memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse

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I had the privilege of attending a virtual presentation a few weeks ago featuring author and activist Ryan Busse, discussing the US’s massive gun violence problem and his book, Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America (PublicAffairs, 2021). I hadn’t been able to get a copy of his book before the talk, but it came in soon after and mirrored a lot of what he spoke about in his presentation. He shared slides, some of which came from testimony he’s given to Congress (like half of them care…), and all of it was shocking and terrifying, like so much in this book.

Ryan Busse grew up loving the outdoors. His father taught his brother and him to hunt and fish, but he shared with them the importance of handling guns safety, and that no gun was worth a human life. Thanks to his strong ties to hunting as a child, Ryan grew up wanting to work in the gun industry and made that happen for himself, securing a position with Kimber and helping the company grow exponentially over his time there.

But Ryan’s goals for the company and where the NRA was steering the firearms industry as a whole began to diverge along the way. Whereas Ryan stood by the values of safety and nature conservation he’d grown up with, the radicalization and violence fetishization the industry pushed, along with its commitment to toxic masculinity and profits above human lives, alienated and horrified him. For years, he fought back from the inside, until the damage was too much for one man to even begin to control.

This is quite a damning look at the firearms industry as a whole and how the NRA has poisoned it along with American politics, and has fanned the flames of xenophobia, racism, toxic masculinity, and violence as a whole, all under the guise of making money. “Who benefits from this?” is an important question to ask when you’re consuming social media of politicians and reporters who are doing their best to drum up fear; the answer is very often the firearms industry, as more and more Americans purchase more and more guns and weapons. It’s a disturbing, sickening industry with no morals or integrity, and it makes me ashamed that we as a country let this happen.

I’m not a gun person; I have no interest in them (I’ve been shooting multiple times in my life and I’m actually a pretty good shot, but it’s not a hobby I’m interested in pursuing), and I can’t say this book did anything to make me more interested in guns as a whole, despite Ryan’s obvious respectful fascination (I did appreciate his devotion to conservation and protecting the lands he obviously cherishes, however!). If you’re not into guns, you should definitely know there’s a lot of information in here about them. I can’t say I’m any better informed about makes and models, but I am walking away with a much better look at how dark the gun industry has become in the US, and how they’re a massive part of the problem, if not the majority of how and why we’re where we are today in the US. It’s shameful, but I’m glad to have this understanding now. I wish everyone understood this.

If you’re looking to shed more light on why the US is such a horrific mess, and you want to know how we got here, with mass shootings every ten seconds and no one doing anything about it, look no further. Gunfight by Ryan Busse will explain it all.

Visit Ryan Busse’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

fiction · thriller

Book Review: The Nowhere Child by Christian White

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I have a love-hate relationship with missing child stories. On one hand, they’re incredibly hard to read. How do you even survive any of that? On the other hand, it’s like a bruise I can’t stop poking at (I blame growing up with Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train blaring on MTV, the pictures of missing children and teenagers running on a loop on the screen every few hours during my early teen years). The Nowhere Child by Christian White (Affirm Press, 2018) ended up on my list as soon as I learned about it; a missing child, a multi-continental story, a weird religious group…yup, I was in.

A strange man shows up in Kim Leamy’s Australian town one day, making claims that she’s not who she thinks she is: she’s actually Sammy Went, who went missing from a small Kentucky town almost thirty years ago. At first, Kim finds his story ridiculous (her late mother, a kidnapper? Hardly)…but then things start to add up, and her stepfather very obviously knows more than he’s saying. When the man reveals himself to be Kim’s biological brother, she knows she needs to figure this all out, so it’s off to America to learn the truth.

The Went family already had deep cracks by the time Sammy was born; father Jack had tried to bury his attraction to men, but that wasn’t working out so well; mother Molly’s fierce devotion to the snake-handling church Jack grew up in and has since abandoned is dividing everyone in the family and pushing Jack even further away. When two-year-old Sammy goes missing, long-hidden secrets come to light, but it’ll take decades before the truth really comes out.

This is a really solid thriller, one that involves a dangerous cult whose devotion to remaining ‘other’ costs lives. Complicating everything are Jack’s sexuality in a time and place that refuses to understand it and thus his need to keep it hidden, teenager Emma’s difficulty with her parents, and, in the current-day sections of the narrative, Kim’s piece-by-piece uncovering of the reality of who she is and how small-town secrets conspired to keep the truth of Sammy’s disappearance under wraps for so long.

