Alice Cary

FictionComing of Age

How to Find Your Way in the Dark

Review by Alice Cary

Prepare for surprises galore in How to Find Your Way in the Dark, a rollicking novel that begins with a lonely truck ride in New England in 1938 and follows its characters through a decade of fascinating history. Just when you think the story is heading one way, it veers in another, completely unexpected direction.

Twelve-year-old Sheldon Horowitz and his father are driving home from Hartford, Connecticut, to Whately, Massachusetts, after honoring the one-year anniversary of Sheldon’s mother’s death. She and her sister died in a horrific movie theater fire in Hartford. And as if that isn’t enough tragedy for the novel’s first 13 pages, a truck purposely forces Sheldon and his father’s car off the road during their return trip, and Sheldon’s father dies.

Readers of Derek B. Miller’s award-winning thriller, Norwegian by Night, will recognize Sheldon as that novel’s 82-year-old protagonist. As a Tom Sawyer-like boy in How to Find Your Way in the Dark, Sheldon is determined to make sense of his double tragedies, and his attempts to do so take the reader on one hell of a ride. As he seeks out the leering, mustached truck driver who killed his father, his quest leads him straight into danger—think mobsters, guns and jewel thefts.

Miller has crafted a wide-ranging, years-spanning yet tightly structured plot, and he excels at placing memorable characters in unusual circumstances. Sheldon is joined in his adventures by his two older cousins, Abe and Mirabelle, and his best friend, Lenny, all of whom play pivotal roles. One summer, Lenny and Sheldon end up as bellhops at the famed Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskills, where Lenny practices standup comedy amid the glamorous, bustling atmosphere.

An underlying seriousness lies at the heart of all of this intrigue, hilarity and fun. Sheldon, Abe, Mirabelle and Lenny, all Jewish, must confront the many faces of antisemitism during the turbulent years of World War II. Miller weaves in a multitude of historical details, including reports of the horrors in Europe and America’s reluctance to intervene.

The ending of How to Find Your Way in the Dark is nothing short of brilliant, tying up a variety of loose ends while making a powerful statement about the need to fully recognize and address antisemitism. Readers are left with much to ponder, including life’s many uncertainties and cruel twists of fate. Despite these unhappy truths, we are also left with the uplifting wisdom of Lenny’s urgent prayer: “Dear God, give me the strength to be joyful.”

The ending of How to Find Your Way in the Dark is nothing short of brilliant, making a powerful statement about the need to fully address antisemitism.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray

Interview by Alice Cary

Two beloved novelists shed light on another notable partnership—between J.P. Morgan and his librarian, a captivating woman with a big secret.

“What has this got to do with me?” wondered Victoria Christopher Murray. The award-winning author of more than 20 novels had received a request from historical novelist Marie Benedict to collaborate on a novel. Murray quickly glanced at the first page of the pitch, which described financier J.P. Morgan’s opulent New York City library. She chuckled, thinking, “The only thing I have in common [with him] is a Chase account”—referring to the modern-day banking company with historical ties to Morgan.

Weeks later, when Murray’s literary agent pestered her to take a closer look at Benedict’s proposal, Murray’s attitude changed. Morgan’s librarian, a woman named Belle da Costa Greene, was one of the most important librarians in American history. She was also a Black woman who passed as white. Greene’s father was the first Black graduate of Harvard College as well as a professor, diplomat and prominent racial justice activist. Once Murray digested this new information, she quickly got in touch with Benedict.

“I feel like she chose us and we did a good job, and now she’s just sitting there with her arms folded, tapping her foot, waiting for the book to come out.”

Their resulting collaboration, The Personal Librarian, imagines the sacrifices and struggles that Greene surely endured to protect her secret. Benedict and Murray’s teamwork also produced a deep, enduring friendship, and the two writers now call themselves sisters. As we chat via Zoom—with Murray in Washington, D.C., and Benedict in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—their admiration for each other is evident, as is their esteem for Greene.

“I feel her presence a lot,” Murray says. “I can’t believe how much I still think about her. I feel like she chose us and we did a good job, and now she’s just sitting there with her arms folded, tapping her foot, waiting for the book to come out.” Benedict agrees, adding that of all the women she’s written about—Agatha Christie, Hedy Lamarr, Clementine Churchill and others—Greene is the one she’d most like to meet.

