BookPage September 2010

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america’s book review

Fall into a great book

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Inspiring new novels of faith & family

PARTY GIRL

Meghan McCain on the new GOP

JONATHAN FRANZEN

The author of ‘ The Corrections’ delivers this year’s must-read novel

contents

september 2010 w w w. B o o k Pa g e . c o m

features

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11 meghan mccain Meet the author of Dirty Sexy Politics

interview

The author of Freedom talks about the personal demons and passions that informed his latest novel—and the pressure to live up to the mega-success of The Corrections

13 emma donoghue A mother’s love transforms a terrible plight

16 scott simon

Cover image © Anolda, 2010 Used under license from Shutterstock.com

Changing the world, one child at a time

18 christian fiction Inspirational stories of faith, hope and love

24 rick bass Stepping into the river of time

27 business books How to be a great leader

29 ingrid law Creating a uniquely American magic

31 timothy basil ering Meet the illustrator of Snook Alone

departments 03 buzz girl 03 Bestseller watch 04 04 06 06 07 08 08 10

audio author enablers book clubs well read romance lifestyles cooking whodunit

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jonathan franzen

reviews 21 Fiction

top pick:

Ape House

by Sara Gruen a l s o r e v i e w e d : The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass; The Lady Matador’s Hotel by Cristina García; Juliet by Anne Fortier; Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord; The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian; I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li; Getting to Happy

by Terry McMillan; The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard; Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

26 NonFiction top pick:

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat

by Hal Herzog a l s o r e v i e w e d : Breaking Night by Liz Murray; The Tiger

by John Vaillant; Promise Me

by Nancy G. Brinker; Exiles in Eden by Paul Reyes; Origins by Annie Murphy Paul; The Coke Machine by Michael Blanding

30 Children’s top pick:

The Year Money Grew on Trees

by Aaron R. Hawkins a l s o r e v i e w e d : Chicken Big

by Keith Graves; The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester by Barbara O’Connor; Hothouse

by Chris Lynch; Plain Kate by Erin Bow; Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

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a m e r i c a’ s b o o k r e v i e w

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EDITOR

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Sukey Howard

Elizabeth Grace Herbert

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CHILDREN’S BOOKS

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Only books we highly recommend are featured.

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departments NEW HOME FOR Evanovich

Our publishing insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers

more awkwardness At first, Awkward Family Photos was just a hilarious website showcasing the best in uncomfortable family snapshots from around the country. Then it became a New York Times best-selling book. And now, after the launch of a sister site, Awkward Family Pet Photos, we can look forward to another cringe-worthy volume. Due in 2011 from Three Rivers Press, Awkward Family Pet Photos is sure to make us sit up and beg. And a third book is already in the works, too.

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

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dexter is delicious

By Jeff Lindsay

Doubleday, $25.99 ISBN 9780385532358 America’s favorite serial killer is back—and this time he’s tracking down a pack of unruly cannibals.

14 safe haven

By Nicholas Sparks Grand Central, $25.99 ISBN 9780446547598 A mysterious young woman with a dark secret arrives in Southport, North Carolina, forever changing the lives of those around her.

21 Santa Fe Edge

By Stuart Woods

Putnam, $25.95, ISBN 9780399156915 Ed Eagle smells trouble when a new client enlists his services in Woods’ 4th thriller featuring the Santa Fe attorney.

After much speculation that she might leave St. Martin’s, Janet Evanovich has officially found a new publisher. She recently signed a four-book deal with Ballantine Bantam Dell, a division of The Random House Publishing Group.

Random House did not release the sale price, but it’s worth noting that St. Martin’s paid a whopping $40 million for their last fourbook deal with Evanovich. The new contract with Ballantine Bantam Dell includes two Stephanie Plum novels and two books from the evanovich Unmentionable series.

Also noteworthy: The film version of One for the Money is slated for release in 2011. Playing the iconic Stephanie Plum? Katherine Heigl, of “Grey’s Anatomy” and Knocked Up fame.

DUBUS ON DUBUS Novelist Andre Dubus III has hit the bestseller list, been a National Book Award finalist and had one of his novels selected for Oprah’s Book Club. But even this talented writer has had projects that ended in failure: In 2008, he told BookPage that he had been working on an autobiographical novel, but kept throwing away drafts. “Terrible, man. It was just so bad,” he said. “So I think I’ve decided I’m not one of those fiction writers who can write from my life.

It’s like calling a dog. Maybe the dog just doesn’t want to come.”

But what about a memoir? That, apparently, clicked: Townie, Dubus’ account of growing up in a depressed Massachusetts mill town in the 1970s, will be published on February 28, 2011 by Norton.

out of the white house

Here’s an—ahem—novel premise: Nicolle Wallace, former White House Communications Director under George W. Bush and campaign advisor for Sarah Palin, has written a novel about the first female president of the United States.

Called Eighteen Acres (which is a term political insiders use to refer to the White House complex), the novel follows “Charlotte Kramer, the 45th U.S. President, Melanie Kingston, the White House chief

Buzz Girl of staff, and Dale Smith, a White House correspondent for one of the networks, who are all working tirelessly on Charlotte’s campaign for re-election.” Due in October from Atria, Eighteen Acres is garnering considerable buzz. Consider our interest piqued!

The New York Times bestselling novel of rock ‘n roll, super fandom, and love, by the beloved author of About a Boy and High Fidelity.

Wolf’s next big thing

You might think creating one of television’s longest-running, most successful shows would be enough for one person. But not Dick Wolf, the creator and executive producer of “Law & Order.”

According to Forbes, Wolf banked an estimated $75 million last year alone, but that hasn’t stopped him from signing a two-book thriller deal with William Morrow.

Morrow annouced that the first book will be “a high-concept suspense thriller about a terrorist attack planned for July 4th weekend in New York City.” No title or release date has been given, but the publisher is already comparing the novel to Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor.

on deck for trollope Prolific British author Joanna Trollope must be one of the lucky few who doesn’t suffer from writer’s block. The author of more than 15 novels, Trollope most recently wrote about what happens after a man dies and leaves behind two grieving families in The Other Family.

Her justTROLLOPE announced next project, Daughters in Law, is about a woman with three grown sons and three daughters-in-law who faces a crisis and “must come to terms with her family’s shifting priorities and loyalties.”

On sale from Touchstone in April 2011, Daughters in Law sounds like Trollope at her best.

Nick Hornby returns to his roots— music and messy relationships. In this funny and touching new novel, Hornby thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but are never beyond redemption.

Now in paperback 9781594484773 • $15

the book case Don’t forget to visit our blog, The Book Case. You’ll find the latest book news and commentary, along with weekly contests, book trailers and excerpts. Look for the link at bookpage.com, and feel free to leave us a comment—part of the fun of blogging is connecting with other readers!

RIVERHEAD BOOKS A Member of Penguin Group (USA)

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columns

auDIO

AUTHOR ENABLERS

by Sukey howard

by kathi kamen goldmark & Sam Barry

BRUNETTI AT HIS BEST Listening to David Colacci, whose lightly Italian-accented narration is always pitch-perfect, read a new Commissario Brunetti mystery is so enjoyable that it qualifies as a guilty pleasure, up there with a pint of Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and one spoon. A Question of Belief (BBC Audio, $29.95, 9 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781602839175) is Donna Leon at her best, and therefore Brunetti at his, dealing, as he has for years, with the corruption that pervades Venetian bureaucracy and the judicial system, pondering the greed, need and passion that can lead to murder and malfeasance. It’s set in August, when the remorseless heat turns Venice into an open oven and the sun’s white glare blinds,

when everyone, except the teeming tourists, leaves town. The Commissario has silently implored the powers that be to shut off crime for just a few weeks, so he can vacation with his family in the cool comfort of the mountains. But his entreaties don’t do the trick: A violent death in a ritzy apartment building, a strange suicide and the ongoing investigation of a smooth charlatan who victimizes old ladies all conspire to keep Brunetti on the beat in the broiling heat.

SONS AND LOVERS

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Just before the car crash, Antoine’s sister tells him that she’s remembered something about their mother, about that last summer at the beach when he was nine, the summer before their mother died.

The key to the secret that haunts Tatiana de Rosnay’s second novel, A Secret Kept (Macmillan Audio, $39.99, 9 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781427210951), lies in that shadowy memory. The secret, a hidden, passionate love affair (I won’t say more) that listeners are privy to in tantalizing, flashbacks, surfaces as it intertwines with Antoine’s story. And it’s done so seamlessly that you don’t realize how involved you’ve become with Antoine, with his unwanted divorce and much-wanted ex-wife,

his inability to connect with his own children and his difficult, domineering father.

It’s a compelling portrait of a man, a Parisian of the haute bourgeoisie now in his mid-40s, who shies away from confrontation and overt emotion, who still mourns the loss of his loving, charming mother with a kind of sepia-tinged longing. A master of nuance, narrator Simon Vance conjures up Antoine’s intimate moods, melancholy, regret and the blossoming of possibility.

AUDIO OF THE MONTH We’re in the Korangal Valley— “sort of the Afghanistan of Afghanistan: too remote to conquer, too poor to intimidate, too autonomous to buy off”—with the Second Platoon of Battle Company. It’s hot and dusty, with lots of tarantulas, no running water, no cooked food, no women. And it’s wildly dangerous.

War, Sebastian Junger’s brilliant, eloquently spare, affectingly narrated account of his time embedded with the platoon from 2007 to 2008, is not about the moral implications of the war in Afghanistan or its longterm success; it’s about what it feels like to be a young man in combat, to endure excruciating boredom and anxious waiting and to feel the adrenaline-soaked exhilaration of lethal engagement. Junger explains, with pinpointed perception, how young men fall in love with combat, with the intense devotion to their comrades, with the sense of purpose and self-worth that “the ragged choreography of a firefight” gives them, why “one of the most traumatic things about combat is having to give it up,” and why it’s so hard for many to adjust to a seemingly dull and frivolous civilian life. Powerful stuff—and important, too.

War

By Sebastian Junger Hachette Audio $28.98, 432 pages ISBN 9781607881988

military history

Practical advice on writing and publishing for aspiring authors

NO PAIN, NO GAIN Dear Author Enablers, I’m a former journalist working on a mystery novel and I would be interested in resources to workshop the first few chapters of the novel.

I believe I may have a future as an author, but I don’t want to be selfdelusional and pursue something I’m not capable of doing, so I’m seeking feedback early on in order to avoid pain and agony later. My friends say, “Oh, this is great,” but are they only being polite? Am I paranoid? You’ll have to be the judge. . . .

Paula Glover Manhattan, Kansas It’s a great idea to find peers who will give you a constructive critique of your manuscript. We are big fans of writers’ conferences, writers’ groups and adult education classes for networking and getting intelligent, honest feedback. Check with your local bookstore or public library: Many host writers’ groups and workshops. You can also find many workshop resources online.

It’s not easy to find the right group, but it’s well worth the effort. As for being paranoid—let’s just say we’re writing from an undisclosed location.

FOUR SCORE AND MORE Dear Author Enablers, I need to know the names of agents or publishers willing to publish parodies. My love of basketball and Abraham Lincoln has led to my 15th book, If Abe Lincoln Were A Basketball Coach. This parody is in need of a publisher. I enjoy your wit and wisdom almost as much as the wit and wisdom of Abe Lincoln.

C. Byron Buckley North Vernon, Indiana Oh no—you stole our Lincolnbasketball coach idea!

Seriously—the best way to find out who publishes similar work is to go to the library or a good bookstore and do a little poking around.

Make a list of publishers who have recently published parodies or, even better, who specialize in them. Then look for the publishers online or in Literary Market Place and adhere to their submission guidelines.

Do this with malice toward none

and you’ll have a slam dunk.

LANGUAGE LAB Dear Author Enablers, I am bilingual and enjoy reading books in both English and Spanish.

Very often, I love reading a book in English—but when I buy the Spanish translation to share with my family, I find it isn’t as good. The words are translated, but the meaning and feeling of the original book do not come across. I am wondering two things: Why don’t publishers take better care to provide good translations? And how can I get a job writing Englishto-Spanish translations for publishers?

Nancy Dinkel Armonk, New York Translation requires a high level of both literary and linguistic ability.

In the best-case scenario, a skilled translator would work along with the author of the original work, and the author would have a working knowledge of the language into which the book is being translated.

But let’s face it, how often is that going to happen? Faced with time and money constraints, most publishers are simply interested in selling the foreign rights to a book and moving on to the next project. The company that buys those rights then has the work translated. The results vary widely—some works are translated beautifully, but others are not. The true artists in the world of literary translation are few and far between and are hired for those books considered to be of the greatest literary merit.

If you’re interested in working in this field, the most realistic path is to start small. Check with businesses in your area that might need translations for commercial services. Build up your freelance translation experience before you attempt to sell your skills as a literary translator. There is an obvious need for these services, and we wish you the best!

Email questions for Kathi and Sam to authorenablers@gmail.com. Please include your name and hometown.

FALL

LISTENING Available wherevermacmillan books are sold and for download. audio Visit www.macmillanaudio.com to listen to excerpts. Become a fan on Facebook. macmillan audio

columns This month’s best paperback releases for reading groups

MOORE’S RETURN A triumphant return for the beloved author of Birds of America, A Gate at the Stairs (Vintage, $15, 336 pages, ISBN 9780375708466) is Lorrie Moore’s first novel in 15 years. Set in a small Midwestern college town, the narrative focuses on Tassie Keltjin, a 20-year-old innocent who comes of age quickly, in ways she never dreamed were possible. Tassie balances school with her new responsibilities as a nanny, a job that comes with a catch: Her boss, restaurant owner Sarah Brink,

book clubs

well read

by julie hale

by Robert Weibezahl

a surprising connection.

Leaving behind a sad past in Israel, Merav has come to America in search of a new life. Stirred by her beauty, Danzig asks Merav to model for him in his private studio, but she is hesitant and elusive. What transpires between the two kindred, sensitive souls makes for an unforgettable story about the transformative power of art and its unique ability to restore the human spirit. Featuring sharply drawn characters and a well-crafted storyline, this is a powerful, probing work of fiction.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS

doesn’t yet have a baby—she’s trying to adopt one. With Tassie along for support, Sarah interviews potential birth mothers, women with their own stories to share, and these eye-opening encounters provide Tassie with new perspectives on life. Meanwhile, Tassie becomes involved with the mysterious Reynaldo, who may be hiding something. Growing up fast but enjoying the ride, Tassie makes for a delightful narrator. She’s a smart young woman with a sense of wonder that’s refreshing, and Moore’s many fans will find her story irresistible.

This is a compelling novel that finds the author in top form.

THE POWER OF ART

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A poignant, multilayered novel, Elizabeth Rosner’s Blue Nude (Gallery, $15, 224 pages, ISBN 9781439173084) explores the farreaching effects of the Holocaust.