The book goes back and forth in time, switching from third person narration by various characters, to first person narration by Kim. This keeps the story moving, but it also serves well to keep the reader on edge, guessing about what really happened, who was really involved, and why. I’m usually pretty bad at figuring out whodunit, but I had this one kinda pegged early on, though the why of it all wasn’t fully fleshed out in my mind until the full explanation appeared in the book. I enjoyed following the characters on their journeys. There are some surprises here, but all in all, this was a good, solid, enjoyable read.

Visit Christian White’s website here.

Monthly roundup

Monthly Roundup: October 2022

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Happy November! Two months left to 2022. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???

I’m still behind in posting reviews. I have so much to do in the mornings and during the day that it’s often difficult to find time to get that post up. But I’m not giving up, don’t worry! I love this book blog, and I really enjoy writing about the things I read, because it helps me remember long-term all these books I’m cramming into my brain. I may be floundering, but I’m not about to stop blogging.

It’s been a super gorgeous October here. The colors this year have been phenomenal. We had a fall like this a few years ago, and someone speculated it was because it was cooler than normal. It was a little like that this year as well; the temps dropped from 80 to in the low 50’s almost overnight, and the trees all just exploded with beauty. Driving around town has been so enjoyable this past month!

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in October 2022

1. Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman

2. God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney

3. Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse (review to come)

4. Flamer by Mike Curato

5. Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself by Rabbi Donniel Hartman (no review)

6. Girl A by Abigail Dean (review to come)

7. The Nowhere Child by Christian White (review to come)

8. Well Matched by Jen DeLuca (review to come)

9. Kin: A Memoir by Shawna Kay Rodenberg (review to come)

10. Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture by Emma Dabiri (no review)

11. Love Thy Neighbor: The Tory Diary of Prudence Emerson by Ann Turner (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears by Farah Stockman (review to come)

Not a very long list this month! I simply haven’t had much time to read, so that explains that. Not much I can do about that, either. Oh well.

I read Emma Dabiri’s Twisted simply to gain more knowledge and understanding so that I can be a better ally. I’m not writing a review because I don’t feel it’s my place; I’m obviously not the target audience, but it’s absolutely a great book: history, a little bit of memoir, even a little bit of discussion of some heavy math, all written in an engaging voice that kept me intrigued and occasionally even laughing out loud.

Eleven of these books came from my TBR!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Oy vey. So, last month, we left off at 132 books. But then I learned about a bunch of really interesting books, and I attended a virtual presentation on fighting book bans, where I learned about a bunch more, and so now my TBR is resting at 133. Not as big a number as it could be, but I was really hoping to get it down to the 120’s this month. Maybe next month…though we’re going to start seeing ‘Best of 2022!’ book lists soon.

I’m in danger…

Books I Acquired in October 2022

I think the only book that made its way into my house this past month was Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. There was a copy on the shelf of the Dollar Tree, for some reason, and since I really enjoyed her other book, I grabbed this one to take home.

Bookish Things I Did in October 2022

So many trips to the library! Does that count?

I also attended a virtual program on the recent slew of book banning and challenges across the country, but this was specific to my area, put on by the local group who puts on the book sales I go to, a local book store, a local-to-me-but-national-in-size publisher, and a local Jewish group I’ve volunteered with. SUPER informative presentation, and it’s definitely got me fired up to fight against these swamphogs who think they can decide what everyone else reads.

Current Podcast Love

Really enjoying Maintenance Phase right now!

Funny story about this. My son and I were out running errands last weekend, and he was like, “Hey, I’m going to throw on this podcast I have to listen to for my English class. It sounds like something you’ll like, too.” So he hooks up his phone to the car’s audio system and when the opening music began playing, I turned to stare at him and said, “Oh my God, is that Maintenance Phase?” Sure was! We listened to their episode on Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, since my son’s English class had been assigned a paper on the introduction of the book (and my son had read some of the book for more clarity). It was indeed a great episode!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. I barely have time to do my regular reading. Zero time to do any extra, specialized reading. *sob*

Real Life Stuff

The good: My son is doing *really* well with his college classes. He’s loving everything he’s been studying, he’s super engaged with the material, and he’s excited to go to class every day. He comes home bursting with information and wants to tell me all about it, which is great. It’s absolutely wonderful to see him so enthusiastic about school; I think the time he spent away from school really helped him mature, understand how he learns, and helped him to figure out what he wanted. Huge relief here! I’ve also been over to his campus with him a few times; their library is a-ma-zing!