Greene ran the Morgan Library for 43 years, first helping Morgan to amass an important collection of rare books and manuscripts and, after his death in 1913, transforming his private collection into a public resource. “As time went on,” Benedict says, “Belle and J.P. became closer and closer, just like Victoria and me. Their relationship really defied description.”

Like Morgan, Greene was extremely charismatic. “It’s hard for us to convey how much of a celebrity she really was,” Benedict says. Greene ran in multiple social circles and had numerous affairs. She was known for her flamboyant fashion, famously saying, “Just because I am a librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Personal Librarian.

Once on board with the novel, Murray brought a whole new perspective to Greene’s story. During one of their earliest meetings, the two writers made a quick stop at the Morgan Library. Benedict knew the space well; it had been a place of refuge when she worked as a corporate lawyer for more than 10 years before turning to fiction. She describes its stunning interior as being like a jewel box. However, this was Murray’s first visit. As she looked around Morgan’s study, she pointed to an oil painting and said, “What is that Black man doing up there?”

Benedict had never noticed the portrait of a Moorish ambassador to the Venetian court, painted around 1600. But the ambassador bore a resemblance to Greene’s father, and the authors began to speculate that Greene bought the portrait as an homage to him. “That is something that I would have never seen without Victoria,” Benedict says. “And in many ways, as time went on, that really became a symbol of Belle. Here she was, this African American woman in the room that nobody saw.”

The Personal Librarian“And I think that’s why she put the painting there,” Murray says. “One of the themes that Marie and I put in the book was that Belle was hiding in plain sight.”

Both writers agree that Morgan likely had suspicions about Greene’s race that he chose to ignore. “He didn’t want to be known in society as the man who had been duped by a Black woman,” Murray says. She describes showing a photograph of Greene to her friends, who responded with surprise. “How did she pass?” they asked. “How in the world did that happen?”

Such questions, inherent to the creation of the novel, sparked a childhood memory for Murray of a time when her younger sister looked at a photograph on their mantle and asked, “Who is that white woman?” It was their grandmother, who on at least one occasion had passed as white during a train trip from North Carolina to New York. “Writing this book, I really began to understand what that must’ve been like,” Murray says.

“As time went on, Belle and J.P. became closer and closer, just like Victoria and me. Their relationship really defied description.”

Greene burned her personal papers before she died, no doubt to protect her secret, so much must be imagined about her life. But as daunting a task as re-creating her story may have been, the two authors render it with gusto, from Greene’s defiant wit to the drama and danger that surrounded her.

The success of Benedict and Murray’s partnership is in part due to a difficult reality: surviving a pandemic while coping with the horror of George Floyd’s and Breonna Taylor’s murders in 2020. They spent hours on Zoom each day, often discussing race issues vital to both their novel and current events. The experience sent them on a “fast track to sisterhood," they agree.

“I think it was a gift for me to work with an author who was not African American,” Murray says, “because I got to see all kinds of perspectives. I had wider eyes. We hope that African American book clubs and white book clubs will get together and talk about our book together the same way [Marie] and I did.”

Benedict chimes in, “During her lifetime, Belle knew that her story couldn't be told because it might eviscerate the impact of her legacy. But now we're at a point where her legacy can be known and celebrated. It’s time.”

 

Benedict author photo by Anthony Musmanno 2020. Murray photo by Jason Frost Photography 2020.

Co-authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray bring to life the elusive story of one of the most influential librarians in history.
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

The Maidens

Review by Alice Cary

Fans of Alex Michaelides’ blockbuster debut The Silent Patient will eagerly dive into his newest thriller, The Maidens, which will immerse them in the world of Mariana Andros, a 36-year-old group therapist living in London and mourning the strange drowning of her husband Sebastian a year ago in Greece. (Mariana trained alongside Theo Faber, the criminal psychotherapist who unraveled the strange case of Alicia Berenson in Michaelides’ debut, and he makes an appearance or two here.)