Danzig, the son of a prominent Nazi, struggles with memories of his sister, Margot, who committed suicide after the war. Once a reputable painter, Danzig, now 58, lives in San Francisco, where he teaches at an art school and flirts with his students. When Merav, the lovely granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, fills in as a model for his drawing class, Danzig feels

Winner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is set in 16th-century England and presents history-making events— including King Henry VIII’s battle with the Catholic Church as he tries to divorce one woman and marry another—from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell comes from a humble family, but he rises to a position of importance at court thanks to his shrewdness, ambition and intelligence. As Henry VIII’s indispensable counselor, he has an inside view of royal goingson and provides the perfect lens for Mantel’s delicious drama, in which the seductive Boleyn sisters, the disfavored Queen Katherine and the scheming Thomas More all play prominent roles. Through the use of rich detail and convincing dialogue, Mantel brings a seminal chapter in England’s past to vivid life. Her meticulously conceived novel has it all—politics, danger, romance and intrigue. A mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction, it’s a must-read for history lovers.

Wolf Hall

By Hilary Mantel Picador $16, 640 pages ISBN 9780312429980

HISTORICAL FICTION

EXPLORING FAME AND IDENTITY IN OUR TECH-OBSESSED TIMES “A novel without a protagonist!” muses a fictional writer near the start of Daniel Kehlmann’s ingenious Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes. “A structure, the connections, a narrative arc, but no main character, no hero advancing throughout.” This amorphous form is exactly what Kehlmann pulls off in this slender, but profusely astute postmodern work. The muchacclaimed German writer, though not well known in the U.S., is a literary star in Europe, and one of his novels, Measuring the World, has sold more than 1.5 million copies. Fame (impeccably translated here by Carol Brown Janeway) may prove his overdue calling card to a wider readership on this side of the Atlantic.

The above-quoted novelist with such grand ambitions is Leo Richter, just one of a number of characters who pop in and out of the episodes in the novel. Each chapter reads as a self-contained story, and not until we reach the end of the book do all of the interconnections fall into place. The book opens when an ordinary man purchases a cell phone and immediately begins receiving calls meant for someone else—Ralf Tanner, an international movie star. Tanner’s name or likeness recur in some of the other stories, and in one he appears in the flesh, pretending to be a Ralf Tanner impersonator to evade notice.

Richter and Tanner are the glue of the narrative, as is a third recurring character, Miguel Auristos Blanco— a Paulo Coelho-like Latin American writer of mega-selling spiritual books. Most of the episodes reference one of these three exemplars of fame in some way. Tanner’s oversized image shows up on billboards outside hotel windows; Blanco’s books are sold in even the remotest shops.

One episode is a Richter story about a terminally ill woman who travels to Switzerland for an assisted suicide. In another, Richter is stalked by an über-nerd cell phone technician (the person responsible, we ultimately learn, for Ralf Tanner’s phone mix-up) who fantasizes about becoming a character in one of the celebrated writer’s stories. A woman mystery writer replaces Richter at the last minute

on a cultural junket to some vaguely definable former Soviet country, losing her cell phone power, and ultimately her identity, as she gets absorbed in the strange Kafka-esque landscape.

Identity, technology, celebrity and the strange ability we now have to both connect and disconnect instantaneously with huge portions of the globe are the themes that propel the novel. One character, a businessman, aided by the mutable A wise and witty look at powers of the phone and our obsession computer, begins a oncewith unthinkable celebrity, extramarital aftechnology fair, puts it best: “How strange and what that technology it means to has brought truly connect us into a world where there are with one no fixed places another. anymore. You speak out of nowhere, you can be anywhere, and because nothing can be checked, anything you choose to imagine is, at bottom, true.”

Terms like original and tour de force get bandied about a lot in the reviewer’s game, but Fame earns both these appellations. Daniel Kehlmann proves himself a 21st-century Italo Calvino, employing the kind of ironic wit and charm that great Italian writer brought to his last works. Fame is the perfect novel for our times—at once disjointed and cohesive, emphasizing our need to connect and our increasing inability to do so.

Fame

By Daniel Kehlmann Pantheon $24, 192 pages ISBN 9780307378712 Also available on audio

International TRANSLATION fiction

romance b y c h r i s t i e r i d g way

Heat of the moment With summer winding down and the school year gearing up, change is in the air—so check out what’s new in the world of romance.

Susan Andersen sets the pages steaming in her contemporary romance, Burning Up (HQN, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780373774982).

Macy O’James left Sugarville, Washington, with little more than a bad-girl reputation, but returns a decade later for just a few weeks.

Back in the family boardinghouse, Macy must confront some rude townspeople as well as her unwanted attraction to fire chief Gabriel Donovan. Macy’s usual method of

complicated.

The daughter he just learned he fathered recently moved in with him, and the rebellious teen has taken a liking to a beautiful family counselor, Audrey Sherrod, whose half-brother is one of the toddlers presumed to have been kidnapped decades ago. As Audrey and the girl get closer, J.D. also gets closer to Audrey—and to learning the identity of the murderer who may have close ties to her. As reluctant as the counselor and the investigator are to start something with each other, there is no ignoring the attraction, even as a killer comes closer. Tight twists and hairpin turns will keep readers racing through the pages.

Romance of the Month

handling the attention—dressing in sexy costumes sure to garner her even more notice—isn’t working because Gabe wants her out of her clothes . . . and he’s getting under her skin. There, he discovers the vulnerable heart she’s desperate to protect. Gabe was only looking for a good time with the bad girl, but the good times are great, and the only way in which Macy is “bad” is how badly he’s going to miss her when she leaves for L.A. Can these two face down their doubts about lasting love? Likable characters, plenty of sizzle and a charming secondary romance about an unlikely pair falling in love all come together in a winning story.

Chilling mystery A complex plot and creepy crime scenes make Beverly Barton’s Don’t Cry (Zebra, $7.99, 432 pages, ISBN 9781420110340) a shivery read. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent J.D. Cass is called when a woman who went missing days before is found murdered—and holding the much-older skeleton of a toddler. Could the child be one of those kidnapped during the “Baby Blue” spree of abductions 25 years before? When another woman goes missing, J.D.’s problems only intensify and his personal life gets more

J.K. Beck builds a dark, compelling world in When Blood Calls, the first in a paranormal trilogy. Prosecutor Sara Constantine celebrates a courtroom win by bringing home a handsome stranger. The next morning she realizes she might be in danger of falling in love with the man—and then she discovers he’s no man at all. When Sara is promoted to a new division, she learns there is a Shadow world of beings that must abide by another set of rules. Luke is one of those beings— a vampire—and her first task is to try him for murder. Luke feels the same intense attraction to Sara, but knows that even beyond his upcoming trial there is trouble ahead: She’s human, he’s not; she believes in the rule of law and he hunts down evil on his own; they’re both in danger of killers from their pasts.

Sexy, thrilling and teeming with weird creatures and unexpected alliances, this story will have readers eager for the next installment.

When Blood Calls

By J.K. Beck Bantam $7.99, 384 pages ISBN 9780440245773

Paranormal

by

Novel Reads

HARPERCOLLINS Born to Bite

by Lynsay Sands Legend has it that Armand Argeneau is a killer in the bedroom, but with all three of his late wives meeting unfortunate and untimely ends, is this sexy immortal a lover or a murderer? That’s what Eshe d’Aureus intends to find out. As an enforcer, it’s her job to bring rogue vampires to justice, even if the rogue in question makes her blood race red hot.

9780061474323, $7.99

The Bricklayer

by Noah Boyd

The clock is ticking. Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon knows that the solution will not be found by following the rules. It’s time to call in someone from her past, someone who has routinely handled the impossible—a loose cannon ex-agent fired for insubordination but still the very best she has ever seen.

It’s time to call in Steve Vail … The Bricklayer.

9780061827020, $9.99

The Echo of Violence

by Jordan Dane

When terrorists attack a missionary school, brutally killing their hostages and posting videos of the senseless murders online, time is running out.

Sentinels’ agent Alexa Marlowe is forced into an unlikely alliance with a relentless mercenary. But he is no stranger.

9780061474149, $7.99

Evidence of Murder

by Lisa Black

Jillian Perry has been found dead in the woods, leaving behind a husband of three weeks and a young daughter. Her body shows no visible marks, and the autopsy reveals no sign of foul play. Apparently it was a suicide—but something doesn’t feel right to forensic investigator Theresa MacLean, and she can’t let it go.

9780061544507, $7.99

Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed

by Tracy Anne Warren

Everyone knows the Byron brothers are “mad, bad and dangerous.” Now their sister shockingly discovers she’s the newest talk of the town when she marries the scandalous Earl of Gresham. Faced with a tragic loss, she’d sought comfort from him as a family friend. But soon consolation turned to passion, scandal—and a wedding!

9780061673443, $7.99

HarperCollins.com • AvonRomance.com

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columns CRAFTING YOUR PERSONAL STYLE If you sew—even just occasionally—you have scraps: bits of fabric too small to fool with but too gorgeous to get rid of. Whether left over from a big project or purpose-bought from an irresistible remnant bin, scraps happen. But what to do with them all? Sewing Bits and Pieces: 35 Projects Using Fabric Scraps (Wiley, $16.99, 180 pages, ISBN 9780470539248) shows precisely what. Author Sandi Henderson, a fabric and pattern designer, shares creative projects for the kitchen, bed, bath, crafts and parties, as well as wearables large and small for kids and adults. Even the teeniest strips can be pieced, appliquéd, fused and sewn to cre-

ate lovely stuff: fabric gift tags, a picnic quilt, foodie bags, a hanging organizer, t-shirt embellishments and more, including a fantastic cardigan makeover. Big illustrations and color photos offer compelling reasons to find even more scraps to work with, turning well-loved old things—say, vintage table linen or a child’s favorite outgrown outfits— into ingenious new ones.

VINTAGE KNITS

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Fortunately, The Ohio Knitting Mills Knitting Book: 26 Patterns Celebrating Four Decades of American Sweater Style (Artisan, $17.95, 168 pages, ISBN 9781579653996), by Steven Tatar with Denise Grollmus, does not require an interest in regional factory lore; this book is really a celebration of sweaters.

I don’t even knit, yet found myself reading the whole thing, ogling the groovy garments of yesteryear and wishing someone would knit a few for me. But first, some background: The Ohio Knitting Mills was, for 40 years, an American fashion giant.

They “created knitwear designs for department stores from Sears to Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as for hundreds of labels, from Van Heusen to Pendleton.” The book documents this history with archival photos and interviews, but the

lifestyles

cooking

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

main focus is a colorful timeline of sweaters: American life via v-necks, argyles, ponchos, tennis sweaters, beatnik wear and other iconic looks. Twenty-six vintage designs are organized by decade and reconfigured for today’s home knitter, both in the original color combinations and in “newer palettes geared to the modern eye.” Fascinating intros define each nifty pattern within its special framework, adding layers of cultural interest to a piece of Americana already fun to make and wear.

TOP PICK FOR LIFESTYLES Ah, what to wear? This tired question runs through the average woman’s head on a daily basis, but rarely gets an above-average answer. And even a full closet is no guarantee of style. Lloyd Boston, television’s style guru, answers with The Style Checklist: The Ultimate Wardrobe Essentials for You. Boston condenses 20 years of experience in the fashion industry into a refreshingly simple concept: “Less is modern.” He says we may already own all we need; the trick is to learn how clothes and accessories work best for our bodies and lifestyles.

He starts with categories—work, weekend, Saturday night, travel, entertaining and so on, plus two chapters for accessories—and within each he showcases the absolute essentials: for example, the white shirt, the navy blazer, the twinset, the party dress, the camel coat, the black pump. Selections are supported by persuasive, contextual descriptions, cross-referenced with “perfect partners” elsewhere in the book and peppered with advice on how to recognize the right fit, fabric and pattern for you.

The Style Checklist

By Lloyd Boston Atria $22.99, 256 pages ISBN 9781439160725

FASHION

by sybil PRATT

THE BIPARTISAN PASTRY CHEF President Obama calls Bill Yosses, the White House executive pastry chef, “the Crustmaster.”

I’m not sure what George W. Bush called him, but Yosses is obviously so skilled at making divine desserts that he crosses party lines with impunity. The Perfect Finish (Norton, $35, 286 pages, ISBN 9780393059533), his debut cookbook, written with Melissa Clark, showcases 80 of his most scrumptious creations, adapted here for us mere mortals. They’re organized by occasion, rather than by dessert category, making it easier to find that special something to serve at a brunch, a holiday lunch or a birthday dinner. Yosses says his recipes are “fairly simple,” but this is not

plish and what a home cook can do.

His recipes should be seen as a “distillation of knowledge,” classics and innovative combos (his Daube de Boeuf Bourguignonne is made with ox cheeks) to be carefully emulated or used as inspiration. This is serious, sophisticated cooking—no explanatory, comforting header notes, no “tips.” He tells it like it really is, and if you’re not up for serving your Bresse Pigeon with Pomme Fondant, Confit of Garlic and Mushroom Ravioli, just indulge in some rarified armchair cooking.

COOKBOOK OF THE MONTH

a collection of quick fixes; each dessert deserves your full attention.

Crumbly Apple and White Cheddar Scones star at brunch, chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies make great pick-me-ups and a chocolate-curlcovered Red Eye Devil’s Food Cake can take center stage anytime, as can an almond-crusted Linzertorte.

Yosses’ instructions are thorough, with embedded “Chef’s Notes,” and his headers have excellent behindthe-recipe explanations and tips on enhancing the fabulous flavors you’re about to create. Oh, the sweet places you’ll go!

RECIPES OF AN ICON Marco Pierre White is the urcelebrity chef, the British badboy-of-the-kitchen who terrorized customers and commis chefs (aka apprentices) with equal fervor. He’s also the first British chef to win three Michelin stars, and the only chef ever to give them back. Now his Wild Food from Land and Sea (Melville House, $24, 192 pages, ISBN 9781935554066), with 80 extraordinary recipes and nearly 80 more “basics,” sauces, stocks, purées and more, is available in the U.S. at long last. White is disarmingly honest, admitting there’s a wide gulf between what a pro, with staff and deep coffers, can accom-

Melissa Clark is a busy girl; she writes a weekly cooking column for the New York Times, assisted Bill Yosses with The Perfect Finish (see above) and now has a new, winning cookbook of her own. In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite is pure Melissa at her chatty, enthusiastic best. The stories that preface each recipe and chapter burble with her love of food, culinary improv and the memories that a dish conjures up. Melissa’s infectious attitude is one of joy and abandon, in the sense of giving your cooking-self over to the moment, to a sensational ingredient or to the need to indulge a craving. She’s grouped her recipes—all with excellent instructions—in an invitingly idiosyncratic way as she creates, recreates and embellishes one tempting dish after another: Buckwheat Polenta with Bacon-Sautéed Radicchio, Baked Flounder and Eggs, Pomegranate Roasted Carrots, Grilled Squid with Snail Butter, Seared Pork Chops with Kimchi, Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake and many more delights.

