.

Making peace More creative illustrations are waiting in Peaceful Pieces: Poems and Quilts about Peace (Holt, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780805089967) by Anna Grossnickle Hines, a follow-up to her lovely A Year in Poems and Quilts.

Hines’ illustrations are photographs of her own amazing handmade quilts. And phenomenal they are, with wonderful backgrounds and vibrant colors, patterns and textures, and people, too, such as a boy in a kayak or a curly-haired girl holding a butterfly.

Hines’ poems are just as wonderful and varied as her quilts, discussing peace in its many forms, whether between a hamster and a snake, siblings, schoolmates, armies or countries. There’s plenty of food for thought here, including a spread dedicated to eight peacemakers, ranging from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to child peacemakers Samantha Smith and Mattie Stepanek.

Hines ends her book with a few pages explaining who these peacemakers are, and also discusses how she created her quilts. She relates the long history of quilt-making, storytelling and artistic and community collaboration. This is indeed a treasure trove of beauty and inspiration.

would you describe Q: How

the book?

has been the biggest influence on your work?

Q: Who

was your favorite subject in school? Why? Q: What

was your childhood hero?

Q: Who

Q: W hat books did you enjoy as a child?

one thing would you like to learn to do?

Q: What

Q: W hat message would you like to send to children?

QUEEN OF THE FALLS Chris Van Allsburg has received the Caldecott Medal twice (for Jumanji and The Polar Express ), the National Book Award and the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. His latest picture book, Queen of the Falls (Houghton Mifflin, $18.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9780547315812), is a stirring account of the real-life figure who was the first to survive a plunge over Niagara Falls.

31

WORDNOOK

By the editors of Merriam-Webster

ON THE LOOSE Dear Editor, A phrase I have been hearing lately is loose cannon. Where did this phrase come from? What exactly does it mean?

L. B. Caldwell, New Jersey The phrase loose cannon is defined as “a dangerously uncontrollable person or thing.” Considering its current popularity, you may be surprised to learn that the earliest example of its figurative use that we have so far found dates from not very long ago, in the 1970s. Though the actual term loose cannon didn’t begin appearing as a figurative phrase until then, the image it creates was one that had been employed metaphorically earlier. For example, in his 1946 autobiography, William Allen White quotes Theodore Roosevelt as saying, “I don’t want to be the old cannon loose on the deck in a storm.”

Despite its relatively recent appearance, loose cannon refers to a situation that isn’t found in mod-

ern times. In naval warfare of the 18th and 19th centuries, shipboard cannons were the long-distance weapon of choice. The cannons were secured against their recoil, but the restraints sometimes failed.

When a cannon—mounted on wheels and approaching a weight of possibly 3 tons—broke free of its moorings, it could pose a danger to the crew even greater than that posed by the enemy.

Though ships no longer employ artillery of this type, the vivid image lives on to describe an uncontrollable and sometimes violent force.

DAMAGE CONTROL

Dear Editor, Can you tell me when the term spin doctor was coined and how it came to have its meaning?

E. A. Waltham, Massachusetts A spin doctor is a person, such as a presidential aide, who is responsible for ensuring that others interpret an event from a particular point of view. The effort of a spin doctor is

called spin control, which has been aptly described as a form of “news management.”

Spin doctor became popular in the early 1980s. The term is a combination of spin, in the sense of “a special point of view, emphasis, or interpretation controlling a presentation,” and doctor, meaning “a person who repairs or restores things” or perhaps simply “a practitioner.”

This sense of spin may have derived from its figurative use in the expression to spin a yarn, but a more likely explanation connects it to the spin placed on a ball to control its movement or delivery, as in tennis or billiards.

CHEAP SHOT Dear Editor, How did we come to call someone who doesn’t like to spend money a skinflint?

V. G. Dayton, Ohio The term skinflint existed with the meaning “a person who would save, gain, or extort money by any means”

EVERYTHING LITERARY

1

Reprinted from The Everything Literary Crosswords Book by Charles Timmerman, published by Adams Media, an F+W Media, Inc. Co. Copyright ©2007, F+W Media, Inc.

2

3

5

13

14

16

17

19

Send correspondence regarding Word Nook to: Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102 6

7

26

64. Plug up 65. Silver salmon 66. Antlered animals

27

21

28 32

37

38

51

DOWN 57 1. From the top 2. Metric prefix 61 3. James and the Gi64 ant Peach author 4. Regretful 5. L ord of the Flies setting 6. Campus digs 7. Nuptial agreement 8. Gangway 9. Grasp 10. How anchovies are packed 11. Small change 12. Word in two Steven Seagal movies 18. Der ___ (Adenauer) 20. “If only!”

22. Father of Balder

47

48

12

34

35

36

54

55

56

30 33 39

41 43

11

25

29

40

10

22

24

31

46

9

18

23

25. Sodium hydroxide 26. Very cold 29. Diligent worker 31. Hospital helpers 32. Actress Phillips 33. Lukas of Witness 37. “Choppers” 38. Break time, maybe 39. L ord of the Flies fat boy 40. Food for Morlocks 41. Lord of the Flies breakaway leader 42. Hydrolysis product 43. Slatted wooden box 45. Lays out 46. Look through a scope 49. Commercial prefix with vision 50. Explorer John and others 51. Fire starter in Lord of the Flies 53. Broadcast slot 57. Compass point 58. Tattled 60. Air freshener target 61. Suffix with fluor62. WWW facilitators 63. Zero

8

15

20

LORD OF THE FLIES ACROSS 1. Po tributary 5. “Got it” 9. Elvis’s swivelers 13. Half-moon tide 14. Common mixer 15. “The __ Love,” R.E.M. hit 16. Reflected sound 17. Hubbard of Scientology fame 18. Solo 19. L ord of the Flies author, first name 21. Lord of the Flies author, last name 23. Possesses 24. L.A. hrs. crossword solution

4

as early as 1700. Back in those days, soldiers used flints to produce the spark necessary to discharge their rifles. Legend has it that one commander was so cheap that he gave his soldiers shavings that he had scraped or “skinned” from a flint because he was too cheap to provide them with whole flints. For this he earned the title skinflint. Of course, only the cheapest person would try to “skin” a flint. And so anyone who is considered tight with a buck is called a skinflint.

One use of the term comes from Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary and reads: “It would have been long . . . ere my womankind could have made such a reasonable bargain with that old skinflint.” We continue to use the term this way even though military commanders need no longer worry about supplying flints for rifles.

42

44

45

49

50

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53 58

59

60

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63

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66

26. Destiny 27. Monetary unit of Cambodia 28. Logical start?

29. Chessman 30. Artificial gemstone 32. Numerical fact 34. Opposed to, hillbilly-style 35. “Yes, there is ___!”

36. Dict. offerings 39. A written document 41. Primer girl 44. Hustle

45. Declared 46. Infamous 1972 hurricane 47. Player’s lament 48. Explorer Polo 50. L ord of the Flies initial leader 52. Put one’s foot down?

54. Teen ___ 55. Brother 56. “___ Tu” (1974 hit) 59. Granada grizzly

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I G D A O N G O P D P L I I A N E N C K E S R A A I O L D S P S O H O

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