Mariana is still overwhelmed by her grief when she is suddenly called to her alma mater, Cambridge University, after her niece Zoe’s friend is murdered. Mariana and Sebastian raised Zoe, whose parents died in a car accident. The distraught girl shares that her late friend, Tara, was part of a group of university students known as “The Maidens,” who are all devoted to their dashing American professor of Greek tragedy, Edward Fosca. The police have arrested a suspect, but Zoe proclaims his innocence. Mariana quickly gets swept up in the case, and soon is on the track of a serial killer as more Maidens are murdered. Each time, a strange postcard with a Greek quotation from a classical tragedy is found in the victim's rooms, and Mariana becomes increasingly convinced that the arrogant Fosca is the murderer.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Actors Louise Brealey and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith narrate as investigator and killer in the audio edition of The Maidens.

Michaelides’ page turner cleverly weaves together Mariana’s difficult and haunted past, her group therapy patients, Greek mythology and the increasing local tension as more girls are killed. He makes excellent use of the Cambridge University setting, with its Gothic architecture, traditions and hierarchy of students, professors and staff. As clues emerge and danger grows, Mariana becomes more and more sure of her sleuthing, although frustrated readers may often want to shake her and point her in other directions. A particularly needy patient named Henry seems obsessed with her. And then there’s Fred, a physics student whom Mariana meets on the train, who has fallen in love with her and keeps popping up—perhaps as friend, perhaps as foe.

The Maidens is a well-paced, suspenseful and easy-to-digest thriller. The Greek tragedy aspect is intriguing and Michaelides explains the mythology, so there’s no need to brush up beforehand. Be forewarned, however: There’s a supremely unsettling, sure-to-be-divisive twist at the end of this cliffhanger.

Fans of Alex Michaelides’ blockbuster debut The Silent Patient will eagerly dive into his newest thriller, The Maidens.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year

Review by Alice Cary

Nina Hamza sets an incredibly high bar by placing three classics of children’s literature at the heart of her debut middle grade novel, Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year. Fortunately for readers, she more than delivers, soaring over the bar with ease. 

Twelve-year-old Ahmed Aziz must move with his family to his father's Minnesota hometown so that his father can receive experimental treatment for a rare genetic liver condition. Ahmed feels displaced and lost, and his Muslim faith and brown skin don’t ease the transition. In Minnesota, he says, “I hated having to explain myself with an adjective. I didn’t feel like an Indian American, and it didn’t matter that I had never been to India, because the color of my skin meant I needed to explain.”

Ahmed’s new English teacher, Mrs. Gaarder, was the best friend of Ahmed’s uncle, who died at age 12 of the same liver condition that now threatens Ahmed’s father’s life. Her class provides the book’s narrative focus: a yearlong group competition in which students will study Louis Sachar’s Holes, Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia and E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. At the end of the year, students will challenge her in “Are You Smarter Than Mrs. Gaarder?”—a competition no student has ever won. Ahmed, who’s never enjoyed school and doesn’t like to read, is less than enthused. 

Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year features not just a riveting and complex plot but also a large cast of fully realized characters anchored by the likable Ahmed, who has a fresh, funny and authentic tween voice. Hamza delves deeply into Ahmed’s fears of loss and grief as he learns more about his uncle, and she portrays a prolonged and dire medical crisis with notable sensitivity. 

The author’s depiction of realistic school scenes, friendships and rivalries is also excellent. At school, Ahmed gets to know a broad group of students, most notably a bully named Jack, who unfortunately lives next door. Their superbly developed relationship provides many opportunities for Ahmed to compare his own experiences to those featured in the books he is studying.

Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year marks Hamza as a writer to watch and provides engaging opportunities for readers to discover common ground with Ahmed and with the characters he meets during his epic year. Hamza hints at a sequel when Mrs. Gaarder reveals that she’ll lead a similar exercise in her class next year with a study of three of Shakespeare’s plays. We can only hope this is the case.

Nina Hamza sets an incredibly high bar by placing three classics of children’s literature at the heart of her debut middle grade novel, Ahmed Aziz’s Epic Year.