In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

By Melissa Clark Hyperion $27.50, 464 pages ISBN 9781401323769

COOKING

columns

Whodunit

by Bruce Tierney

A JAPANESE POLICE PROCEDURAL We have quite an international batch of books this month, with entries from such far-flung locales as South Africa, Iceland, Kyushu (Japan) and wartime Europe. Three are from long-time favorites, and the fourth, Villain (Pantheon, $25.95, 304 pages, ISBN 9780307378873), by Shuichi Yoshida, marks the Englishlanguage debut for the awardwinning Japanese author. Villain reads not unlike a series of in-depth police interviews concerning the suspicious death of a young woman, Yoshino Ishibashi, on a lonely mountain road. There is a narrative of sorts, but critical facts are supplied from several different, and occasionally conflicting, viewpoints.

Several potential suspects present themselves as the police investigate the

last few days of Yoshino’s life. Her computer and cell phone yield compelling evidence of intimate contact with several men, a side of Yoshino entirely unknown to her family and friends.

An earlier Yoshida novel, Park Life, won the coveted Akutagawa Award for literature, and reading Villain will certainly clue you in as to what all the stir is about. The book is translated skillfully by Philip Gabriel, who has also translated works by Haruki Murakami, Natsuo Kirino and Kenzaburo Oe, to name but a few.

While we’re on the subject of awards, Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason has a couple of major ones to his credit: the Glass Key award for Nordic literature and a Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger award. Once again, the English-speaking (and reading) world is a bit behind the curve: Of the 10 Indridason novels featuring the melancholic Inspector Erlendur, we are just now getting number six, 2007’s Hypothermia (Minotaur, $24.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780312569914).

This time out, Erlendur embarks on an unofficial investigation into what seems a garden-variety suicide.

Still, when the victim’s best friend brings Erlendur a tape to listen to, he sits up and takes notice, for it is an exceptionally eerie recording of a séance. Human nature is on display at its avaricious worst in Hypothermia, as the threads of three seemingly unrelated cases, two of them some 30 years cold, weave ever more tightly together. Fans of Indridason’s work (among whose ranks I count myself) will be happy to know that there are at least two more books in the pipeline; better late than never!

RUNNING AGAINST THE CLOCK

A killer on a crosscountry rampage.

Only she can stop him.

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“Corin is one of those writers who, years from now, other newcomers will be imitating.” —Booklist

10

OUT OF ICELAND

www.JoshuaCorin.com • www.MIRABooks.com

You are no doubt familiar with the television show “24,” in which events take place in real time, over the run of a one-day period. The pace is relentless, and the tension palpable, right? Well, condense a similar level of pressure/anxiety/ conflict into just over half that time, and you will begin to get an idea of the heart-thumping pace of Deon Meyer’s latest novel, Thirteen Hours (Atlantic Monthly, $24, 384 pages, ISBN 9780802119582). On holiday in South Africa, American tourist Rachel Anderson witnesses the brutal murder of her traveling companion; she takes off running, getting just the slightest jump on the killers. They have the home court advantage, of course, but Rachel is canny and athletic, and for the time being she is able to elude them. She frets that the police are not to be trusted, though; it is up to homicide detective Benny Griesel to win her confidence and secure her safety before the bad guys (some of whom may indeed be cops) take her off the board.

Thirteen Hours is the second book to feature the recovering alcoholic detective, now with 156 days of

sobriety to his credit; will he live to see day 157?

One of the “do not miss” books of this (or any) fall!

Mystery of the Month Readers of a certain age may remember English novelist Nevil Shute, whose tales of wartime Europe struck a chord with thousands of fans, propelling him onto the bestseller lists numerous times during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. His plot lines were crisply delineated, his characters imbued with dignity whatever their station in life and his dialogue second-to-none.

Fast forward some 60 years, and contemporary author James R. Benn seems to have taken up the mantle of Nevil Shute with his WWII stories featuring Boston cop Billy Boyle, a freshly commissioned first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, serving under General Eisenhower, who happens to be his uncle. Boyle is a hero in the Shute vein, a truly decent guy caught up in a situation over which he has little control.

Rag and Bone, the fifth in the Billy Boyle series, finds our hero in Blitz-era London, hot on the trail of a killer who murdered a Russian attaché. Trouble is, one of the prime suspects is Billy’s good friend, “Kaz” Kaziemierz, who has saved Billy’s bacon on more than one occasion.

Graceful plotting, a strong supporting cast and a modern take on ’40s dialogue all come together to make the Billy Boyle series one of the finest—perhaps the finest—of contemporary period mysteries. This is not James R. Benn’s first Mystery of the Month; odds are good it won’t be his last. As a plus, the series’ cover designs, reminiscent of War Bonds posters, are suitable for framing!

Rag and Bone

By James R. Benn Soho Press $25, 320 pages ISBN 9781569478493

Detective fiction

meet MEGHAN McCAIN Q: W hat’s the title of your new book?

These are not your fairy Godmothers.

Q: H ow would you describe the book?

Q: W e have to ask: what’s the dirtiest thing about politics?

Q: A nd the sexiest thing?

Q: What’s your favorite memory from the 2008 campaign trail?

Q: What issues are most important to you as a young Republican?

Q: T ell us one thing about yourself that readers would be surprised

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to learn.

Q: I f you could change places with one person for a day, who would it be?

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DIRTY SEXY POLITICS Currently a columnist for The Daily Beast, Meghan McCain worked for her father’s 2008 presidential campaign and blogged about her experiences as “McCain Blogette.” She offers a candid look at life on the campaign trail and her views as a moderate conservative in Dirty Sexy Politics (Hyperion, $23.99, 208 pages, ISBN 9781401323776).

McCain lives in New York City.

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Immediate New York Times Bestseller To Be a Major Motion Picture Starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess

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Join the discussion at ReadingGroupCenter.com! Set up phone chats with your book club, browse inside the books, print reading group guides, find author tour schedules, watch videos, and more.

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/RGCenter • Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/ReadingGroupCenter Available Wherever Books and eBooks are Sold

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interviews

emma donoghue

Interview by Katherine Wyrick

LIFE BEHIND A LOCKED DOOR

I

magine living within the confines of a 12x12 room, the only natural light coming from a skylight, a television your only link to the outside world. That’s just what Irish-Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue does in Room, a book so original and daring it recently landed on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is his entire world, where he was born and where he lives with Ma, where he learns and plays. It is also where, at night, Jack crawls into Wardrobe to sleep, and to hide when Old Nick visits his mother (when the bed squeaks). For Jack, Room is the only home he’s ever known, but for Ma it’s a prison where she’s been held captive for seven years after being abducted at the age of 19.

If this sounds like the stuff of tabloids, luridly sensational or gimmicky, in Donoghue’s talented hands it’s anything but. Told from Jack’s perspective, Room turns the usual victim/survivor story on its head, transforming it into something else entirely—a meditation on the nature of reality and a testament to the ferocity of a mother’s love.

In a conversation from her home in London, Ontario, Donoghue readily admits, in a lilting Irish brogue, that readers might at first balk at the idea of a five-year-old narrator, but believes that they will “relax into it after a few pages.”

A native of Dublin, Donoghue received a doctorate in English literature from the University of Cambridge before launching her writing career. In 1998, she moved to Canada, where she and her partner are raising their two young children.

Her son was five while she was writing Room, and she says, “The dialogue came very easily because I know what they’re like—five-yearold boys in particular. I wanted to get Jack at that moment when [children] suddenly move from the very concrete, ‘where’s my next snack coming from,’ to the big questions. At that age they have this astonishing ability to tackle abstract issues and then swing right back to concerns about toys.”

Donoghue perfectly captures that liminal stage. Jack’s voice is wholly believable and pitch-perfect, and in him Donoghue has created a narrator who is endearing without

being cloying, one whose phrasing, thoughts and insights are by turns touching and astute.

Coming across as sentimental or cutesy was, Donoghue says, her biggest fear. “Getting the readers to care is a challenge with any novel, but with this novel I knew they would care when they worked out what the situation was, so then my challenge was to rein in the sentiment.”

A writer of literary historical novels (Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Life Mask) Donoghue admits that Room marks a dramatic Told in the departure for pitch-perfect her. “I’ve often been invoice of a spired by fact five-year-old in the past, boy raised but it’s never happened in captivity, to me in the Donoghue’s present. I stunning novel happened to offers a unique hear about Fritzl case portrait of one the in Austria, mother’s fierce but that just gave me the devotion. hook, the notion of a child raised in a room not realizing that there was an outside world.

That’s as much as I took from it.”

(Interestingly, Donoghue had already completed the novel before the Jaycee Dugard case in California came to light.)

“I read up about a lot of those kinds of cases, but I deliberately kept the story in my book very different from all of them because I really didn’t want the book to be in any way like true crime,” she says.

“I was interested in boiling down those situations to the essence of confinement and captivity.”

Donoghue stresses that she never intended for Room to be a realistic depiction of life in captivity. To that effect, she deliberately made Ma and Jack’s living conditions far better than in real-life cases, mak-

ing their quarters an above-ground building with proper light and ventilation. She also didn’t want Room to “read like a treatise on male violence.”

“I didn’t want it to be about child abuse or about appalling neglect,” Donoghue says. “I wanted it to be just about the locked door. What if everything else is fine, but you’re locked away from the world?”

At times, Room has the feel of a macabre fairy tale—like a modernday Rumpelstiltskin. “There’s no denying those overtones,” the author says. “I deliberately chose a common name for Jack because I wanted him to be like a hero in a fairy tale.” She’s quick to add, however, that though Room can be read on many levels, she’d rather readers understand it as a “real” story with authentic, true-to-life characters.

Above all, she explains, she was “trying to create a kind of test case for a mother’s love.” Strange as it may sound, Donoghue says that the simplicity of the story—a mother and child spending uninterrupted time together—is what has resonated with readers most. “Oddly enough, people have responded in a kind of nostalgic way. Nobody wants to idealize imprisonment, but many of us have such complicated lives, and we try to fit parenting in alongside work and socializing. . . . We try and have so many lives at once, and we run ourselves ragged.”

“Today parenting is so self-conscious and worried, so I wanted to ask the question, how minimally could you do it? One parent in one room. Would that do?”

Room seems to say yes, at least for a time—and with a young, resourceful mother like Ma. (A note to all mothers: prepare to feel

inadequate as you marvel at Ma’s mothering skills and instincts.) “She really civilizes and humanizes Jack; he’s not a feral child,” says Donoghue. “She passes along her cultural knowledge to him, from religion to tooth-brushing to rules.”

Despite limited space and resources, by day, the two engage in “Phys Ed,” cooking lessons, model-making, storytelling, crafts, and standing under their skylight and screaming (for help, though Jack thinks it’s a game). Although they watch television for education and distraction, Ma limits its use, warning that it can turn your brain to mush.

As a reader, it’s easy to be lulled by the rhythm of their days until the horror of their situation reasserts itself (and the harrowing second half of the book begins). “It is a nightmare for Ma, but she’s managed to create an idyll for Jack within it, so she benefits too. She gets to escape from her situation by entering into this fantasy that they live in this world of only two people,” Donoghue says. “In a way they are their own society.”

This unique relationship gets right to the heart of Room—a book that illuminates the intimate bond between mother and child, and finds beauty in the unbearable.

room

By Emma Donoghue Little, Brown $24.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780316098335 Also available on audio

Fiction

13

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interviews

jonathan franzen Interview by Alden Mudge

© GREG MARTIN

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Franzen’s ‘Freedom’ rings true

ine years have passed since the publication of Jonathan Franzen’s monumental novel The Corrections. That book, a National Book Award winner, remains one of the best and most popular American works of literary fiction of this new century. And it casts a long shadow over any piece of fiction Franzen subsequently chooses to write.

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“The disorientations of going from relative obscurity to relative well-knownness were obviously daunting,” the author acknowledges during a call to his home in Santa Cruz, California. Franzen “got involved with a Santa Cruz girl,” the writer Kathy Chetkovich. As a result, each year the pair spend a month in the winter and most of the summer on the West Coast. In New York, Franzen writes in a small, sparsely furnished studio apartment. In Santa Cruz, while school is out of session, UC Santa Cruz offered him office space.

Addresssing the personal impact of the success of The Corrections, Franzen says, “I have the kind of nature that needs to prove that it wasn’t any fluke, that I can do it again. So the pressure from the outside was combined with an enormous internal pressure.”

The pressure has served Franzen extremely well. His new novel, Freedom, is different from The Corrections but is, in its own way, as good as its predecessor. The novel concerns the travails of the Berglunds, a seemingly perfect, progressive,

middle-class family whose lives fall apart shortly after 9/11.

Freedom is a sort of contemporary epic, part tragedy and part comedy, whose basic story is swiftly outlined in the novel’s pitch-perfect opening section, “Good Neighbors.” There we meet the young Berglunds, early gentrifiers of the Ramsey Hill section of St. Paul, Minnesota. Patty, a former college basketball star, is a self-deprecating, “sunny carrier of sociocultural pollen,” so devoted to parenting her children Jessica and Joey as to excite envy among her neighbors. Walter, a “generous and smiling” young lawyer who rides a commuter bike to work and spends weekends rehabbing the family’s Victorian, is thought by neighbors to be “greener than Greenpeace.”

The first fissure in the family façade develops as their entrepreneurial and surprisingly self-possessed son Joey rebels against his father’s authority, then falls in love with the girl next door, the daughter of a jilted mistress of a local politician, and finally moves out of the Berglund household and into

the considerably more conservative and lower-class home of his girlfriend. By the time Joey finally heads off to college, the family is in tatters. They leave St. Paul and head to Washington, D.C., where Walter has taken a job with a foundation devoted to saving the habitat of the Cerulean Warbler, whose sole funding comes from an energy magnate named Vin Haven—who is, as it turns out, a close associate of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The remainder of the novel drills deeper into the family’s frustrations, competitions and betrayals, and the moral and political compromises that divide these family members and their friends and lovers. Franzen’s characters are not entirely likable people, and there is more than enough sadness and disappointment to make Freedom a difficult book to read. And yet, through the sheer force of Franzen’s abilities—his mastery of tone and voice, his sharp understanding of family dynamics and his subtle sense of humor—Freedom rings with meaning and pulses with recognizable contemporary life. In the

Sherman was wrong about war

despairingly acknowledge what is happening. Neither of those make for good fiction. So I wanted a character [Walter] who might be lovable for other reasons, who could also embody some of the environmentalist rage that I was certainly feeling during the Bush years and am certainly feeling now with what’s happening in the Gulf.”

Yet the wily, manipulative energy baron Vin Haven is, in Franzen’s characterization, a pretty good guy.

“It’s very hard to make fiction out of political anger,” he explains. “When you’re speaking politically, you really can’t allow in the possibility that you are the problem.

“I have the But of course we are all the kind of problem. The nature that flip side of needs to that is that the people we see prove that it as the problem wasn’t any in our political fluke, that way of thinking are also people I can do it too.” again.”