Our new town library is coming along swimmingly! Their outside walls are finished; there’s brickwork, there are windows in, and it looks like they’re ready to commence on work on the inside of the building. It’s slated to open at some point early in the new year, so that’ll be exciting!

The not-so-good: My back is garbage right now, sending pain down both my legs. My blood pressure is up, likely from stress. Homeschooling is…well, there are good days, and then there are days that are likely responsible for the rise in my blood pressure (I found this out at the eye doctor, who is seeing blood pressure-related changes in my eye vessels, sigh. I have to go back in six months, and I’m supposed to try controlling my stress, which basically means I’m just resigned to going blind at this point). My daughter’s counselor has been out for the past two weeks due to COVID that turned into pneumonia, and my husband’s boss also has COVID right now.

Sigh.

I’m hanging in there, though. I have a massive stack of library books that I’m really looking forward to reading, if only I had time where I wasn’t homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, or running errands (exercise? AHAHAHAHAHAHA). Doing my best, but there are only 24 hours a day, and I’m doing everything I normally do with a significant amount of pain, so it’s rough. But one foot in front of the other…

Wishing you all a peaceful November. Happy reading, friends.

fiction

Book Review: God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney

Stephanie1 Comment

I can’t remember where I learned about God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney (William Morrow, 2021), but the premise intrigued me immediately. I’m fascinated by religion, and even fiction with religious twists or drama is enough to pull me in. Usually I swing more towards cults or cult-like settings, but I’m not picky; I’ll take average, everyday religious drama!

Abigail and Caroline are daughters of a famous megachurch pastor, Luke Nolan, who rose to fame years ago after a sermon on purity went viral. Now, Abigail is getting married, Caroline is about to head off to college, and it’s come to light that Luke has been having an affair for over a year. This is major news, bound to affect everyone affiliated with The Hope, Luke’s church, and Abigail and Caroline are directly in the path of the fallout.

Taking refuge at the ranch they inherited from their deceased grandmother, the sisters grow close for the first time as they spend their days trying to understand what happened, how they got here, what exactly growing up with Luke Nolan as a father has done to both of them. More secrets are revealed, and Caroline’s desperation increases as the summer nears an end and Abigail’s wedding inches closer.

I really wanted to love this book, and it was okay. Luke Nolan obviously has some major skeletons in the closet, and both he and his wife, Abigail and Caroline’s mother, were extremely well-written and true to character, easily recognizable if you have even the slightest bit of knowledge or interest in what American evangelical megachurches have looked like over the past twenty or thirty years. Luke is the narcissistic pastor determined to remain in the limelight; his wife, ever-adoring, keeps a smile plastered on her face at all times, despite what it costs her.

Abigail is the quintessential eldest daughter, solid, hard-working, always keeping up appearances like she’s learned from her mother. Caroline, the younger, more forgotten child, has space to wonder, to question, to doubt, and to forge her own path; no one is as dependent on her as they are on Abigail, which is both good and hurtful.

The characters were all well-developed; the plot, or lack thereof at times, was where the book lost me a bit. Drama would build up, and then…nothing. Not much of anything would happen. Any kind of action was sacrificed on the altar of Caroline’s (the narrator’s) inner turmoil (which is likely true to real life, but in fiction, I expect a little more action, you know?). I kept waiting for more things to happen to advance the plot forward, for the realizations the daughters came to to move things along, but it never really happened, and at least one of the daughters is arguably worse off at the end than at the beginning. Not much at all changes, and that just kind of left me feeling flat and uninspired at the end. I didn’t fully dislike this one; I just felt as though it lacked any real purpose at its conclusion. Interesting, yes, but it didn’t follow through enough on its initial promise of drama for me.