FictionHistorical Fiction

The Personal Librarian

Review by Alice Cary

“Your act goes against everything I stand for and everything I’ve worked for,” Richard T. Greener tells his wife in The Personal Librarian. Despite the fact that Richard is a civil rights activist and Harvard University’s first Black graduate, his wife claimed their family was white on the 1905 New York state census. 

The act tears the family apart. Richard eventually leaves his wife and children, who change their surname to “Greene,” and his daughter Belle adds “da Costa” to her name, claiming Portuguese ancestors as a way to explain her complexion and still pass for white. Belle da Costa Greene grows up to become J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian and one of the most influential librarians in America.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover the origin story of Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray’s co-authorship.

Belle’s unlikely rise to fame forms the heart of this engrossing, dramatic novel, and co-authors Marie Benedict (who is white) and Victoria Christopher Murray (who is Black) do an admirable job of trying to imagine whether her achievements were worth the sacrifices. Despite the fact that Belle burned her personal papers before she died, no doubt to protect her secret, the authors succeed in bringing her elusive, charismatic personality to life, highlighting her attention-grabbing style, her witty quips and her rich, complicated relationship with Morgan.

Although the novel may have benefitted from a more sharply focused narrative arc, the authors take full advantage of the treasure trove of intriguing historical detail at their disposal. The Personal Librarian explores high-stakes art auctions; Belle’s long-lasting love affair with art critic Bernard Berenson, who had his own secret (his Jewish Lithuanian roots); friendships and encounters with the likes of dancer Isadora Duncan; and an art show featuring the works of Auguste Rodin and Henri Matisse. As Belle grapples with her ongoing fear of having her secret discovered, she realizes she can’t have children at the risk of having a dark-skinned baby—although it’s hard to imagine how a husband or child would have fit into her busy, globe-trotting lifestyle.

There is much to enjoy in The Personal Librarian, as well as much to consider, especially the tragic central dilemma of Belle’s life: “While Papa held beautiful dreams of equality for us all, Mama saved me—and all my siblings—from the segregation and racism in America, freeing me to fulfill that early promise Papa saw in me.”

Co-authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray bring to life the elusive story of one of the most influential librarians in history.
FictionLiterary Fiction

One Two Three

Review by Alice Cary

It’s rare when a book is decidedly grim—dire, even—yet still manages to be as full of comfort, humor and hope as One Two Three, a thought-provoking allegory about corporate greed, environmental activism, parent-child relationships and the bonds and betrayals of sisterly love. 

The residents of the fictional town of Bourne were poisoned 17 years ago by a chemical leak into the water supply, and “the only people who did not die or leave were the ones who could not.” The Mitchell family is among those still stuck in the fading, abandoned town, with matriarch Nora struggling for years to make ends meet and to bring a class-action lawsuit against Belsum Chemical. The leak caused her husband’s death not long before their triplet daughters were born, two of whom were affected in utero by the chemical. 

With nicknames “One,” “Two” and “Three,” the girls, now 16 years old, take turns narrating. Mab describes herself as “a boring straight white girl”; Monday is autistic and maintains what’s left of Bourne’s library in their small home; and Mirabel is super smart but can’t walk or talk, so she communicates electronically through an app she calls “the Voice.” Frankel reveals their stories in artful prose laced with humor, much of it dark. For instance, when Mirabel gets angry at her sisters, she reminds herself “that if I killed them both I would never be able to use the toilet again when my mother was not home.”

The town is filled with wonderful characters, including Mrs. Shriver, the high school teacher who teaches history achronologically because she doesn’t believe in cause and effect. The plot takes off when a new student arrives from Boston named River Templeton. He’s the descendant of Belsum’s founders, who have plans to reopen the plant. Mab and Mirabel quickly fall for River, while all three sisters scheme clever ways to use him to gather information that will help their mother’s lawsuit.

The result is a warm, funny tour de force that has much to say about big business, the ways that tragedies unfold, the power of citizens to effect change and the passing of civic responsibility from one generation to the next. As Mirabel explains, “It’s not our mother—our mothers, the last generation—who can fix this. They can’t. It is up to us now, the daughters, to move our town forward, to save us all, to tell a different story.” One Two Three is a very different story indeed—one that is delightfully memorable and wildly empowering.