Franzen’s adherence to the dictates of good fiction at the expense of ideology is embodied in a set of psychologically, morally and, yes, politically complex characters. The novel, he says, “only took a year to actually write the pages. The eight years preceding that were spent coming up with interesting, difficult characters who I could nonetheless love.”

Whether readers will also love these characters remains to be seen, but they will certainly appreciate Franzen’s ability to transmute the dross of contemporary American life into the gold of Freedom.

Freedom

FidelisBooks.com

LYDIA STARTS OVER IN

Charm, Ohio

Come to Ohio’s Amish Country along with Lydia King, a widowed mother, who moves to the village of Charm and attracts a secret admirer.

Will Lydia pursue an impossible love?

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By Jonathan Franzen, FSG, $28, 576 pages, ISBN 9780374158460, also available on audio

978-1-60260-063-8

end, the novel is oddly and surprisingly uplifting.

In conversation, Franzen is extremely reluctant to speak about his weighty novel’s multiple levels of meaning. It’s as if he doesn’t want to intrude upon a reader’s freedom to decide for herself. Asked what he’d like readers to think about when they finish reading Freedom, he demurs, saying, “I’m just hoping people have an experience with the book. I want the pages to turn without effort. I think that’s probably more important than ever. Because we are competing with so many other media, the challenge is to try to do something interesting and halfway serious, within the context of easily distracted people. I mean, I am an easily distracted reader. If the book’s not doing it, there are a lot of other things I could be doing.”

On the other hand, Franzen is astonishingly, even courageously forthcoming about the personal demons that at some subterranean level inform Freedom.

“Even though The Corrections drew directly on some experiences I had when my father was dying,” Franzen says, “it didn’t get into the real stuff with me and my parents, and it steered entirely clear of my rather long marriage. Even though there’s nothing in the new book that actually happened to me—there’s not a scene, there’s not an incident that is from my own life—to go a little way into the shameful heart of my fraught relationship with my mom, to go a little way into the kind of things, again shameful, that happen in a long marriage, was really the core adventure.”

“And I might also say that not having kids was something I was dealing with in the years when the book was coming together. Specifically it manifested itself in a kind of rage against young people that I was feeling some years ago. So it was important for me to try to create a young character [Joey] who I could love and forgive—if only to be rid of an anger that I knew really had nothing to do with its object.”

Then there is the thread of Franzen’s political and environmental anger. “I’m an old environmental writer,” Franzen says “Yet the environment is just about the hardest thing there is to write about. The news is bad, and your rhetorical options are either to shrilly and unrealistically decry what other people are doing, or to guiltily and

It’s not hell But It’s close

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15

interviews

scott simon I n t e r v i e w b y J ay MacD o n a l d

© WIll O’Leary

THE BLESSINGS OF A BLENDED FAMILY

S

ince Scott Simon has chronicled the American experience for years as the host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” it seems only fitting that he should apply his prizewinning reportorial skills to a personal experience that has enriched his life beyond his wildest dreams: adopting a child.

In his new memoir Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, the congenial moderator invites us into the family he and his wife Caroline created when they adopted two Chinese daughters based on little more than thumb-size snapshots. Being a gracious host, he also shares other adoption stories within his circle of friends that includes sportswriter Frank Deford, Freakonomics author Steve Levitt and celebrated fashion designer Alexander Julian.

Elise, now 7, and Paulina, a precocious 3½, have become the center of Simon’s world. “I am the spoiler-inchief,” admits the proud papa without hesitation or remorse. Despite the fact that he and his wife saved

16

their daughters from what he calls “a life too terrible to contemplate,” it is Simon who feels lucky.

Having failed to start a family “in the traditional Abraham-and-Sarahbegat manner,” the Simons submitted to the prodding protocols of a fertility clinic, without success.

“At some point, we just looked at each other and thought, why are we pouring money into a scientific procedure to create children when we know there are millions of children in this world already who need love?” he recalls. “I wish that people would take a look at adoption early on in the process of trying to have a family rather than as a last resort.”

Their search for a family led them

to China, land of the controversial one-child-per-family policy that has placed a premium on male offspring at the heartbreaking expense of tens of thousands of abandoned little girls each year. That it took 18 months to adopt Elise and two years to adopt Paulina frustrated “Why are Simon beyond we pouring words.

“The Chimoney into nese permit an a scientific astonishingly procedure small percentage of orphaned to create and abandoned children children to be when there adopted,” he are millions says. “To me, that is absoof children lutely flabberin this world gasting. The already who government policy on adopneed love?” tion is addressing political, economic and social goals that have almost nothing to do with the best interests of children. Now that we have two little girls from China who are part of our family, we need to speak out about it.”

Simon describes the anxious hours of waiting in a Chinese hotel room before they could take their daughter Elise in their arms.

Impending fatherhood brought its share of doubts.

“I love children, but I understood even then that there is a real difference between playing peek-a-boo in a public place and then being able to get up and go about your business,” he recalls. “I knew I could be a pretty successful play partner, but I think I was concerned whether I would be a good and devoted parent. But the transformation was pretty quick.”

The Simon sisters are in most ways typical American kids; they attend public school, prefer ice cream with extra sprinkles and believe in the Tooth Fairy. “They’re very, very bright,” Simon crows, then quickly adds: “One of the other advantages of adoption is that you can brag on your children without any concern that you’re congratulating your own genetic contribution.”

Still, he’s aware that childhood can slip by faster than a half-hour newscast. “The older they get, the sharper their questions get about not just what happened to them but what happens to other people there,” he says.

Those are questions the Simon family will tackle together.

“I’m sometimes amazed today that people can get scolded for using a paper cup and throwing it away and yet somehow we haven’t fathomed all the youngsters in the world who need homes,” he says. “There are at least 15 million children who have been orphaned and abandoned. We’ve really come to think of it as one of the great unfinished endeavors of the world.”

It is Simon’s fervid hope that the joy he has found in adopting two daughters from a faraway land will in some small way inspire others to do the same.

Baby, we were meant for each other

By Scott Simon Random House $22, 192 pages ISBN 9781400068494

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BEVERLY LEWIS!

In this riveting series debut, Beverly Lewis—the top name in Amish fiction—gives you an open door into the hidden world of the Lancaster County Amish.

As two Amish sisters find themselves on the fringes of their beloved community, will they find the love and acceptance they long for?

The Thorn by Beverly Lewis The Rose Trilogy # 1

On Sale Date: Sept. 7, 2010

“No one does Amish-based inspirationals better than Lewis.”—Booklist

www.bethanyhouse.com A Division of Baker Publishing Group

features

inspirational fiction

By Dee Ann Grand

SETTINGS CHANGE, BUT FAITH REMAINS

G

ood Christian fiction does what all great fiction does—it introduces us to characters and stories that make us think, feel and reflect. And this year’s crop is no different. From a retelling of a classic biblical story to a modern take on faith and family, our selections will have you reading late into the night.

A versatile writer, Walter Wangerin Jr. has written fiction and nonfiction for adults and children.

In Naomi and Her Daughters (Zondervan, $24.99, 228 pages, ISBN 9780310327349), Wangerin utilizes the books of Judges and Ruth to boldly retell an often-marginalized biblical story. Not a child’s Sunday-school version, Naomi’s life story is sometimes a tough read; the environment was harsh, the language rough, and women and children were treated as a second (or third) class during the Old Testament era. Still, timeless issues like murder, war, heartbreak and, of

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course, the power of love, manage to come to the forefront. Wangerin is adept at neither glorifying nor mollifying this pivotal biblical character, who changes not only the lives around her, but also the course of an entire nation. This novel might forever change the way you think about brave, heroic Naomi.

SMALL-TOWN HAPPENINGS River Jordan’s The Miracle of Mercy Land (Waterbrook, $13.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780307457059) is set before WWII when the name Hitler was unfamiliar to most.

Mercy, a preacher’s daughter raised

in rural Alabama, moves up to the “big city,” Bay City—not much of a city at all. There she lands a job as an assistant editor to Doc, head of The Banner, the largest newspaper around. And just as world events are about to change everything, Doc discovers an omnipotent, mysterious book that details the choices each citizen of Bay City has made, paths taken and paths abandoned. Mercy is brought in on Doc’s overwhelming discovery, which forces her to make hard decisions, ones that will determine causes and effects for the rest of her life.

Jordan’s writing is as smooth and

Southern as molasses, all the way to the last page. And there the reader, like several of the characters in this novel, will leave with a sense of wonderment at how life might have changed if we had made different choices along the way.

ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY Kit Livingstone has led a terribly humdrum life. Even his girlfriend is dull. But soon all that changes when, with the help of his deceased great-grandfather, Kit is catapulted into worlds unknown in The Skin Map (Thomas Nelson, $24.99, 448 pages, ISBN 9781595548047), the

When tragedy steals her future, can Leah learn to trust again?

WE ARE FAMILY

first book of the Bright Empires series by prolific writer Stephen R. Lawhead. Dynamic settings are mixed with unpredictable adventures as we follow Kit through his new life, which includes parallel worlds and time travel. Most interesting is the lost map many are battling to find, the map that is crucial to traveling the cosmos and, more importantly, getting back to Earth. And yes, it’s tattooed on the mapmaker. But soon the reader discovers that, as intriguing as the map is, that’s not the real prize. It’s only square one. Although some of the characters seem a bit underdeveloped, this fantasy adventure is a terrific foundation for the next books coming in the series.

AN EPIC LOVE TRIANGLE Valeria’s Cross (Abingdon, $14.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9781426702150), by Kathi Macias and Susan Wales, has everything a love story should have: clashing religions, adultery, murder and betrayal. That pretty much describes Valeria’s newly arranged marriage, too. The co-authors create authentic kings and countries, castles and bravery in this tale of a thirdcentury Roman marriage. Against panoramic settings and woven with accurately portrayed history, the story centers on Valeria, the young daughter of a Roman emperor. She falls in love with a captain of the Theban Legion who is murdered

by Galerius for being a Christian.

Soon Valeria is caught in a political nightmare and is forced to marry the man who murdered her true love. Strong-willed Valeria has many hurdles to overcome, not least the challenge of becoming a loving wife to a man she despises. A strong thread throughout this tale is how Valeria, like most of us, struggles with her beliefs when life hits hard.

This is a story of how faith and love can overcome even the most impossible hardships.

Carla Stewart’s debut novel, Chasing Lilacs (FaithWords, $13.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780446556552), plunges right into serious life challenges, including some 1950s methods of dealing with mental illness, suicide and painful coming-of age traumas. But overshadowing all that is a warm, compelling tale with characters who will stay with you for quite a while. Sammie Tucker, who lives in a small town in Texas, is forced to grow up fast. Her mom has, as they used to say to hide the shame, “nerve problems,” something that keeps Sammie questioning her own emotional health long after her mother’s suicide. Full of unanswered questions, Sammie has to learn how to trust and love again.

Stewart’s storytelling has readers feeling the Texas midday sun, smelling whiffs of lilacs and remembering the taste of Ovaltine. Those who lived during the 1950s will have delightful flashbacks, and those who didn’t will get a true glimpse into that era. All will identify with Sammie and the friends and family who deeply influence her search for the truth about her family—and herself.

n

Available Wherever Books Are Sold

savor the moment In Billy Coffey’s Snow Day (FaithWords, $18.99, 208 pages, ISBN 9780446568265), Peter Boyd is an ordinary man who learns to look at even the most insignificant things in life just a bit differently. Against the setting of a surprise snowfall, Peter’s cozy world is turned upside down when he hears the dreadful D word at work: downsizing. This news, coupled with an unplanned day off, forces him to move a little slower and look beyond the shallows. Each chapter, a story within itself, allows us to visit a simple town to meet lively characters, each worth taking the time to get to know. It’s a heartwarming story about how God speaks to us in the most unexpected ways, even when we aren’t paying attention. Snow Day is a well-written reminder: Don’t wait for a detour to force you to pause and savor life’s little moments. Savor them now.

“The Confirmation is only part fiction—the issues are as real as a massive heart attack.”

—John Ashcroft, Former U.S. Attorney General

FidelisBooks.com

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H E A R T � S T O P P I N G � S U S P E N S E � A N D � I N T R I G U E

The M Th Malacca l C Conspiracy i 9780310272151 • $14.99

P d t Predator 9780310250661 • $14.99

D it Deceit 9780310276449 • $14.99

From Don Brown, author of the Navy Justice series, comes the story of a plot to a�ack civilian oil tankers and finance a nuclear a�ack. Can Navy JAG officers foil the conspiracy before disaster strikes?

In Predator, a page-turning suspense novel by New York Times bestselling author Terri Blackstock, a killer stalks an online social network.

Seatbelt Suspense® author, Brandilyn Collins, presents a harrowing, standalone novel of a disappearance and a woman’s quest to put a killer behind bars.

H E A R T � T U G G I N G � F A I T H � A N D � I N S P I R A T I O N

Seeds S d off S Summer 9780310292760 • $10.99

Li L Life f iin D Defi fiance 9780310278382 • $14.99

A Ma�er of Character 9780310258070 • $14.99

Deborah Vogts’ second book in the Seasons of the Tallgrass series examines a former rodeo queen’s realization that even the most dire of circumstances can turn into seeds of hope.

Book three in Mary DeMuth’s Defiance Texas Trilogy reflects a choice we all face: reveal our secrets or bury them forever and live with the consequences.

In the Sisters of Bethlehem Springs third book, Robin Lee Hatcher tells the story of a dime novelist re-examining the power of her words and reconsidering the direction of her life.

New Fiction On Sale Now!

reviews

FICTION The Lady Matador’s Hotel

APE HOUSE

EXPLORING ANIMAL INSTINCTS

By Cristina García Scribner $24, 224 pages ISBN 9781439181744

Literary fiction

Review by deborah donovan

Readers young and old are attracted to books that explore the mysterious and emotionally powerful human-animal bond, from Lassie Come Home to The Yearling, from Black Beauty to Seabiscuit. Sara Gruen’s affinity for the animal world lies at the core of her three earlier novels, including the best-selling Water for Elephants, which explored the life of a Depression-era circus and the animal caretaker who finds solace in both the human and animal companionship he discovers there.

In Ape House, Gruen furthers her study of this unique bond, this time portraying a group of six bonobo apes housed in the fictional Great Ape Language Lab in Kansas City and the humans who either come to love them or seek to profit from their surprisingly advanced communication skills. Led by Bonzi, the matriarch and undisputed leader, the bonobo group includes Sam, the charismatic oldest male, Jelani, an adolescent

By Sara Gruen, Spiegel & Grau, $26, 320 pages, show-off, and Makena, “Jelani’s biggest fan,” who is pregnant and due ISBN 9780385523219, also available on audio any day. Isabel Duncan is a research scientist overseeing the bonobos and their unique ability to communicate via lexigrams on their computers, supplemented by American Sign Language. She actually feels safer and more loved in the presence of her bonobo charges than with most humans.