Visit Kelsey McKinney’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman

Stephanie1 Comment

I can’t actually remember how Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman (The Jewish Publication Society, 2015) ended up on my TBR; likely a mention by one of the many Jewish pages I follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Books and reading have always been an important part of being Jewish (we are the People of the Book!), and so learning about and understanding what happened to Jewish books during and after World War II was something that piqued my interest. Boy, did I learn a LOT from this book!

So, almost everyone knows that the Nazi burned books. Most of us have seen pictures of people throwing books onto a huge bonfire, and we use Nazi book burning as a metaphor for the dangers of censorship. But most of us probably don’t know that their book burning phase didn’t last very long; they quickly moved on to collecting books. That’s right. The Nazis stole, then collected Jewish writings even as they mowed down the Jewish people during World War II. They planned to study the writings of the culture they had wiped out. Fortunately, they lost, and afterwards, one of the many questions to be answered at war’s end became, “Now what do we do with all these millions of books?”

In order to help the reader understand the importance of this question, Rabbi Mark Glickman begins the book with a fascinating look at the history of Jewish texts and the emphasis on reading and study that has always been central to Judaism. The second section segues into the many heartbreaking ways the Nazis stole and desecrated our texts; the third, how so many people worked for years to return said texts to their rightful owners, or, barring the ability to do that, to send the texts to the places they would again be loved and cherished. This was obviously a massive amount of work; millions upon millions of books and papers had been stolen and hidden away, or stored in places that ranged from caves to castles. Moving these books involved multiple organizations working tirelessly for years.

This is an incredible book that tells a story I hadn’t heard before. I had no idea about the Nazis stealing books; even with all the reading I’ve done about history, World War II, and the Shoah, I had been under the impression that they burned books and nothing else. I had no clue about the massive troves of Jewish literature that lay hidden after the war, nor of the incredible effort of so many people to return these books to communities and organizations that would recognize them for the treasures that they are. This book presented a brand-new understanding of history to me, and I’m grateful to Rabbi Glickman for having penned such an interested, eye-opening work. I always appreciate being able to be better informed about anything, but especially Judaism and Jewish history.

nonfiction

Book Review: You’re the Only One I’ve Told: The Stories Behind Abortion by Dr. Meera Shah

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Abortion has been in the news lately for obvious reasons, and I wasn’t sure if I had the spoons to read a book about it; it’s not always easy to engage with a subject that’s so important but which is also under assault at the moment. After volunteering with a local organization to pack comfort care bags for our local Planned Parenthood a few weeks ago, however, I was ready to pick up You’re the Only One I’ve Told: The Stories Behind Abortion by Dr. Meera Shah (Chicago Review Press, 2020).  

Dr. Shah is a doctor who provides abortion care to patients who seek it out. Because being able to decide when to become a parent is an important part of bodily autonomy, planning one’s future, and in some cases, remaining alive, she is passionate about her work and seeks to help others understand the importance of what she does. Each chapter focuses on one person who, for varying reasons, chose to end a pregnancy; Dr. Shah includes the important medical knowledge necessary to fully understand each situation, and the difficulties that our national climate surrounding abortion adds to what is already often a tense and heartbreaking decision.

The reasons behind the abortion in each chapter are various and complex; from abusive relationships (who wants to be tied forever to a man who has hurt you multiple times???), to a doomed pregnancy where the baby will live maybe minutes after being born (if it survives that long without killing the parent carrying it), to pregnancies that occurred at the worst possible time, to a pregnancy that would render life next to impossible for the entire rest of the family (“Here, person already struggling to pay the rent for you and your three kids! Here’s another new baby; now you can also add $1200+ per month in daycare fees! I’m sure you can handle that!”), there are so, so many reasons why these women choose abortion, and Dr. Shah is respectful of them all, without judgment. Throughout each chapter, she illustrates and emphasizes the importance of being able to examine one’s life and come to the conclusion that becoming a parent (often becoming a parent again) at this moment cannot happen, and how important it is that this procedure remain legal.

So many heartbreaking decisions in this book. Often, the pregnancies were desperately wanted; nature, however, had other ideas about how the fetus would develop, and the parents were faced with the awful knowledge that there was no chance of them ending up with a child even if the pregnancy were continued. At other times, the parents simply realized that bringing a child into their lives was the worst possible thing they could do at the moment. Being allowed to make that decision allowed them to go on to have the lives they wanted – lives that often included, eventually, having more children.