It’s rare when a book is decidedly grim—dire, even—yet still manages to be as full of comfort, humor and hope as One Two Three.
NonfictionMemoirFood & Drink

My Place at the Table

Review by Alice Cary

When Alexander Lobrano arrived at a Paris bistro one evening, the maitre d’ led him to a table where an older woman sat sipping a glass of white wine. Eventually, with “an avalanche of awe,” Lobrano realized his companion was none other than Julia Child. After confessing that he hoped to someday become a food writer, she replied, “That’s a good boy. But you don’t want to get too big for your britches.”

That memorable scene epitomizes Lobrano’s memoir, My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris. It’s a scrumptious, humor-filled love letter to Paris and its food, written by a James Beard Award-winning writer who is the first to admit that his life’s trajectory sounds highly improbable: “suburban Connecticut guy becomes a restaurant critic of a leading French newspaper.”

Lobrano’s childhood memories are rich, although laced with sadness, loneliness and sexual abuse. His father worried that Lobrano was “a bit of a fruit loop” and sent him off to a two-month “Adventure Camp” in hopes of transforming him into a “regular boy.” Gradually, food became Lobrano’s savior: “my muse, my metaphor, and my map for making a place for myself in the world and finding my place at the table.”

By happenstance, as a young man in 1986, he landed an editorial position at Women’s Wear Daily in Paris to write about menswear, a topic he found “excruciatingly dull.” His slow, steady attempts to transition to food writing are fascinating fun, and Lobrano’s nonstop curiosity and enthusiasm are particularly engaging—especially when they lead him to a dinner with Princess Caroline of Monaco and several encounters with Yves Saint Laurent.

Lobrano’s culinary heritage is hardly sophisticated; in fact, his mother was a Drake of Drake’s Cakes fame. (Remember Ring Dings and Devil Dogs?) At one hilariously recounted dinner with renowned food writer Ruth Reichl, Lobrano’s mother told her, “Andy’s favorite foods when he was little were Cheez Doodles and Sara Lee German Chocolate Cake.” But by the end of Lobrano’s transformation into a cosmopolitan restaurant critic, readers will find themselves longing to be seated at a Parisian table alongside him. (If this can’t be achieved, his memoir contains the next best thing: Lobrano’s list of his 30 favorite restaurants in Paris, with descriptions.)

Lobrano concludes that “gastronomic expertise is dull and can be irritating unless it’s leavened by humility, humor, and emotion.” Rest assured, there’s never a dull moment in My Place at the Table. It’s a veritable feast of humility, humor and emotion.

There’s never a dull moment in Alexander Lobrano’s memoir of becoming a food writer in Paris. It’s a veritable feast of humility, humor and emotion.
NonfictionBiographyAnimals

The Ride of Her Life

Review by Alice Cary

Road trip sagas can be unforgettable, whether it’s Jack Kerouac crossing the country in On the Road or Cheryl Strayed hitting the trail in Wild. That’s definitely the case with Annie Wilkins, a 63-year-old widow from Maine who made a bold decision when life handed her way too many lemons. In 1954, she suddenly found herself with no money, home or family, and her doctor had just told her she had only two years to live. 

Determined not to become a charity case, Wilkins remembered that her mother had always dreamed of saddling a horse and heading to California to see the Pacific Ocean. So, improbable as this sounds, that’s what Wilkins decided to do—never mind the fact that she had no horse and hadn’t even sat on one in at least 30 years. Elizabeth Letts tells Wilkins’ amazing story in The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America, drawing on Wilkins’ extensive diaries, postcards and more.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Elizabeth Letts discovered the freedom of the open road—in the midst of lockdown.

Wilkins is an extraordinary woman with an abundance of grit and wit—imagine Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, or Frances McDormand’s character in Nomadland. She managed to buy a horse named Tarzan and set out with her beloved mutt, Depeche Toi—French for “hurry up,” which is something this unusual trio certainly couldn’t do. Wilkins wore layers of men’s clothing, had no map or flashlight, and only kept about 32 bucks in her pocket. Undaunted, she wrote in her diary, “I go forth as a tramp of fate among strangers.”