Gruen enlivens this charming story of their emotional bonding with multiple villains—including Isabel’s fiancé, the head of the Great Ape Language Lab, who she discovers has a history of animal cruelty, not to mention he’s a purveyor of porn who sees the bonobos as the perfect stars for his new reality TV show, enticing viewers with their healthy sex lives 24 hours a day. Ape House turns into a romp, but Gruen never loses the thread of the enviable bond Isabel has nurtured with her ape friends, as evidenced by the frantic message Makena taps on the TV show computer as she goes into labor: “make Isabel come.”

Gruen undertook extensive linguistics studies in preparation for this novel, and was then invited to be one of the few visitors to the real-life Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where six bonobos and six orangutans are housed. She describes that experience as “magical”—a word that could be used to describe her new novel as well.

The Widower’s Tale

By Julia Glass Pantheon $25.95, 416 pages ISBN 9780307377920 Also available on audio

Literary fiction

Fans of Julia Glass have come to love her stories of family relationships and the complexity of life’s small moments, most notably in Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award. Both funny and heartbreaking, her fourth novel will leave readers examining their own choices and priorities.

The Widower’s Tale is the story of Percy Darling, a 70-year-old man who has lived for decades in the same house in the same Massachusetts town. He has been a widow for 32 years, since his wife drowned in the pond behind their home. Percy

raised their daughters Clover and Trudy alone, never loving another woman.

When Percy allows the progressive preschool Elves & Fairies to take up residence in the barn in his backyard, life changes in unexpected ways. Clover, who has recently left her husband and children in New York, works at the school.

Trudy’s son Robert, a student at Harvard, helps construct a tree house for the school along with Guatemalan lawn-care worker Celestino, an illegal immigrant. Most surprisingly, Percy falls in love. His lover is Sarah, a 51-year-old mother at the school.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Glass’ novel is that she writes convincingly from multiple points of view, classes and stations in life. The story is told in four alternating voices: Percy, who is at the center of the narrative; Robert; Celestino; and Ira, a young gay man who teaches at Elves & Fairies, and who is newly employed after a damaging experience at another

preschool.

A major theme of The Widower’s Tale is that of “shifting shape,” a description Percy gives to his newly populated barn, but which also can apply to Glass’ characters. For many years satisfied with solitude, Percy starts to laugh and love more as he gets to know Sarah—although he does not lose his sarcastic sense of humor or his old-fashioned sensibility. Robert confronts the demands of friendship and the authenticity of his convictions when he becomes involved with a radical environmental action group, the DOGS (“Denounce Our Greedy Society”). Celestino acknowledges his unrooted life when he revisits his first love. Ira faces the cynic inside of him and tries to embrace what he has.

The reader, in turn, will embrace these wonderfully developed characters as they transform and adapt.

Satisfying and touching, The Widower’s Tale is a novel to remember and cherish.

Cristina García, the much-lauded author of Dreaming in Cuban, has been most frequently compared to Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. There are hints of both authors in her latest novel, but The Lady Matador’s Hotel gives a more substantial nod to Bel Canto than anything else. Like Ann Patchett’s modern masterpiece, The Lady Matador’s Hotel watches a diverse group of international figures interact in the wake of political turmoil.

The setting this time is Central America, and the heroine is not an opera singer but, most unusually, a female matador in town for a much-hyped fight. Suki Palacios—a half-Mexican, half-Japanese Californian who abandoned her medical studies to follow in the footsteps of her bullfighting grandfather—is the compelling focal point around whom García builds an intriguing cast of characters, all of whom are either staying at, employed by or relevant to the hotel where Suki is a guest. A Korean businessman contemplates suicide in the honeymoon suite where he is staying with his pregnant mistress; a troubled American couple tries to bond with their newly adopted daughter; a German lawyer with a complicated agenda facilitates the adoption; and an arrogant army colonel tries to pursue Suki while a waitress, formerly a guerrilla, plots her revenge against him. Tension at the hotel escalates in the wake of Suki’s fight as the characters become more and more entwined, showcasing the global reaches of conflict in this unnamed but very real place.

While García’s novel lacks the absolute urgency of Patchett’s, she writes with the same clear, lyrical prose that has earned her earlier novels so much praise. With a particular flair for detail, she creates distinct characters with endearing quirks that make this imaginative novel come vividly to life.

—Eliza Borné

—Rebecca Shapiro

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reviews Juliet

By Anne Fortier Ballantine $25, 464 pages ISBN 9780345516107 Also available on audio

Debut fiction

One need not be a devotee of Shakespeare to appreciate Romeo and Juliet. The iconic love story, based on Italian lore, caught fire with audiences in the 1590s; more than 400 years later, forbidden romance and family drama resonate just as clearly with audiences today.

Author Anne Fortier puts her own twist on the tale of “star-cross’d lovers” with her debut, Juliet. She brings to light events of the 14th century, starring feuding families Tolomei and Salimbeni—characters who are believed to have inspired Shakespeare’s Capulets and Montagues. Chapters oscillate between

Death is no escape …

FICTION Romeo and Juliet in the year 1340 and the book’s main character, the contemporary Julie Jacobs.

Julie, who makes her living directing Shakespearian drama at a summer camp in Virginia, commences the adventure of a lifetime when she receives news that the aunt who raised her has passed away. Julie’s inheritance is a letter, penned by Aunt Rose, that alludes to a fortune awaiting her in Italy if she is willing to treasure hunt. Equipped with a key to a safety deposit box that once belonged to her mother, Julie heads for the Tuscan hills. The letter cautions her to travel under the guise of her given name, Giulietta Tolomei.

Julie’s long-lost identity is news to her. The further she digs into her family history and uncovers her relationship to the Juliet that inspired the litany of literature, the more thrilling her quest becomes. In Siena, she is pursued by thugs, duped and drugged, and strung along into her own seemingly ill-fated romance. There’s no end to the list of ruffians who pop up, convinced that Julie knows the whereabouts of ancient riches.

Fortier’s ambitious story merges past with present in a rare feat of seamless writing. Based on historical fact and poetic license, Juliet is a fast-paced, sumptuous read. Fortier’s razor-sharp framing of time and insight into her characters make the wholly original Juliet so much more than just another adaptation.

a businessman works 80 hours a week and becomes dependent on alcohol. Other characters have a gift for happiness: The psychiatrist encounters laughing, impoverished people at a picnic and wonders how they can overlook their own suffering and experience pleasure.

Most notably, a very ill friend of the psychiatrist is able to forget that she is dying, enjoy her final days and inspire the people around her.

Hector and the Search for Happiness turns psychological research into a fast-paced, enchanting story.

Lelord himself is a psychiatrist, and his interest in the human mind is infectious. He writes as if he were telling a bedtime story—calmly, authoritatively. His story makes you ask: Am I happy? How could I change to make myself happier?

Already an international hit, Hector and the Search for Happiness will be turned into a feature film in 2011. Fans of Eat, Pray, Love and The Elegance of the Hedgehog won’t want to miss this gem of a book.

—Dan Barrett

The Gendarme

By Mark T. Mustian Putnam $25.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780399156342

Literary fiction

—Lizza Connor Bowen

Hector and the Search for Happiness

By François Lelord Penguin $14, 176 pages ISBN 9780143118398 Also available on audio

General fiction

See back of the book ad for To Have and to Kill (on sale 12/28/10), Mary Jane Clark’s new wedding cake hardcover mystery and an exciting sweeps with the Crystal Coast, North Carolina’s Southern Outer banks.

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AvonBooks.com

In François Lelord’s utterly charming Hector and the Search for Happiness, a psychiatrist wants to know what makes people happy.

He visits friends and keeps a list of observations—comparing your toys with a friend’s toys can make you unhappy, sun and sand can make anyone happy, happiness is caring for the people you love. Wealth and status seem to hurt some of the psychiatrist’s friends; for example,

Every decade or so, I find a novel that I sense, just by reading the basic description, will become unforgettable; after reading only 20 pages of The Gendarme, my impression was confirmed with great force. For this decade, and this reader, The Gendarme is that extraordinary, unforgettable novel, set during the Armenian genocide, a divisive, ever-evolving controversy among nations.

When he first looks into Araxie Marashlian’s eyes, one blue, one green, Ahmet Khan knows immediately that her effect upon him will be lasting. Seven decades later, when he is dying at the age of 90, she remains unforgettable. Ahmet, a Muslim gendarme guarding the exodus of Armenians out of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and Araxie, one of thousands of Christian Armenians forced to walk

more than a thousand miles toward Armenia, are as mismatched as her exotic eyes.

A first-time novelist, Mark T. Mustian made the brilliant artistic decision to develop two disparate narratives in alternate chapters: the progress of Ahmet’s battle with a fatal disease in America in the present and the progression of the death march of Araxie’s people until they bog down in Aleppo in Syria in the past.

Scenes set in the present, mostly in the hospital, reveal Ahmet’s fears as a dying 90-year-old and his strained relationship with his daughter. Scenes in the past, during the horrendous march out of Anatolia and into the ancient city of Aleppo, dramatize his faltering efforts to win Araxie’s love and his conflict with Mustapha, a vicious fellow gendarme. But from the first few pages, Mustian meshes Ahmet’s agony in the present with his desperate attempts to recapture in fine detail his submerged memories of Araxie. The unusually fast-paced, crystal-clear and fine-tuned style Mustian has forged to render internal and external events is superb.

Having immersed himself and the reader in memories of his bizarre, wondrous love affair, Ahmet sets out to find Araxie and ask her forgiveness for failing to protect her from maltreatment by his countrymen. Mustian has imagined a final chapter that is inventive, unforgettable and shockingly surprising, for both Ahmet and the reader. One can only eagerly await what he’ll come up with next.

— D a v i d M a dd e n

I’d Know You Anywhere

By Laura Lippman Morrow $25.99, 384 pages ISBN 9780061706554 Also available on audio

Thriller

In Laura Lippman’s compelling and provocative psychological thriller, I’d Know You Anywhere, she explores the emotions and thoughts of a serial killer and his victim.

Eliza Benedict is a happily married stay-at-home mother of two

FICTION living in a D.C. suburb when she is contacted by Walter Bowman, who kidnapped her when she was 15. A serial killer who raped and killed young girls, he now sits on death row and writes to Eliza more than 20 years after he abducted her.

Alternating between the past and the present, Lippman deftly explores the relationship between victim and perpetrator and the impact of the crime on both the victim and the victims’ families. Walter is brilliantly rendered as a disturbingly ruthless and manipulative killer who feels no guilt and rationalizes every one of his crimes to justify his

actions. Eliza, who witnessed the murder of Holly, his last victim, is racked with guilt and cannot stop blaming herself for Holly’s murder.

Why was she the only victim allowed to live? That question haunts her throughout the novel.

While examining the aftermath of Walter’s crimes and the fallout for all the characters, Lippman also explores the ethical issues surrounding the death penalty. Holly’s parents, who blame Eliza for their daughter’s death, will never feel that justice is done until Walter is executed. Walter’s advocate, who is against the death penalty, pres-

sures Eliza to visit Walter before his execution. Walter, however, has his own motives for wanting to see her one last time.

This powerful novel was inspired by real-life crimes. A serial killer, as in I’d Know You Anywhere, raped and killed his victims—except for one case, according to Lippman, in which the victim, a minor, was allowed to live and witnessed the murder of another victim. Lippman asked herself, “What is it like to be that person?” She probes that question with this riveting, suspenseful page-turner.

—Susan Schwartzman

paperback picks

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

By Yiyun Li Random House $25, 240 pages ISBN 9781400068135

Short stories

In Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Yiyun Li explores the big themes—individuality, honor, family ties and love—and sets them against a

penguin.com

Chains of Fire

Kisser

The Knight

The Law of Nines

Samuel and Isabelle share a past filled with love and betrayal, and a future denied by fate. And when danger threatens, Isabelle has only one choice: to place her trust in the power of the one man she could never forgive—or forget.

A New York Times bestseller!

The fetching Broadway actress has a pout to die for, a past to hide from—and Stone Barrington on her case.

A series of unique clues are left for FBI criminologist Patrick Bowers at the scenes of several ritual murders.

As Bowers deciphers the clues, he begins to realize he isn’t closing in on the killer. The killer is closing in on him...

Turning 27 may be terrifying for some, but for Alex, a struggling artist living in the Midwest, it is cataclysmic. Something about this birthday, his name, and the beautiful woman whose life he has just saved has suddenly made him— and everyone he loves—a target.

9780451231024 • $7.99

9780515147483 • $9.99

9780451229632 • $9.99

9780451412928 • $7.99

Midnight Crystal

Must Love Hellhounds

The Professional

The Scarpetta Factor

The final book in the Dreamlight Trilogy! For many earthly centuries, a legendary curse has plagued the Winters family, stemming from the tumultuous founding of the Arcane Society. But now, on the futuristic world of Harmony, the curse’s final mystery will be unraveled.

In these four novellas, readers follow paranormal bodyguards into Lucifer’s realm; seek out a traitor in the midst of a guild; find out why the giant threeheaded dog that guards the gates of Hades has left the underworld; and embark on a perilous search for the kidnapped niece of a powerful vampire.

The wives of Boston’s wealthiest men have a shared secret: they all had an affair with the same cad who’s blackmailing them, and Spenser’s been hired to stop him.

But when the wives start dying one by one, Spenser’s new case becomes murder.

Kay Scarpetta is surrounded by familiar faces, yet traveling down the unfamiliar road of fame. A CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor.

But the glare of the spotlight could make Kay a target for the very killers she would put behind bars.

9780515148367 • $7.99

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9780425236284 • $9.99

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behind the book A disappearing act COLUMN by RICK BASS

N

ashville Chrome is a fictional treatment of the lives of the Browns, a 1950s country music trio whose sudden success was as inexplicable and meteoric as their subsequent disappearance.

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They were once the biggest thing in country music—the first group ever to have number one hits in both country and pop charts and the Beatles’ mostadmired American group. They were confidants of Johnny Cash and the closest friends and mentors to a young Elvis Presley. The key to the Browns’ success was a mysterious “tempered harmony” that could come only from shared bloodlines. The smoothness of their sound helped usher in the more commercial Nashville music industry.

As fascinating as their story is, I was struck most by the question of why the Browns, and not any other group or individual, emerged out of that time and place and almost singlehandedly altered the course of American music. So stark and dramatic was their success that it seemed their sound might as well have come from a venthole in the earth—as when the earth’s plates slide over rifts of volcanic activity—and that from that hotspot, new life and land was formed. Was their own genetic drift that random?

But that question proved unanswerable, and so I decided to focus on a new heart of inquiry, less scientific and less metaphysical: wondering not so much why fame had chosen the Browns, but rather, how they each dealt with it after it went away.

