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by Alice Cary

Sometimes characters continue speaking to their creators long after their books have been published, prompting authors to write unplanned follow-ups. Grateful readers will reap ample rewards in Kate DiCamillo’s Beverly, Right Here, the last in what has unexpectedly become a middle grade trilogy, which began with Raymie Nightingale and continued in Louisiana’s Way Home, about three irrepressible girls who meet at baton-twirling lessons in Lister, Florida, in 1975.

This installment, set in 1979, features the tough-as-nails, eye-rolling Beverly Tapinski, who is now 14. Following the death of her beloved dog, Beverly decides she’s had enough of life with her drunken mother and leaves, hitching a ride to nowhere with a good-for-not-much-else cousin. A big-hearted older woman named Iola welcomes Beverly into her trailer. Beverly slowly builds an anchoring friendship not only with Iola but with bullied, brilliant Elmer, who is about to leave for Dartmouth on a full scholarship.

Life with a ragtag bunch of strangers becomes much better but is still hardly perfect as Beverly, who hates fish, ends up working in a fish restaurant and eating tuna melts every day. A tormentor named Jerome lurks on the sidelines, and Beverly desperately misses Raymie and Louisiana.

DiCamillo’s genius is her ability to create such worlds without ever sugarcoating their gritty realities. “People were terrible to other people. That was the truth,” Beverly realizes. Yet amid life’s injustices, a fish restaurant waitress repeatedly urges Beverly to always dream big, and a cook named Doris stages a sit-down strike for better working conditions.

In the end, although Beverly realizes she can’t run away from her past or her neglectful mother, she learns that she doesn’t have to be held back by either one. Instead, she can seek her own springboards to happiness. As Iola says, “Oh, I’m glad I needed you. I’m glad you needed me.”

DiCamillo has described her trilogy as being about “becoming” and “the power of community.” Drawing each girl’s story with subtle yet bold strokes, DiCamillo delivers novels that feel both beautifully spare and deeply rich. With lovely reminders of the angels who help us all find our way in this sometimes unbearable world—as well as the enduring power of stories, kindness, hope and surprising possibilities—Beverly, Right Here completes DiCamillo’s superb trilogy, which is destined to remain a classic.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

How to Be a Family

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

In 2017 Dan Kois, his wife and their two children did what many families secretly dream of doing: They packed up their belongings and spent a year living abroad. Their life in Arlington, Virginia, had come to feel like an endless rat race—Kois is an editor at Slate and his wife, Alia, a First Amendment attorney—leaving them feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. They asked themselves, “Could the two of us set aside our relentless quest to make sure our children had every material and educational advantage, and instead focus for twelve months on caring for all our hearts and souls?”

Kois shares the fascinating and frequently hilarious results in his admirably honest account of that year, How to Be a Family. In addition to Kois’ humorous, self-deprecating style, the book is particularly lively because Kois and his wife picked such diverse spots to live: the blustery coastal town of Wellington, New Zealand (their favorite spot); the bustling city of Delft in the Netherlands; tropical Samara, Costa Rica; and deep in the heartland of Hays, Kansas, where a friend of the family lived. (Yes, Kansas!)

Kois and company adored their friendly, welcoming neighborhood in New Zealand. The Dutch were not so affable (Kois calls them “mysterious and frustrating”), although the family loved the country’s reliance on bike transportation. Costa Rica was at times monotonous in its endless string of beautiful days, and occasionally the togetherness became too much, prompting Kois to write, “Thank God for cards” (as in card games). In Kansas, they found a wonderful sense of community, discovering that it was “a place where people could bloom.”

In the end, the family found their lives changed but not transformed, realizing that “a place never solves anything.” Nonetheless, their journey was an unforgettable adventure, allowing them the priceless gift of having time to pay more attention to each other.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our interview with Dan Kois, author of How to Be a Family.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Stormy

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

Chinese-born illustrator Guojing made her publishing debut in 2015 with The Only Child, a 112-page wordless book that won widespread acclaim and earned a spot on numerous best-of-the-year lists. Exploring an incident from her childhood, she delved into themes of being lost and lonely and finding one’s way home. Now, with Stormy, a wordless book about a homeless dog, Guojing has struck gold again as she explores similar themes with equal emotional resonance, albeit for a slightly younger audience.