Wilkins was repeatedly hospitalized and encountered all sorts of weather and hardships, but she never gave up. Sometimes she slept in stables with Tarzan, and she often spent nights in jail cells—a somewhat common occurrence for thrifty travelers at the time. However, she also became famous as reporters shared her story, and many communities and households began to excitedly await her arrival. They showed her endless hospitality, putting her up in their homes and sometimes in fancy hotels. As Letts writes, “That was when Annie realized she wasn’t just riding for herself—she could carry other people’s hopes and dreams along with her.”

This is a feel-good story in every way, and Letts keeps the momentum lively, sprinkling in interesting historical tidbits that enrich the drama. The Ride of Her Life is an altogether quirky, inspiring journey that’s not to be missed.

This is a feel-good story in every way, and Elizabeth Letts keeps the momentum lively, sprinkling in interesting historical tidbits that enrich the drama.
Children's & YAPicture Book

And I Paint It

Review by Alice Cary

There’s hardly a more intriguing or renowned family of creatives than the Wyeths. Patriarch N.C. Wyeth was a painter and illustrator who, with his wife, raised five talented children in their famed home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Henriette, Carolyn and Andrew all followed in their father’s artistic footsteps, while Ann became a composer and Nathaniel an engineer and inventor.

Writer Beth Kephart invites readers into the Wyeth family’s busy life, depicting an imaginary day narrated by young Henriette. With paint box, easel and canvas in hand, Henriette eagerly follows her father on a ramble through the countryside to paint the sprawling landscape. Along the way, they pass the other Wyeth children, each busy in their own little world, and Henriette ponders Pa’s advice to “awaken into your dreams.” When Henriette and Pa reach an open meadow, they set up their easels and, in a wonderful spread, begin to paint side by side.

And I Paint It: Henriette Wyeth’s World is a sensitive, satisfying portrayal of an adoring daughter spending time with her father. It’s also an inspiring glimpse into the careful cultivation and blossoming of a child’s creative spirit. Kephart’s writing is full of marvelously specific detail, from “the slosh of the creek” to “the green growing into the cap of a strawberry” to Pa’s coat, which “smells like apple cores and packing moss and turpentine.”

The text echoes with an unspoken sense of the past that’s reinforced by Amy June Bates’ mixed media illustrations. Her muted palette of pastels lends a dreamy mood to the spreads and recalls the spirit of the Wyeths’ worlds. She nimbly alternates between broad landscapes and close-ups of singular items (acorns, a bouquet of flowers) that echo how N.C. and Henriette observe and paint subjects both big and small. Her illustrations also incorporate small pencil sketches—a leaping squirrel, birds in flight—that highlight another stage of the artistic process.

Though the narrative is enriched by biographical information included in the backmatter, this beautiful picture book stands well on its own for readers unfamiliar with the Wyeth family and provides a fascinating look at one of its often overlooked members.

Writer Beth Kephart invites readers into the Wyeth family’s busy life, depicting an imaginary day narrated by young Henriette. With paint box, easel and canvas in hand, Henriette eagerly follows her father on a ramble through the countryside to paint the sprawling landscape.

NonfictionMemoirGraphic Memoirs

The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Review by Alice Cary

A new graphic memoir from Alison Bechdel is always a treat, and The Secret to Superhuman Strength is no exception. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), which concentrated on Bechdel’s father, became not only a bestseller but also a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. The subsequent Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012) was also a bestselling hit. The long wait for Bechdel’s third book—and the first one to be published in full color—is now over, and this time her long-standing obsession with exercise is in the crosshairs of her literary lens.

“My bookish exterior perhaps belies it,” she writes, “but I’m a bit of an exercise freak.” She immediately adds, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ‘good at sports.’ I’m not a ‘jock.’ That’s a whole different ball game, and not my subject here.” Instead, she takes readers on a very personal journey—divided into decades, beginning with her birth in 1960—that showcases America’s many fitness crazes over the years.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alison Bechdel reveals the surprisingly physical process of creating her illustrations.

Bechdel’s early fascination with exercise was sparked by Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads in comic books. These ads made her realize she was “a textbook weakling” and led her on a lifelong quest for strength. “It’s a world gone mad!” she observes about the current state of working out. “Pacifists paying for boot camp! Feminists learning to pole dance! Geeks flipping tractor tires! And the trends keep coming!”