This book is far less an environmental parable than any I’ve ever undertaken, and yet in thinking about the parallels in this story—the creation, as if from a garden of innocence, of something amazing, and

then the bittersweetness of the wonderful thing’s slow goingaway—there seems to be a larger metaphor for our times. The success of the Browns’ sound came in part from a taming of the old Appalachian nasal caterwaul—rough and raw as a cob— that rendered a new, smooth, chrome-like sound more accessible, and more marketable.

I wonder if part of the book’s unspoken, haunting regret—like the Browns’ sound itself—comes from a subconscious awareness of some of the costs and losses involved in this trade.

As cultural spokespersons for the 1950s, the Browns hold intriguing clues to how we once were as a country: a product of our landscape and our fears and hungers, and of complicated circumstances that could no more hold steady than could a river stop in mid-flow. For a little while, the Browns changed the world—but just because they changed it did not mean they controlled it, or that the world was obliged to stop for them. Of the two sisters, one realized this, and retreated to anonymity with grace, while the other—Maxine, the oldest—burns, and waits still for that river to return. It’s a fascinating story, and I’m grateful to the Browns for living it.

RICK BASS is the award-winning writer of many works of nonfiction and fiction. His new novel, Nashville Chrome (HMH, $24, 272 pages, ISBN 9780547317267), considers the sudden rise and fall of the country music trio The Browns.

reviews richly detailed tapestry of Chinese life. Though each story takes place in modern-day China, they are formally rigorous and crafted with an elegance that harkens back to stylists like Chekhov and William Trevor. At the same time, the contemporary settings and Li’s modern sensibility bring freshness to old themes.

The nine stories take place in small villages or provincial corners of Beijing. Li’s focus is the ordinary person trapped where the demands of history, community and family collide, and characters suffer from an internalized sense of guilt or shame. Though not overtly political, Li’s stories denote the struggle between individual and community— a particularly potent subject given China’s social and political history.

In “A Man Like Him,” Teacher Fei, a lifelong bachelor, conspires to meet a man who has been publicly—and wrongfully—accused of an indiscretion. Fei has his own past troubles that he hopes will be absolved by this meeting. In “House Fire,” five friends band together to form a detective agency devoted to domestic issues. When a man comes to them for advice regarding an unsavory rumor about his wife and father-in-law, the case threatens the unity of the group and they must decide whether or not to accept it.

But Li is also interested in the way love blooms in the most unlikely places. The title story is the masterpiece in the collection—an expertly crafted work in which a professor introduces her middle-aged son to her favorite student—an action that ignores the natures of both individuals, but also opens up their lives to the possibility of happiness.

Similarly, “Number 3, Garden Road” depicts a life-altering evening in the lives of two residents in a Beijing apartment house. Both moved in when the building was new, Meilan as a child, Mr. Chang as a young husband. Many years later, Meilan has returned, twice divorced, and hopes for the newly widowed Mr. Chang to notice her at the neighborhood dances. This story, with the assertive Meilan and deliberately obtuse Chang, comes the closest to humor, but it is a most gentle kind and one that draws inspiration from wise observation.

Li is ruthless in depicting the depths of her characters’ emotional shortcomings; nevertheless her

FICTION lucidity and eloquence make this collection a literary pleasure.

—Lauren Bufferd

getting to happy

By Terry McMillan Viking $27.95, 400 pages ISBN 9780670022045

women’s fiction

Terry McMillan may not be the most lyrical of novelists, but she does one thing very well, and it must be the key to her success: She’s fantastic at capturing the lives of certain African-American women. These women are middle or upper class, suburban, well-educated and take their right to be treated as full and intelligent human beings as a given. Still, there’s room for their lives and the insides of their heads to be delightfully messed up. Such is the case in Getting to Happy, a sequel to the iconic Waiting to Exhale.

The same four girlfriends are back—Savannah, Bernadine, Robin and Gloria. They’re middle-aged now, and dealing with bodies that sag no matter how much they work out, sudden health scares, shaky job situations and perennially bewildering men and children.

The book begins with a restless Savannah tossing her Internet porn-addicted husband’s computer into their swimming pool, and goes on to Bernadine’s financial woes and light addiction—if an addiction can be light—to over-the-counter meds; Robin’s man troubles and her relationship with her smart, funny and exasperating daughter; and the personal and professional traumas endured by Gloria, who has gone from single parent to doting grandmother.

Another of McMillan’s talents is that she can leaven even the most grim situation with a nice dose of unforced, true-to-life humor, and there are many passages in the book that will have the reader laughing out loud, as well as passages that will leave one a bit dewy-eyed. It spoils nothing to say that all’s well that ends well in the lives of McMillan’s spirited, pottymouthed, tetchy quartet. Can we

topshelf

FICTION look forward to following them into vibrant old age?

—Arlene McKanic

The Good Daughters

By Joyce Maynard Morrow $24.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780061994319

General fiction

Two baby girls, dubbed by one mother as the “birthday sisters,” are born on the same day in a rural Vermont hospital. Somehow the baby who becomes a tall blonde winds up in a family of short brunettes, while the short brunette finds herself the daughter of a leggy young blonde. Hmm. But suspicious readers shouldn’t be worried—the unfolding of this story is a journey well worth taking.

At the center of the novel are two families, the Planks and the Dickersons. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. The Plank family has lived on the same piece of Vermont soil for generations—and throughout the scope of the novel (roughly from 1950 through the present day) they face the plight of the small farm trying to compete with corporate supermarkets.

Meanwhile the Dickersons seem incapable of staying in one place, and they are thoroughly modern in a way that mystifies the more traditional Planks. But underneath the happy-go-lucky exterior, desperate poverty follows them at every turn.

On July 4, 1950, Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson arrive into their respective families. The story is told in short chapters, alternating perspectives with each protagonist. While occasionally sounding the tiniest bit contrived, the shifting point of view is, on the whole, believable and engrossing. We follow Ruth and Dana from childhood through adulthood, and each emerges as an independent, likable woman, both of whom long to be good daughters while struggling with a nagging sense that something in their families is deeply wrong.

Maynard’s excellent storytelling keeps readers eagerly turning the pages, and she raises some interesting questions along the way: How

this month’s top publisher picks

I’m an Audiobook!

much of who we are is shaped by our family background? How do our families limit who we may become?

Ultimately, Maynard suggests that every family story is fraught with complications—and that it is the responsibility of the good daughter to create her own identity in spite of them.

— K e l ly B l e w e t t

Maybe This Time

By Jennifer Crusie St. Martin’s $24.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780312303785 Also available on audio

Women’s fiction

HC 9781595540096 $25.99 www.TedDekker.com

CD 9781615735303 $49.95

Immanuel’s Veins

A Curable Romantic

Ted Dekker

Joseph Skibell; Read by Jeff Woodman

A transforming love story inked in blood. Full of longing and bold sacrifice, the heart embraces what it should flee. Yet hope remains, because the heart knows no bounds.

An epic and audacious historical novel set in turn-of-the century Vienna and Paris that crosses the lines between characters both real (Sigmund Freud, Emma Eckstein, L. L. Zamenhof and others) and imaginary (including protagonist Dr. Sammelsohn).

Thomas Nelson

HighBridge Audio

Andie Miller is not the type to see ghosts, let alone talk to them. But then she agrees to spend a month in her ex-husband North’s creepierthan-creepy ancestral home, taking care of his recently orphaned niece and nephew. North has offered to pay her $10,000 so she can pay off debts and start married life free and clear with her fiancé.

Seems like a win-win situation to practical, beautiful Andie, until she arrives in the southern Ohio mansion and meets her strange charges.

Eight-year-old Alice screams at the slightest provocation, while her 12-year-old brother, Carter, prefers to bury his nose in comic books.

Andie quickly learns that Carter is ignoring not just her, but also a few extra souls in the centuries-old house. The kids’ Aunt May, who died in a suspicious fall months earlier, is still hanging around, and then there are Miss J and Peter, two ominous spirits who are unwilling to let the kids leave the house.

Now that you’re thoroughly freaked out, let me assure you: Jennifer Crusie has produced a story that is both chilling and wickedly funny. Andie is a no-nonsense free spirit, and the heat between her and North is palpable. As they join forces to break the kids free from their past, the long-divorced couple realize they have some unfinished business of their own.

There’s no maybe about it: Maybe This Time marks Crusie’s longoverdue return as one of the most deeply satisfying writers around.

—Amy Scribner

HC 9781592405688 $22.50 www.changingshoes.com

Changing Shoes: Getting Older– NOT OLD–with Style, Humor and Grace Tina Sloan

A beloved daytime TV actress tackles the real-world issues women face as they get older, including advice on celebrating life’s transitions with humor, courage and grace.

PB 9781893670471 $20

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

“A beautiful mix of words and images, light and deep.

Good for the eye, mind and heart.” —William Wiley “Lyrical, intense and concerned with issues of our planet’s survival.” —Susan Terris Tebot Bach Press

Gotham

PB 9781886976245 $15.95

PB 9781605945316 $14.95 www.ARHomer.com

All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song

Look Long into the Abyss

Rebecca Foust

A. R. Homer

“All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song brims with amplitude and vitality. By virtue of her unsentimental warmth of spirit, Foust brings to life an immense range of experience and feeling.”—Peter Campion

In this historical thriller set in the last days of World War II, Lt. Gina Cortazzo seeks to save Hitler’s trove of looted masterpieces from a Nazi general who has orders to destroy it.

Many Mountains Moving Press

Llumina Press

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reviews

NONFICTION leads to something better—a sense of possibility.

—Heather Seggel

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat

ANIMAL FRIENDS AND FOES R e v i e w b y J o h n T. S l a n i a

When I was a newspaper editor, I found it fascinating that stories about animals would often elicit greater emotional responses from readers than articles about humans. People are passionate about animals, whether considered pets, pests or protected by PETA. Hal Herzog adeptly explores this phenomenon in his new book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, which asks: How can humans have such a range of feelings about animals, to the point where they want to domesticate some, destroy others and deep fry the rest?

Herzog is the perfect man for the job. A professor of psychology at Western Carolina University and a leading expert on human-animal relations, he has spent years studying the complex and sometimes conflicted relationships between man and animals, including research on animal rights activists, cattle ranchers, circus trainers, laboratory technicians

By Hal Herzog, Harper, $25.99, 336 pages, and cockfighters. He writes about his own complicated relationship with ISBN 9780061730863, also available on audio animals: “I eat meat—but not as much as I used to, and not veal. I oppose testing the toxicity of oven cleaner and eye shadow on animals, but I would sacrifice a lot of mice to find a cure for cancer. And while I find some of the logic of animal liberation philosophers convincing, I also believe . . . humans [are] on a different moral plane than other animals.” Having identified his own psychological and moral dilemmas, Herzog spends the rest of his book examining how the rest of humankind relates to animals.

While Herzog is a university researcher, the book is thankfully not written like a scholarly article. He uses simple language and an engaging, conversational writing style, and the book is filled with wonderful anecdotes, from people who have had fatal encounters with crocodiles and sharks to those whose lives have been saved by their pet dogs. Herzog also offers answers to such pressing questions as “Do children who abuse animals become violent adults?” and “Why is dog meat a delicacy to some and disgusting to others?”

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat is both educational and enjoyable, a page-turner that I dare say puts Herzog in the same class as Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. Read this book. You’ll learn some, you’ll laugh some, you’ll love some.

Breaking Night

By Liz Murray Hyperion $24.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780786868919

MEMOIR

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You may not know Liz Murray by name, but you may be familiar with the TV movie Homeless to Harvard, Lifetime’s version of her teen years, during which she transitioned from sleeping in doorways and subways to an Ivy League dorm of one’s own.

Breaking Night allows Murray to tell her own story, beginning in early childhood, and it’s a truly harrowing tale.

Born to two loving but profoundly drug-addicted parents, Liz and older sister Lisa must fend for themselves almost from birth.

Forced to run interference between truant officers, social workers, dealers, pimps, “Ma” and “Daddy,” Liz runs wild from an early age, stealing food from supermarkets and pumping gas for tips, while Lisa maintains an almost militant focus on schoolwork as a possible means of rescue. As their parents split up and Ma is diagnosed with HIV and then AIDS, the family fractures completely. Lisa goes to stay with Ma’s new, abusive boyfriend, and Daddy ultimately signs away his parental rights to Liz, who takes to the streets with a boyfriend who seems perfect, but looks increasingly unstable with every passing day.

Murray does a wonderful job telling her own story, giving an honest account of the powerful love that connects her family even as addiction and disease separate them.

She captures the giddy freedom of being a teenager completely on her own, but counters it with a perfect take on the impact of homelessness: “The strain of not having your

most basic needs met can drive you a little crazy. Hunger wears on your nerves; nervousness wears on your energy; malnutrition and stress just plain wear on you.” (I was homeless for over a year as an adult, and that says it all.) Because of her parents’ history, she stays sober throughout this ordeal; not using drugs or alcohol means feeling the cold, hunger and loneliness without a buffer, and likely also gave her the clear vision needed to finally enroll in the alternative high school that turned things around for her.

We know things end well for Liz, but she wisely ends Breaking Night as she’s waiting somewhat frantically for the mailman to bring the fateful “fat” envelope bearing an acceptance letter from Harvard. A beloved teacher tells her to “relax, have some compassion for yourself,” and really stop and absorb how far she’s come. It’s as necessary for us as it is for her, considering the journey we’ve just been on together.

Murray’s story is a jarring ride that

The Tiger

By John Vaillant Knopf $26.95, 352 pages ISBN 9780307268938 Also available on audio

ANIMALS

On a subfreezing night in early December 1997, a gigantic Amur tiger killed and devoured a beekeeper and hunter named Vladimir Markov just outside his cabin in a forest in the Russian territory of Primorye, near the borders of China and North Korea. This is the event around which John Vaillant’s The Tiger is coiled. Markov’s death activated a unit of the Russian conservation service known as Inspection Tiger, then headed by the dogged and charismatic ex-soldier Yuri Trush. It became Trush’s duty to track down and subdue the tiger before it killed again. In this, he failed, although there would be an ultimate face-to-face confrontation between the man and the beast.

“To properly appreciate such an animal,” Vaillant writes, “picture the grotesquely muscled head of a pit bull and then imagine how it might look if the pit bull weighed a quarter of a ton. Add to this fangs the length of a finger backed up by rows of slicing teeth capable of cutting through the heaviest bone.

Consider then the claws: a hybrid of meat hook and stiletto that can attain four inches along the outer curve. . . . Now, imagine the vehicle for all this: nine feet or more from nose to tail, and three and a half feet high at the shoulder.”

Vaillant unspools his story in several strands. In addition to giving an hour-by-hour account of the hunt, he also describes in considerable detail the landscape and history of this incredibly remote, exotic and inhospitable region. He explains the impact the breakup of the Soviet Union has had on efforts to conserve the tiger’s habitat and probes the mentality and motivation of those who wrest a living from this resource-rich—and thus endangered—frontier. Most absorb-

NONFICTION ing, though, are Vaillant’s musings on whether this particular tiger sought out and attacked specific human beings as deliberate acts of revenge. Had the victims, in effect, courted their own destruction? This question leads to other discussions of how humans and animals behave toward each other in stressful environments.