If you’ve never read a book about abortion and are curious as to what could possibly lead a woman to make the choice to have one, this would be an excellent place to start. I’ve noticed that doctors tend to fall into two camps: either they’re terrible writers, or they’re great. Dr. Shah is one of the great ones; her style is engaging and never wanders into stiffy, stodgy medical writing. Her respect for the people she treats is obvious in her gentle handling of the stories in this book, and it’s obvious her patients are lucky to be served by her.

Mini reviews

Mass Review: More Graphic Novels!

Stephanie1 Comment

More graphic novels! I swear, this year, I’ve read more graphic novels than I ever have before. For one, there are just more out there; they’re getting more and more popular, which I love. For two, I’m wandering over by the graphic novel section more, at least the middle grade section, thanks to my daughter. I love how quick they are to read, but how fully they tell a story. I’ll never stop being in awe of all the work that goes into creating them! (Seriously, one drawing takes me hours upon hours to do. I would die if I tried to create a graphic novel.)

First up is Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob (One World, 2019). Ms. Jacobs is Indian (born here to immigrant parents); her husband is Jewish; their son, Z, is mixed-race and is full of a lot of questions about what’s going on in the world during the time period where this book takes place, which is the rise and election of Donald Trump. He’s struggling to understand why people are so fearful of and angry at people who look like him and his mother, and how his beloved grandparents can support a man who says such awful things but still profess to love Z. The book also delves into Ms. Jacobs’ experiences with racism throughout her life.

This is a really wonderful graphic novel; the art blends drawings, cut-outs, and photographs, and they all blend together in a way that looks really fresh and fits the story well. Her son is introspective and hilarious in the random way that small children are, interjecting their weird little kid thoughts about superheroes and other non-sequiturs into the middle of important conversations. The book provides an excellent perspective that shouldn’t be missed, especially if you’re white. It’s so important to understand what our privilege looks like for those who don’t have it, and what it looks like to exist in this society without it and how those parents explain it to their kids. If you’re unable to get that from friends in real life (whether that’s because you lack a diverse friend group or you don’t know where to start asking those friends), this book is a thoughtful explanation of it all. I’d love to read more graphic novels from Ms. Jacobs and know how things are going with her in-laws these days…

Button Pusher by Tyler Page (First Second, 2022) is a graphic novel I picked up off the new shelves in the children’s section of the library. The title called out to me immediately, and I barely had to glance at the back to know that I needed to read this. Button Pusher is a graphic memoir, describing Mr. Page’s experiences growing up with ADHD, a subject that has turned really important to me with my own daughter’s diagnosis (which, believe me, explained SO MUCH). He details his impulsivity, his inability to focus in class, his hyperfocus on areas that interested him, and the behavioral problems that ensued. He also goes into detail about the problems in his family: his father’s anger problems, his parents’ turbulent marriage.

It really helps me to read accounts of ADHD like this so I can get a little bit of an understanding about what it’s like being in my daughter’s head. It doesn’t explain all her behavior – we’re still working on dealing with her anger and her tendency to lash out at me – but it helps to hear, again and again, that so much of this behavior isn’t controllable, at least not at first, and not at this age. That her brain works a little differently, and that she will eventually learn how to work with her unique brain, instead of it working against her. There are some heavy parts of this; Tyler’s dad gets physically abusive multiple times throughout the book, so I’d recommend this one for the mature middle grade reader, and all parents who are looking to gain an understanding of what growing up with ADHD looks and feels like.

And then we have Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy by Steven Nadler and Ben Nadler (Princeton University Press, 2017). This was a cool little graphic nonfiction book about, obviously, some of the European philosophers who got modern Western philosophy off the ground. SO much of it was over my head – I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to really get into philosophy – but I enjoyed the quick journey into the past, the history, and trying to bend my mind around the deep thoughts of the historical figures portrayed in the book (I especially enjoyed the section on Baruch Spinoza, whom I’ve read about in several other books).