Don’t be fooled, however. The Secret to Superhuman Strength is much more than simply a fab, fit, fun retrospective. With her trademark self-deprecation and deliciously dark humor, Bechdel takes a thought-provoking look at her gradual realization that she’s gay, as well as at her search for transcendence as she ages and faces the specter of her own mortality. While exploring these themes, she devotes scenes to literary and philosophical heroes who may at first seem like unlikely exercise gurus: Jack Kerouac, Margaret Singer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and more. Rest assured, in Bechdel’s talented hands, such commentary works beautifully, immensely enriching the book.

Every page yields a variety of delights. There’s the poignancy of a full-page depiction of her last walk in the woods with her beloved, complicated father in late 1979, just months before his death. There’s the surprise of peppered-in fun facts. (Ralph Waldo Emerson was so grief-stricken a year after his first wife’s death that he opened her coffin.) And there’s the simple, repeated joy of reading a really great line. After a karate class in the 1980s, Bechdel guzzles a Budweiser and says, “There was no constant, namby-pamby suckling of water bottles in those days.”

The Secret to Superhuman Strength is the liveliest literary workout you can get. Bechdel’s unique combination of personal narrative, the search for higher meaning and nonstop comic ingenuity will leave you pumped up and smiling.

Alison Bechdel’s unique combination of personal narrative, the search for higher meaning and nonstop comic ingenuity will leave you pumped up and smiling.
NonfictionTrue CrimeMemoir

Everything Is Fine

Review by Alice Cary

On July 24, 2014, while experiencing schizophrenic psychosis, 23-year-old Tim Granata murdered his beloved mother. Although Tim’s mental health had been declining for several years, the family’s worry was that Tim would take his own life, not harm others.

Soon afterward, an acquaintance wrote to Tim’s brother, Vince: “I hope you will eventually be able to find some peace and feel whole again, though that might be your life’s work.” Despite the enormity of the task, Vince Granata bravely and lovingly chronicles his family’s story—before, during and after the tragedy—in his riveting memoir, Everything Is Fine. 

Tim’s illness “began as a whisper” late in high school and during his first year of college, but it slowly took over his life. Repeated hospitalizations and therapy didn’t help, and he refused medication. Because of his background as a champion wrestler in high school, Tim lifted weights to try and calm the cacophony of his increasingly psychotic thoughts.

Granata shut down after his mother’s murder, unable to think of her without remembering her horrific death. Plagued by nightmares, he avoided sleep and turned to caffeine and alcohol. Still, he was wracked by magical thinking, wondering if he might have been able to save his mother had he been present instead of 1,000 miles away tutoring children in the Dominican Republic.

Granata writes with compassion, reflection and unsparing honesty of not only his brother’s metamorphosis but also his own transformation after the crime—how he was finally able to find his way back to his life, memories and love of his brother. Some of the book’s most memorable scenes take place during his visits with Tim in Connecticut’s Whiting Forensic Hospital, where Tim was sent to be “restored to competency” so that he could eventually be tried for his crime.

Anyone trying to better understand the cruel grip of psychosis will learn much from Everything Is Fine. As Granata concludes, “We can only conquer terror when we drag what scares us into the light. We only understand horror when we think about what we know, when we look at all the pieces.”

On July 24, 2014, Vince Granata’s 23-year-old brother, while experiencing schizophrenic psychosis, murdered their beloved mother.
FictionFamily Drama

Margreete’s Harbor

Review by Alice Cary

Eleanor Morse’s precise, patient prose captivates from page one of her fourth novel, Margreete’s Harbor, as she describes an early winter morning for an elderly woman named Margreete. At home on the Maine coast, Margreete heats up some bacon drippings and retrieves her slippers, but while she’s sidelined by a dead mouse that the cat brought in, poof—her stove catches fire. That fire leads to big changes, as Margreete’s daughter, Liddie, and her family must move from Michigan to look after Margreete in Burnt Harbor, Maine. 