As digressive and far-ranging as Vaillant’s narrative is, it never shifts for long from the tiger he has crouching at the edge of the reader’s imagination.

—Edward Morris

Promise Me

By Nancy G. Brinker Broadway $25.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780307718129

MEMOIR

Nancy G. Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (SGK), says she is often asked why her world-famous foundation doesn’t have a grand, dedicated facility.

Her answer typifies this remarkable woman’s laser-like focus: “Our greatest hope is . . . to eradicate breast cancer and close up shop.

When the work is done, I’ll happily walk away . . . and celebrate the promise kept.”

That promise, a vow she made in the summer of 1980 to her dying sister Suzy, was that breast cancer would be brought out into the open—that all would be educated about this lethal disease; that women would be treated earlier and better; and that fewer women would die. Thirty years after Suzy’s death, Brinker is still working on that promise, an endeavor adeptly chronicled in the memoir (and so much more) Promise Me. I had my doubts about this book: I am a stringent critic of memoir and am dubious about authors who require a professional co-writer in order to tell a story (in this case, the co-author is Joni Rodgers, whose many credits include Bald in the Land of Big Hair, about her diagnosis with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

And then there was the grief factor.

Like many of us, I have lost a loved one to breast cancer, and I read not

a few pages through a blur of tears.

But by the book’s end, I felt respect and gratitude for the herculean efforts of one fiercely determined woman and the worldwide advocacy she has engendered.

Brinker reveals her life story— with just the right amount of background included about her family, her special relationship with her sister and her own breast cancer diagnosis—but balances this with other women’s poignant stories of life with breast cancer. The crisp narrative, interwoven with SGK’s history, growth, achievements and milestones, also tracks the progress of breast cancer research treatment and developments and includes a resource list for women coping with cancer. An interesting sub-storyline, which includes a mini-management primer, follows Brinker’s relationship with her former husband, millionaire Norman Brinker, and how his personality, ethics and business principles informed how she has built, marketed and sustained SGK. Hats off—and pink ribbons on— to Nancy Brinker and Joni Rodgers for this inspiring book.

—Alison Hood

Exiles in Eden

By Paul Reyes Holt $25, 272 pages ISBN 9780805091236

CURRENT EVENTS

The headlines from the 2008 financial crisis targeted macro catastrophes: the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the perils of AIG, government bailouts. But the crisis also encompassed thousands of discrete dramas lived by homeowners with rotten mortgages. How did these nameless cope with the crumbling dream of homeownership, and how did they come to have that dream in the first place? Paul Reyes tackles these questions in Exiles in Eden, a compelling combination of memoir, history and reportage from one of the states hardest hit by the housing collapse.

Reyes (with whom I have worked at The Oxford American) is in a special position to tell this story. His

spotlight

business

LEADER OF THE PACK

By Linda M. Castellitto

W

e’ve all worked for bosses we remember with gratitude, even fondness—and for bosses upon whom we’ve wished all manner of ills. And who wouldn’t want to fall firmly in the former category? These new business books offer top-notch advice and strategies for becoming a leader extraordinaire.

How to be good Robert L. Sutton, Ph.D., has stellar credentials, but perhaps the most compelling reason to pick up Good Boss, Bad Boss (Business Plus, $23.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780446556088) is the fact that people demanded he write it.

After publication of The No Asshole Rule, Sutton says he was “inundated with asshole stories from all over the world.”

And people didn’t just share—they wanted answers: namely, Sutton’s advice for dealing with passive-aggressive people, bullies, people who don’t listen and more. The author realized “the boss” was a central figure in all these stories, so he decided to study the great ones. Case studies, charts and surveys help readers assess their challenges and act on them, and sections like “The Damage Done” make it clear that bad bosses increase turnover, inflict collateral damage on employees’ loved ones and inhibit performance. Sutton convincingly illustrates the need for education and change and stresses that leaders should keep one question in mind: “I wonder, dear bosses, what would your people say about you?”

Artful persuasion The prospect of negotiating to reach compromise is often viewed as difficult and discomfiting, but Chris St. Hilaire has a different take. “Like sports and music, persuasion is both an art and a craft,” he writes in 27 Powers of Persuasion (Prentice Hall, $25, 240 pages, ISBN 9780735204515), noting that many people associate persuasion with manipulation and sleazy sales pitches. But there’s a much better way to look at it, he argues, and the things he’s learned from decades of experience working with politicians,

CEOs, lawyers and marketers back him up. He notes that effective persuaders, regardless of the situation—professional or personal, business or law—follow the same rules. In each chapter, St. Hilaire and co-writer Lynette Padwa explain a rule of persuasion, share successes and offer insight. This

book is a valuable resource for current and future leaders in the workplace and beyond. As St. Hilaire writes, “Nearly every human interaction involves some type of persuasion.” Wouldn’t you agree?

Get them committed Every day, employees are told they must be passionate about their jobs—they should embrace the company’s mission and values, regardless of whether they feel valued. This is a problem, and Stan Slap knows how to solve it. Bury My Heart at Conference Room B (Portfolio, $25.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9781591843245) draws on Slap’s 20 years of experience as a CEO, plus the eponymous management workshop he delivers worldwide. He’s seen time and again that “being emotionally committed to a cause” can make a big difference in performance. He cautions that managers can’t truly be leaders unless they bring their own values to work and believe they’ll “live better by working harder.” Slap’s tone is at once heartfelt and excited: He knows his strategies work because he’s seen it happen. This workshop-ina-book should prove a worthy investment of readers’ time, thought and, yes, emotion.

27

reviews father’s business is “trashing out” foreclosed Tampa-area homes— cleaning houses abandoned by owners who could not meet the payments. Working with his father’s crew, Reyes comes to know many evictees only through the detritus they have left behind. Others he tracks down—a former drug addict and current deacon who thought he had his life on track until the bank called; a man too stubborn to accept payment for his keys who one day simply disappears.

This portion of the book began as a National Magazine Awardnominated article for Harper’s. With Exiles in Eden, Reyes expands the scope of that piece in several ways.

He examines his father’s personal history, from his early promise as an architect and engineer to his current struggles against the corporate trash-out giants the housing crisis has spawned. He reports on Max Rameau, a Miami activist who shelters families by putting them in houses legally the property of banks. He explores Lehigh Acres, a town built on hucksterism and the

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September 16, 2010 www.monkeybible.com

NONFICTION marketable appeal of homeownership rather than sustainable development—and a town where Reyes owns a quarter-acre because his parents fell prey to that hucksterism on their honeymoon in 1969.

Readers may wish that Exiles in Eden had gone into more detail about the rarified financial concepts it occasionally toys with. But Reyes offers something harder to come by: a reflection on the struggle between development and nature; on the clash between the rule of law and justice in housing; and on the many ways a life can be rocked by foreclosure.

—J o h n C . W i l l i a m s

Origins

By Annie Murphy Paul Free Press $26, 320 pages ISBN 9780743296625

SCIENCE

Annie Murphy Paul is a journalist whose work makes science more accessible to intelligent general readers. Her latest assignment, a fascinating foray into the world of the fetus, takes on some incredibly personal significance for the author, who embarked on Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives while pregnant herself.

Paul deftly mixes her personal, sometimes guardedly emotional responses to her own pregnancy with insightful interviews with researchers and physicians, offering a nine-chapter tour (one for each month) of what is known and unknown about the fetal environment.

Her professional consultations reveal much about the history and current state of prenatal studies, which emerges as an ever-growing scientific discipline with implications far beyond the womb. Fetal health and nutrition receive much focus as Paul conducts her own daily dance with toxicity, increasingly aware that what happens in the womb can be linked to “cancer, asthma, obesity, diabetes, mental illness—even . . . arthritis, osteoporosis, and cognitive decline.”

Enhancing her prenatal environment is Paul’s uppermost daily

concern, as she learns that working out apparently makes for a smarter baby, that a mother’s tobacco and alcohol intake are actually more potentially damaging to a fetus than crack cocaine, and that a fetus’ exterior pre-birth situation can have untold effects (calm is preferred over chaos). More jarringly, Paul recalls historical horror stories such as the effect on fetuses of the drugs thalidomide and DES, while also ruminating on the Brave New World aspects of sex selection, reminding readers of the shocking number of abortions of female fetuses performed in Asia since the advent of easily available ultrasound. (In fact, as her knowledge of the fetus increases, she grapples somewhat with pro-life/pro-choice issues, which makes for some interesting journalistic moments.)

Paul’s inquiries also touch upon tantalizing questions regarding sexual orientation and reveal the statistical facts about the current falling rate of male births. With an eye toward the future, she describes major studies such as Project Viva and the National Children’s Study, which are ever widening the scientific community’s knowledge of prenatal health and its later impact on the individual. “Birth is an ending as well as a beginning,” writes Paul; “it ruptures one relationship, even as it commences another.” Happily, her own pregnancy appears to be an unqualified success, as is her very readable blend of memoir and medical fact-finding.

—Martin Brady

The Coke Machine

By Michael Blanding Avery $26, 384 pages ISBN 9781583334065 Also available on audio

POPULAR CULTURE

In one of the world’s most famous television commercials, hundreds of teenagers of diverse backgrounds dance and sway on a sunny hillside as they belt out a ballad about teaching the world to sing in peace and harmony. Each young person is holding a bottle of Coke, the “real thing,” promising in his or her earnest way that if only everyone

in the world would drink Coke, violence would cease and peace would prevail. Ever since 1886, when John Pemberton stumbled upon the secret formula for the soft drink that would become known as CocaCola, the company that eventually grew out of his success has obscured the shady medicinal origins of the drink and zealously designed ads that focus not on its ingredients but on what the customer thinks it represents. Coke has spent billions of dollars to present an image of wholesomeness and harmony cherished by millions of people around the world.

Yet, as award-winning magazine writer Michael Blanding points out in his provocative and far-reaching investigative book, The Coke Machine, all is not well in the House of Coke. The pristine images of peace and harmony promoted by the company have been shattered by accusations that the company has depleted water supplies in India, made schoolchildren fat in the U.S., supported murder as it sought to destroy unions in Guatemala and deceived consumers around the world by marketing tap water as purified water under its Dasani brand.

For example, in the Kerala region in India, Coke not only used up fresh water supplies in its production process, it also produced solid waste that it distributed to local farmers as fertilizer. When the fields treated by this fertilizer began to lie fallow, and when farm animals that drank water polluted by this waste began to die, Indian scientists discovered that Coke’s solid waste contained four times the tolerable limit of cadmium, which can cause prostate and kidney cancer.

In shocking detail, Blanding uncovers Coke’s numerous transgressions against humanity and nature. Although many groups have protested Coke’s presence in their countries and various legal actions have been brought against Coke, the company has managed to slither out of the grip of any legal injunctions. It’s very unlikely that Coke will ever change its practices until its bottom line is threatened by binding legal consequences and there is a sustained public campaign that threatens its brand images. Blanding’s thoroughly detailed, stimulating and challenging study will have many readers saying, “Give me a Pepsi.”

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

children’s books AN AUTHOR WITH A MAGICAL TOUCH

Y

ou don’t need a big travel budget to have adventures—just ask Ingrid Law. The author has taken many a day trip from her home in Boulder, Colorado, to nearby small towns, excursions that inspired the settings for her Newbery Honor book, Savvy, and the new companion novel, Scumble.

“When I was writing Savvy, I’d [already] cut back my hours working for the government so I could spend time with my daughter,” Law recalls. “I had chosen a certain level of poverty, so we didn’t travel much, and certainly not on planes!”

But road trips suit this author’s tastes just fine. “There’s really so much around us, and I’m not a terribly demanding person when it comes to seeing the sights,” she says. “We went to Kansas and Nebraska, saw the largest porch swing, added twine to the largest ball of twine. . . . I have great memories of these trips, and the people I met.”

In Scumble, the Kale family travels to Uncle Autry’s Flying Cattleheart ranch in Wyoming—just nine days after Ledger’s 13th birthday (and nine years after his cousin Mibs’ adventures in Savvy). It’s an auspicious time for any young person, but a particularly challenging one in this family: The new teens learn what their savvy, or special power, will be, and things tend to get a little wild before they get their new abilities under control.

Ledger’s new power seems to be a destructive one, and he inadvertently turns the sheriff’s truck into a pile of rubble (oops!). Once at the ranch, the hijinks continue, thanks to twin cousins who can levitate objects, among other fantastical goings-on.

Young readers will eagerly turn the pages of Law’s magical novel to find out what will happen next—just as 13-year-old Sarah Jane Cabot is ea-

Scumble

By Ingrid Law Walden Media/Dial $16.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780803733077 Ages 9 to 12

MIDDLE GRADE

ger to share the story via her newspaper, The Sundance Scuttlebutt.

Ledger’s struggles to keep his family secret, figure out why he finds Sarah Jane both annoying and irresistible, and scumble (or manage) his savvy into something positive keep him more than a little frustrated.

The challenge of fielding life’s curveballs is one every reader can relate to, but in Law’s hands, Building on it becomes the tradition the stuff of tall tales. This mix of tall tales, of quotidian Law creates and outrageous a fanciful has always world where intrigued her. “I knew early on, teenagers before Savvy, learn to tame that I wanted to write about the special magical kids powers that without using come with the word magic. adolescence. Not necessarily to create a new kind of magic, but to create something that reflected a sense of Americana,” she recalls.

To create a uniquely American sense of magic, she explains, “I use a lot of small towns, and fall back on the tradition of tall tales, stories that are larger than life, with a conquering-the-wilderness idea. It’s an emotional element of becoming a teenager, needing to tame the external and internal.”

Thanks to a summer stay at his uncle’s ranch, and assists from his quirky extended family, Ledger realizes there’s another side to making things fall apart: He has a gift for putting them together—and a knack for creating new and beautiful things, too.

It’s no coincidence that Ledger’s artistic awakenings emerge as he learns to scumble his savvy.

Law, who’s long been interested in linguistics, says, “I stumbled across the word scumble in a writing book.

ingrid Law

I n t e r v i e w b y L i n d a M . C a s t e lli t t o

I loved the way it sounded, and one of the definitions seemed appropriate for the idea of controlling this element that’s taking over.” In this definition, scumbling is a painting technique that tones down a bright color so that the hues are more evenly balanced.

The art-infused nature of Ledger’s journey can be traced back to Law’s own creative background. “I come from a family that always appreciated and was involved in the arts,” she says. “So I grew up drawing and painting, and learned about fiber arts and quilt arts.”

Law says she found her writerly voice when, after a decade of ill-fated manuscripts, she decided to ignore her doubts and go where her characters took her: “I decided I would pull out all the stops, not judge what I wrote, and push my voice to the limit.”