The story opens as an adorable, scruffy ball of fluff sleeps under a park bench. A young woman approaches, causing the pup to scamper off. The next day she brings a tennis ball, which the dog cautiously sniffs and finally takes. Guojing shows each move of the dog and woman in a series of moody graphic panels, highlighting the deserted, desolate landscape, the dog’s curiosity mixed with fear and the woman’s quiet patience until she finally leaves to go home. Next, a full-page illustration shows the dog sitting with the ball on a dark, cloudy night, his small, quivering body backlit by moonlight.

On the next visit, the woman and dog actively play with the ball in a lively sequence of panels, and a full-spread illustration shows them gazing at each other from several yards apart, both gloriously backlit by the sun’s golden glow. They’ve made a connection, and in ensuing masterful scenes, Guojing shows how each tries to reach out to the other during the course of a wildly stormy night. Their efforts are, at first, unsuccessful, which makes their eventual reunion in the city all the more sweet.

A master of both mood and lighting, Guojing proves once again that she’s an expert at translating her own heartfelt emotions to the page in a style that can only be described as beautifully cinematic. Deserving of worthy comparisons to wordless classics such as Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman and Chris Raschka’s A Ball for Daisy, Stormy is a timeless treasure.

Stormy, a wordless book about a homeless dog, explores themes of being lost and finding one's way home in a beautifully cinematic style.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The Secrets We Kept

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

Debut author Lara Prescott’s parents gifted her with a gold mine. First, she was named after a character in her mother’s favorite book and movie, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Then in 2014, her father sent her a newspaper article about how the CIA secretly helped publish and distribute editions of the novel in the late 1950s, using it as political propaganda to try to turn Russians against their government. Prescott spent years researching this bizarre saga, ultimately turning her knowledge into richly imagined, thrilling historical fiction.

The result, The Secrets We Kept, uses multiple narrators to deftly show how this drama unfolded on opposite sides of the world. Readers learn how Pasternak came to write Doctor Zhivago, a Nobel Prize winner that his government refused to publish, and how his mistress Olga Ivinskaya both inspired parts of the novel and helped get it published outside the Soviet Union, despite unimaginable costs to both herself and her children. As Prescott’s fictionalized Ivinskaya explains, “I was the person who ushered his words out into the world. I became his emissary.”

Readers also take a deep dive into the clandestine world of literary spycraft through a host of characters, including a pool of female CIA typists (who occasionally serve—quite delightfully—as collective narrators). Several of these women are spies, like Sally Forrester and newcomer Irina Drozdova, whom Forrester trains. In addition to the sheer drama of the situation, the historical details and office politics are intriguing. Think “The Americans” meets “Mad Men,” with a dash of Soviet literature.

Indeed, this is a whirlwind of storytelling. With a bevy of themes that include the monumental power of words and literature, governmental attempts to suppress citizens and craft political propaganda, women’s ongoing struggle for equality, and the suppression of gay and lesbian rights, this novel could have easily become either heavy-handed or perhaps confusing. Never fear, because in Prescott’s supremely talented hands, the result is no less than endlessly fascinating, often deliciously fun as well as heartbreaking.

The Secrets We Kept is a dazzling, beguiling debut.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our September 2019 cover story on Lara Prescott and The Secrets We Kept.

In Lara Prescott’s supremely talented hands, this Doctor Zhivago-inspired novel is endlessly fascinating.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Small in the City

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

A bundled-up child of indeterminate gender, perhaps about 10 or so, rides a big-city bus on a snowy winter’s day and upon departure proclaims, “I know what it’s like to be small in the city.” This city seems dark, cold and not very friendly, and thus a tone of worry, uncertainty and intrigue runs throughout Sidney Smith’s captivating Small in the City.