And finally, Flamer by Mike Curato (Henry Holt and Co, 2020), which tells the story of Aiden, a teenager at Boy Scout camp, worrying about starting high school in the fall, his parents (who fight all the time), and who he is. A lot of the other boys have sensed there’s something different about him; Aiden’s been the victim of bullying for years in school, but he’s trying to figure it all out. Is he gay? What does that mean for his life, his Catholic faith? Who is he, really?

I checked this out because it made a few lists of idiot people trying to get it banned from libraries, and…yeah, it’s just bigoted idiots. There’s absolutely nothing controversial here, just a teenage boy trying to figure out who he is. It’s a really well-done graphic novel, with great art and a sympathetic hero whose journey I think most kids will be able to identify with (the message, if not the exact content, and that’s likely the issue. The people who want books with gay characters banned don’t want us to be able to emphasize with them. All the more reason to pick these books up!).

And that’s it for now! Have you read any great graphic novels lately?

nonfiction

Book Review: Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America by Peter Edelman

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Poverty is a subject I’ve read a lot about, in vain attempts to understand our societal reaction to it. People are struggling and suffering, and we just…do nothing? And sometimes, we actively make the situation worse, because in the US (and I’m sure in other countries around the world), we see not having money as a moral issue. It was because of this inability to understand the way we view poverty that Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America by Peter Edelman (New Press, 2017) ended up on my TBR. It’s a gut-punch of a book, but if you’re looking to understand exactly how difficult it is to be poor in the US, it’s a sock to the stomach that you need.

In a book reminiscent in tone and in the intellectual heft of Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, Peter Edelman chronicles how poverty is systemic the US: the pointless fees and charges that are meant to keep poor people poor; the next-to-impossible roads necessary to make to climb out of poverty; the punishment that we inflict upon those who are already struggling in an attempt to discipline the poverty out of them. We fill our coffers and profit off the backs of people barely managing, or not managing at all; we see them struggling; we enact more laws and regulations meant to drain their accounts. And the cycle continues.

This isn’t history. What Peter Edelman writes about is here and now: court systems enacting hefty fees and fines, prisons charging for anything and everything they can, law enforcement writing tickets, which come with a heavy price tag, to homeless people. In every way we can, we make it harder to be poor. It’s not all without hope; plenty of people are fighting back, and fighting back hard. But this is a systemic issue; it’s baked in deeply to our laws, our law enforcement, our court systems. But in order to make things better, first, you need to understand just how bad it is, and that’s why you need to read this book.

This is an information-dense book; it’s not something you’re going to want to kick back with after a long day at work when you’re looking for relaxation. Not a Crime to Be Poor is a book you open because you want to understand what’s going on, and because you want to challenge yourself and your preconceived notions. After you turn the final page, you’ll close the book with a righteous sense of anger, a healthy dose of empathy for those who are set up to fail in this wretched system, and hopefully, a strong desire to be part of the solution. Read this book in small chunks if that’s what it takes: a chapter at a time, a few pages a day. This is information that all Americans should be aware of, an understanding we should all have.

Not a Crime to Be Poor throws the curtains open on a reality that far too many of us find it convenient to ignore.

fiction

Book Review: The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis

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Okay, y’all. I have discovered a deep love for Tova Mirvis’s books. I’ve read The Book of Separation and The Outside World, both of which I loved, and a few week ago, I picked up a copy of The Ladies Auxiliary (Ballantine Books, 1999). From the first page, I was hooked with a capital HOOKED. This book pulled me in like a shark dragging me into the deepest ocean waters, and I didn’t want it to end, like, EVER. If you haven’t read Tova Mirvis, you neeeeeeeeeeeeeed to. She’s so good.

The orthodox Jewish community of Memphis, Tennessee is abuzz with the news of a new woman moving to town. Bathsheba, a recently widowed mother, has come to town, her late husband’s hometown, with her five-year-old daughter Ayala, for a fresh start, and the women of the town want to know everything about this unconventional woman. Bathsheba is a convert, a woman with a past outside of Orthodox Judaism, and immediately, the community is on edge. Who is this woman with her strange way of dressing and her outside-the-box behavior? What kind of influence will she be on the young people of their community? What’s she really doing here?

The more the women get to know Bathsheba, the more suspicious they are. Even though she’s still following the rules of the community, is she really following them well, with the right spirit? After all, they wouldn’t want their daughters to end up like her. Surely they’re in the right in ostracizing her, because she just doesn’t fit in. Not really. And the more the women of Memphis try to push Bathsheba away and make her understand she’s not wanted, the more damage they actually do to one of their most beloved members.