It worked—she wrote Savvy in just over four months, an agent offered representation, three weeks later she had a book deal, and soon after, film rights sold. “My life was turned upside down,” she recalls.

When Savvy received a Newbery Honor, Law says, it was “a wonderful, amazing thing, but also really frightening for the next book!” Although writing and revising Scumble was a much longer process, the author’s voice remains steady and true.

Or, in the loopy language of her fun and funny books: It’s clear that Ingrid Law has scumbled her savvy.

READING IS

fun!

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29

children’s books THE YEAR MONEY GREW ON TREES

reviews

TAPPING A CAN-DO SPIRIT Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In The Year Money Grew on Trees, first-time children’s author Aaron R. Hawkins, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, mines his own childhood memories of working in his family’s apple orchard. The result is as warm and delicious as a slice of apple pie.

It’s only February, but Jackson Jones, who lives on a dirt road in New Mexico, is already thinking about a summer job. His father wants him to work in the local junkyard. His neighbor, Mrs. Nelson, offers an alternative: If he can prove that he is a true heir to her late husband’s 300 apple trees, she will give the orchard to him. There’s only one catch—first he has to make $8,000 from this year’s crop and pay it to Mrs. Nelson.

Without revealing the precise details of the deal to anyone, even his parents, Jackson recruits a motley crew of cousins and siblings to tackle the challenge of bringing the orchard back to life. The kids supply the hard

By Aaron R. Hawkins, HMH, $16, 304 pages, work, day in and day out. Advice (such as it is) must come from the one ISBN 9780547279770, ages 10 and up book on apple growing Jackson manages to track down in the school library, along with tips from adults in the community. Little by little, Jackson and his crew find out what they need to know, from pruning to fertilizing, thinning, irrigating and picking. The text is enhanced by the author’s delightful drawings—maps of the orchard, sketches of a tree before and after pruning, and diagrams of such essentials as the irrigation system. Teachers will be pleased to see how Jackson uses math to figure out his anticipated profits and expenses in the quest to become the orchard’s new owner.

The Year Money Grew on Trees yields a harvest of riches, not only as a wonderful story of one boy’s resourcefulness but as a humorous and insightful portrait of a community. Take a bite!

CHICKEN BIG

By Keith Graves Chronicle $16.99, 40 pages ISBN 9780811872379 Ages 4 to 8

PICTURE BOOK

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You know the story: Chicken Little and her rhyming cast of friends run pell-mell through the woods, convinced that the sky is falling. Well, think again.

Our story begins with an egg—a very BIG egg. Out of that egg emerges an enormous chick. The other barnyard chickens are perplexed.

“What is it?” they cry. The smallest chicken declares it an elephant, and the fun begins.

As in the traditional tale, an acorn drops from a tree and the birds take off in a panic. In Keith Graves’ ridiculously comical retelling, however, rain surely means “the sky is leaking” and a chill wind indicates that “someone has put the world in a refrigerator.” When a fox comes calling, the larger-than-life chicken must save the day with cleverness, kindness and bravery.

Young children will delight in this zany rendition, in which humorous dialogue is enhanced by the opportunity for adult readers to add a chorus of chicken squawks. Pencil line drawings with muted colors make an exception for the bright yellow main character who makes a bold statement throughout the tale.

Like all fables, Chicken Big is at its best when the moral emerges.

Regardless of our appearance, we all long to be accepted, and readers will be touched that Chicken Big finds a flock of friends willing to make room for him in the coop.

— J ENNI F E R R OBINSON

THE FANTASTIC SECRET OF OWEN JESTER

By Barbara O’Connor FSG $15.99, 176 pages Ages 8 to 12

MIDDLE GRADE

Set in rural Georgia in a time before television, Barbara O’Connor’s The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester is a kid-centered story of summertime fun. When his father loses

his job in a hardware store, Owen Jester and his family are forced to move across town into his grandfather’s house. Owen is “a master of evasion” who does his best every day to escape Earlene, his ailing grandfather’s grumpy, no-nonsense housekeeper.

The highlight of Owen’s summer so far has been the capture of Tooley, “the biggest, greenest, slimiest, most beautiful bullfrog ever to be seen in Carter, Georgia.” Along with his best pals Travis and Stumpy, Owen schemes to find Tooley the best insects and build the best frog cage so he won’t escape. The boy’s summer takes a thrilling turn when in the woods behind his house he discovers a Water Wonder 4000, a two-person submarine.

Caring for a bullfrog and trying to figure out how to move the submarine to the nearest pond is hard enough, but when Viola, Owen’s nosy next-door neighbor, uncovers his secret, his mission intensifies.

Who would think a girl, especially one who’s “allergic to pine and grass and dust and dogs and just about every good thing in life,” would know anything about frogs or submarines? But Viola seems to know “everything about everything,” and when she threatens to tattle to au-

thority figures, the boys are forced to include her in their adventures.

With a quiet sensitivity, O’Connor explores the effects of unemployment and relocating and the joys of both longtime companions and new, unexpected friendships. Filled with charm and wonder, this finely crafted novel reminds readers of the mysteries to be found in childhood and the outdoors.

— AN G E L A L EEPE R

HOTHOUSE

By Chris Lynch HarperTeen $16.99, 208 pages ISBN 9780061673795 Ages 12 and up

TEEN

Seventeen-year-old Russell grew up in the Hothouse. He wasn’t literally raised in the local firehouse— more like metaphorically. His father was a firefighter and so was his best friend DJ’s dad, and the two are practically like family. For as long as he can remember, Russell has considered himself a firefighter too, training with the Young Firefighters and eating, sleeping and breathing the brotherhood-culture of it all.

But when Chris Lynch’s Hothouse opens, Russell’s and DJ’s dads have been killed while fighting a house fire. The men are revered as heroes, and the entire community rallies around their families. In fact, the whole first half of the novel is a cavalcade of hero stuff: speeches, memorials, rituals, bonfires on the beach and a concert where the boys are lifted up over the heads of the audience. It’s hard for Russell to keep his composure, but he’s fairly swelling with pride for his dad.

It’s a real surprise, then, when the story takes a dark turn. An inquiry into the accident is made, and Russell must come to terms with the fact that his dad had some unheroic tendencies. Unfortunately, the community that had at first embraced them is much less forgiving.

In many ways this is a difficult story: These kids live with the specter of death around them all the time, and they have a wisdom and world-weariness beyond their years. Yet Lynch’s writing has a lyrical, almost musical quality. With intelligence and sophistication, he

reviews explores what it means to be built up and then torn down, how painfully capricious other people’s opinions of us can be. But underneath this, buoying the story all along, is a fighting spirit, a humor, hopefulness and passion for life.

meet TIMOTHY BASIL ERING

world in the process, the novel’s fantastical elements come together to create a spellbinding ending.

—Angela Leeper

CLOCKWORK ANGEL

—Katie Haegele

PLAIN KATE

By Erin Bow Arthur A. Levine/ Scholastic $17.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780545166645 Ages 12 and up

TEEN

In Erin Bow’s first novel, Plain Kate, an enthralling fantasy set in a time and place much like medieval Europe, it’s the skara rok, or hungry time, and the folk of Samilae are eager to blame anyone a little odd for the town’s diminishing supplies and growing illnesses. With “one eye the color of river mud and one eye the color of the river” and a gift for carving popular talismans that surpasses her teenage years, orphan Plain Kate Carver knows she’ll be accused of witchcraft soon.

When a “witch-white” stranger offers to grant Plain Kate her heart’s secret wish in exchange for her shadow, the lonely girl begrudgingly accepts the bargain as a way to flee the town. Feeling as if she’s lost a part of her soul, she secretly departs the only home she’s ever known with Taggle, a talking cat, as her companion. Plain Kate is soon taken in by the Roamers, a traveling, Romani-like clan, and befriended by Drina, whose mother, a healer and a witch, was sentenced to death for her practices.

This elaborate story takes on more twists and turns as Drina begins to teach her the rules of magic and the friends conspire to reclaim Plain Kate’s shadow. But things don’t always go according to plan when Plain Kate discovers the witch-white stranger’s true identity and his diabolical plot Plain Kate’s natural talents and bravery will endear her to teen readers. Her cat Taggle, who’s willing to claw any man or beast to save his beloved owner, also adds light humor to this tale of dark magic.

As the pair travels together, finding friendship and saving their small

By Cassandra Clare Margaret K. McElderry/ Simon & Schuster $19.99, 496 pages ISBN 9781416975861 Ages 14 and up

TEEN

In 1878, 16-year-old orphan Tessa Gray sails for England to reunite with her older brother. Before she even sees him, she is kidnapped by the Dark Sisters, members of the dangerous underworld society called the Pandemonium Club. The sisters, who brutally tap into Tessa’s ability to transform into other people, are grooming her for an even greater evil. As Tessa attempts a daring escape, she is rescued by a group of Shadowhunters, descendants of angels who combat demons. They welcome Tessa into their home and offer her protection; in turn, she must her use shape-shifting talents to help them destroy an android army and save her brother. As Tessa desperately comes to grips with her otherworldly identity, she must also unravel her very earthly feelings for William Herondale, a brooding Shadowhunter with demons of his own.

Cassandra Clare, beloved author of the Mortal Instruments series, has scored another hit with this much-anticipated prequel set in a sexy, steampunk Victorian England.

The characters’ clothing, language and mannerisms and the era-appropriate poetry that precedes each chapter all draw the reader into this fascinating historical era. But what would the Age of Innocence be without the passion of first love?

Everything from the late-19th-century clothing with its long hemlines and drab colors to the strict societal norms dictating courtship intensify Will and Tessa’s feelings. Will’s quick wit and bad-boy behavior make him Clare’s hottest hero yet.

Clockwork Angel certainly stands alone, but be forewarned: Once readers dive into this first book in the Infernal Devices series, they won’t be able to wait for the sequel.

— K i m b e r ly G i a r r a t a n o

snook alone An artist and writer with a longtime love of the sea, Timothy Basil Ering illustrated Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery Medal winner, The Tale of Desperaux, and has written and/or illustrated many other children’s books. His beautiful seaside portraits of a faithful dog on a difficult journey appear in Snook Alone (Candlewick, $16.99, 48 pages, ISBN 9780763626679), written by poet Marilyn Nelson.

31

WORDNOOK

By the editors of Merriam-Webster

PLAYING FAIR Dear Editor, My co-worker claims that the expression level playing field must come from football, but I wonder about that. Can you give us the origin of the saying?

W. H. Milton, Massachusetts The field in the expression level playing field doesn’t appear to be connected with any particular sport.

In the literal sense, playing fields are simply open fields upon which games are played, and all such fields, whether used for baseball, football, lacrosse or any other sport, are of course, ideally, level.

The first known use of the term playing field in its literal sense is in a 16th-century British reference to the sports grounds at Eton. It was probably in the 1950s in the U.S. that playing field was first used figuratively, as in “the playing fields of international democracy”—apparently without intended reference to any particular sport.

Level playing field seems to have

originated within the banking industry in the late 1970s as a metaphor for “competitive equality”— again, without any clear reference to a particular sport. Interestingly, it took more than a decade before the metaphor was picked up by the world of sports, in statements like “for the first time our country will be able to play [basketball] on a level field,” a reference to the admission of professional athletes to Olympic competitions.

BACHELOR NO MORE Dear Editor, Can you tell me why benedict seems to mean “a recently married man”?

B. M. New York, New York In fact, benedict is even more specific than that—it refers to a newly married man who was a bachelor for a long time before recently acquiring a wife. It’s derived from the chief male character in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, named

Benedick. Throughout the play, both Benedick and his female counterpart Beatrice exchange barbed comments and profess to loathe the very idea of marriage, but of course the story eventually culminates in their marriage to each other. As a result, Benedick’s name came to be applied to men who marry later in life (and who may have seemed like they “weren’t the marrying type”).

FIGURE IT OUT Dear Editor, A recent crossword puzzle contained the word trope, meaning “figure of speech.” What exactly is a trope? Can you give some examples?

G. G. Erie, Pennsylvania Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines trope as “the use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it for giving life or emphasis to an idea.” The term also refers to an individual word or expression that is used in such a way. So trope

does not denote a particular kind of figure of speech but is instead a broad, inclusive term for all such expressions. Metaphor, simile, hyperbole (exaggeration) and synecdoche (in which a part is used to represent a whole, as in “wheels” for “car”) are all varieties of trope. In fact, almost any word or phrase that is not to be taken literally (such as “He’s a sly fox”) can be designated a trope.

Trope comes from the Greek noun tropos, meaning “turn” or “style,” which is related to the verb trepein, meaning “to turn.” The word most often appears in the context of literary analysis and criticism, as in the following passage: “Through allusions, euphemisms, and the use of all kinds of tropes the reader is intended to arrive at the conclusion that his author is familiar with the best authors on whom he can draw freely, if the occasion demands it.”

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

EVERYTHING LITERARY 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.

SHERLOCK HOLMES ACROSS 1. Lion, in Swahili 6. More than dislike 10. “Pogo” cartoonist Kelly 14. Eye layers 15. Word said before opening the eyes 16. Roman Eros 17. Type of glass carried by Sherlock Holmes 19. The O’Haras’ home 20. Somewhat rashly 21. Severe 23. Stack role 25. Some is white crossword solution

26. Food from the curds of milk 30. Unadorned 33. Meander 34. Holy one 35. Critic __ Louise Huxtable 38. First story to feature Sherlock Holmes 42. Range units: Abbr.

43. Sit in on 44. Ray of light 45. Varieties 46. Tapering mass of ice 48. Iraqi port 51. “Once I ___ secret love...”

53. Contrary to 56. Acacia-eating mammal 61. Tartan garb 62. “The Woman” to Holmes 64. Pollster Roper 65. Medical discovery 66. Marketing ploy 67. Jockey strap 68. Locksmith’s stock 69. Old British guns DOWN 1. Sport for heavyweights 2. ___ the Terrible

3. Start of something big?

4. “The Adventure of the Speckled ___”

by Sherlock Holmes 5. Thais, e.g.

6. Garfield’s predecessor 7. “What __, chopped liver?”

8. Watch 9. Tech sch. grad 10. Friend of Sherlock Holmes 11. Treasured violin 12. Large-eyed lemur 13. Slight amount 18. Gratis 22. Hill in 1991 news 24. Pert. to Spain 26. Study for finals 27. Multitude 28. Greasy spoon sign 29. Earthbound bird 31. Catalog

32. Mandela’s org.

34. Faction 35. “Smart” one 36. “Agreed!”

37. “Don’t look ___!”

39. Six-Day War hero 40. “Uh-huh” 41. Stat for a DH 45. Moon of Neptune 46. “Each Dawn __” (Cagney film) 47. Ring figures

48. Street where Sherlock Holmes resided 49. Like a gymnast 50. Game ragout 52. A de Mille 54. Ailing 55. “Can’t argue with that” 57. Mine entrance 58. Absquatulate 59. Sinn ___ 60. Coastal raptors 63. Trick ending