Beginning in 1955 and continuing through 1968, this is a bighearted, multigenerational saga with a simmering social conscience, as Margreete; Liddie; her husband, Harry; and each of their three children wrestle with their secrets and desires. Morse chronicles big and small moments equally well, the sum of which can make—and sometimes break—a family. 

Burnt Harbor is “the tiniest eyelash compared to the great eye of the ocean beyond,” and Morse expertly plays with this perspective, showing how global events seep into every molecule of the family’s life. For example, with dogged determination, teenager Bernie tries to head to Washington, D.C., to join Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, partly motivated by his realization that he loves his best friend, a Black boy named Noah. A few years later, Harry chains himself to a White House fence to protest the Vietnam War—at a moment when Liddie desperately needs her husband by her side.

Margreete’s Harbor is also a particularly tender portrait of a family faced with dementia. All three grandchildren safely confide their greatest secrets to their grandmother, sure that she won’t remember their confessions. But Margreete still has wisdom to share, and when Bernie is just a boy, she advises, “When you grow up, don’t ever try to love someone you don’t love. And don’t ever try to not love someone you do love.” 

Of course, things aren’t always rosy. By moving to Maine, Liddie must leave behind her spot as first cellist with the Ann Arbor Symphony. One of the grandchildren must stop Margreete from jumping out a bedroom window, and Harry has a secret rendezvous with a nurse he encounters in the emergency room. As Morse writes, “Unless you live in a cave by yourself and speak only to the chickadee, life is messy, because humans are messy.”

Full of love, triumph and a boatload of heartbreak, Margreete’s Harbor is a celebration of life’s inevitable messiness. As after any good visit with family or dear friends, you will leave feeling satisfied while yearning for more.

Like a good visit with family or dear friends, Eleanor Morse’s novel will leave you satisfied while yearning for more.
YA FictionYA

Luck of the Titanic

Review by Alice Cary

Stacey Lee has earned critical acclaim and a loyal readership for intricately plotted fiction featuring Chinese characters amid memorable historical settings, including Under a Painted Sky and The Downstairs Girl. Her new book, Luck of the Titanic, was prompted by a little-known fact: Of the eight Chinese passengers aboard the Titanic, six survived, but they were deported within 24 hours of arriving in the United States.

The novel opens with a mesmerizing action scene as Valora Luck, a trained acrobat, catapults her way on board the doomed ship. Although she has a valid first-class ticket, an officer has refused to let her board, claiming she lacks proper documentation and won’t be allowed to disembark in America due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. But Valora is determined to join her twin brother, Jamie, who has already boarded in third class for the first leg of a journey to Cuba. They haven’t seen each other for two years, and Valora has a scheme to reunite them: She wants to convince a circus executive who’s also on board to hire them both as acrobats for the Ringling Brothers.

Lee’s characters often adapt disguises, and Valora alternately poses as a male laborer alongside Jamie below decks and as a fashionable first-class widow who turns heads with her confidence and style. As Valora navigates the highly class-conscious world of the ship, readers witness the stark discrepancies between rich and poor, as well as some of the racist behavior of its passengers. “The English love all things Chinese—silk, tea, plates—just not if it comes with a beating heart,” Valora observes.

The narrative builds slowly toward the looming, inevitable tragedy. In a moment of overt dramatic irony, a well-heeled character remarks, “Imagine being afraid on such a magnificent vessel as the Titanic.” Once the ship strikes the iceberg, Lee unspools one heartbreaking scene after another as Valora, Jamie and their friends struggle to find each other and reach safety. 

From the start, readers are aware that two of the book’s Chinese characters will die. When one succumbs early in the disaster, the remainder of the novel becomes a superbly choreographed guessing game of who the second victim will be. Despite the hardships its characters encounter, Luck of the Titanic is anchored by its energetic and empowered heroine. This novel is an admirable and engaging addition to the annals of fictional Titanic lore. 

Stacey Lee has earned critical acclaim and a loyal readership for intricately plotted fiction featuring Chinese characters amid memorable historical settings, including Under a Painted Sky and The Downstairs Girl. Her new book, Luck of the Titanic, was prompted by a little-known fact: Of the eight Chinese passengers aboard the Titanic, six survived, but they were deported within 24 hours of arriving in the United States.

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