Oh my goodness, this was WONDERFUL. The Ladies Auxiliary is narrated in a kind of first person plural, as in “We thought this,” and “All of us wanted to know…”, and then goes into examples of that behavior, describing each character in third person omniscient. I loved this structure SO much. I’ve never seen this done before, and it worked so very, very well to illuminate the suspicion, the fear, and the gossipy, bullying nature of some members of the community. Absolutely incredible storytelling.

Bathsheba is a strong character who withstands a lot in this book. She does show her hurt several times, but not as much as one might suspect. The other members of the community, for all their piousness, are often portrayed as nosey, judgmental, and unable to see beyond the tips of their own noses. The introduction of a colorful new person to their insular community wakes them up, but not in the way they need to, and their behavior and treatment of Bathsheba will have exactly the opposite effect, driving them all apart, harming their relationships with each other, and most of all, harming the very last person they wanted to hurt.

The Ladies Auxiliary comes to an excellent conclusion, with a few questions still left up in the air. Plenty still remains to be seen, and that’s left for the reader to wonder, to ponder, to try to fill in the blanks. Does the community truly learn its lesson? It’s something I’ll be considering for a long time.

Excellent, excellent book. I loved every page of this.

Visit Tova Mirvis’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: Why We Fly by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

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A book on high school cheerleading wouldn’t normally appeal to me. I’m not in high school, my one brief foray into cheerleading (seventh grade) did not go well, and while cheerleaders are incredible athletes, it’s generally not a subject that interests me. But the premise of Why We Fly by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal (Sourcebooks Fire, 2021), along with its first person, dual-narrative structure, lured me in right away. It only took a few tries to finally find it on a somewhat-local-to-me library! (Always glad to see interest in the books that interest me. I’m never too bummed when I have to wait a little bit!)

Why We Fly begins with Eleanor in physical therapy, where she’s been for months following her second concussion after a cheer accident. It’s affected everything about her life – not just her ability to cheer, but her ability to drive, her memory, even her personality. Concussions are serious business, but Eleanor just wants to get back to cheering. At PT, she runs into Three, the star quarterback from her school who’s on his way to college football and a career in the NFL, and things fire up a little between them.

Chanel, Eleanor’s teammate and best friend, is super-focused on success. Leadership runs through her veins, and she’s determined to succeed in everything she does. When Eleanor is named team captain, Chanel can’t believe it; with as hard as she’s worked, how is this possible???

This will affect everything, because the team needs strong leadership right now. Teams across the country are coming to understand the systemic racism inherent in the US, and Chanel and Eleanor’s school is no different. The fallout from their teammates taking a knee during the anthem will have dramatic effects on their school, their friendship, and their futures, and both girls have a lot to learn.

This ended up being a really interesting book. I was kind of expecting it to be more about concussions, but it left that behind early on and segued into the Black Lives Matter movement and how that movement plays out in high school sports teams, how high school administrations respond to it, and how it can divide friendships. Eleanor got caught up in a lot of things in this story; I wondered often if the multiple concussions had made it less likely that she would see she was often making the wrong decisions in regards to the leadership of her team (she should’ve known she wasn’t the right leader from the start) and her friendship with Chanel.

Chanel is a dynamic character. She’s complex, driven (maybe sometimes a little too much?), and hard-working. She gets the short end of the stick far too often, but that usually just makes her work harder. She doesn’t let disappointment get in her way; when it tries, she’s able to refocus and continue on. I liked her character a lot; contrasted against Eleanor, who is a little flakier and nowhere near as driven, she felt like a strong role model.

I do wish we had seen more of what made the two girls friends in the first place. I never got a great sense of what drew them together and kept their friendship going. I did really like the information on concussions in the beginning, though. My son had two (mild) concussions during his teenage years; some kids are just more prone to them than others, but they can be really devastating, and I’m glad more attention is being paid to the seriousness of these brain injuries.

Fascinating look at racial injustice and how today’s social movements play out in high schools and among high school students. I enjoyed this one.

Visit Kimberly Jones’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Visit Gilly Segal’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.