Nonetheless, the unaccompanied narrator trudges through the streets with a sense of purpose and determination, seemingly fearless, although admitting that the busy streets “can make your brain feel like there’s too much stuff in it.”

“But I know you,” the child adds. “You’ll be all right.”

Offering advice on getting around safely, the narrator takes readers on a tour, warning against dark alleys and scary dogs while pointing out safe places to hide and spots offering comfort―a hot steam vent “that smells like summer,” a friendly fishmonger and a house where piano music is always playing.

Smith’s ink, watercolor and gouache illustrations perfectly portray the intricate, busy scramble of snow-covered city streets, while the narrator’s forward stride and yellow and orange boots act as a warm beacon on a stormy day. Some scenes are blurry, others razor-sharp. On one spread, a montage of vignettes shows the myriad sights that can seem an assault to the senses, from barbed wire and gleaming skyscrapers to warning traffic lights and crowds of people.

As the snow falls deeper and deeper, readers realize that the narrator is addressing their lost cat, all the while searching and putting up “lost” posters. Finally the child reaches home, falling into the arms of awaiting mom. The narrator hopes for the cat’s safe return while repeating the book’s comforting refrain, “But I know you. You will be all right.”

Small in the City is an unusual, useful parable, offering hope and reassurance for any young reader in the midst of a worrisome or frightening situation, whether it’s a missing pet or something else―or simply life itself.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

Wildfire

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

“If you want to live, you got to run, boy, run,” 12-year-old Sam Castine tells himself. He’s trapped deep in the Maine wilderness after trying to retrieve his forgotten cell phone during a frenzied, smoke-filled evacuation of his summer camp. With wildfires raging, Sam gets left behind in the confusion. He quickly realizes, “Use your brain or die, that’s the rule.”

Thankfully, this lively, engaging narrator has plenty of smarts, allowing him to carefully but quickly try to find his way to safety, especially with the help of an abandoned old Jeep that takes on a life of its own as it zips along a maze of narrow, rutty logging roads.

Action lovers will relish every word of Wildfire, the latest by Newbery Honor winner Rodman Philbrick, whose previous books include Freak the Mighty and Zane and the Hurricane. This new novel chronicles six nonstop days of danger that include not only fire and smoke but also encounters with a bear, moose, lightning and a pair of marauding arsonists on motorbikes.

Early in his misadventure, Sam finds a friend in 14-year-old Delphy Pappas, a camper left behind at a nearby girls’ camp. Their believable, deepening friendship is the icing on the cake of this page turner. Delphy is a likable, powerful young woman coming into her own, but she’s self-conscious of her size and height, especially at “Camp Fatness,” as she calls it.

Sam was sent to summer camp instead of foster care by a savvy, caring social worker while his loving but opioid-addicted mother tries to reclaim her life in rehab (a refreshing change of pace from many such characterizations). Meanwhile, Sam recalls the many camping and survival skills learned from his late father, killed in a tanker truck explosion in Afghanistan. He also contemplates the wise words of his social worker, reminding himself, “Mrs. Labrie says that’s what life is all about, learning how to deal with stuff you can't control.”

With Wildfire―reminiscent of Hatchet and the real-life saga Lost on a Mountain in Maine―Philbrick transforms a raging inferno into an impressively plotted escape story full of heart and soul.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

Into the Planet

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

“When I describe the act of cave diving to most people, they think I have a death wish,” notes Jill Heinerth, who has spent over 30 years diving all over the world, often into deep, pitch-dark, narrow and, yes, highly dangerous places. She has explored, filmed and photographed remote underwater regions for National Geographic, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other institutions, and she’s not only an outspoken environmental advocate but also the Explorer-in-Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

So it’s hardly a surprise that the journeys she describes in Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver make for exciting, edge-of-your-seat reading. Not only is Heinerth’s memoir thoughtfully structured and adrenaline-filled, but it also offers a fascinating account of exactly how one becomes a renowned, record-setting adventurer.

As a girl growing up in Canada, Heinerth decided she wanted to learn to dive as soon as she saw Jacques Cousteau on TV. That’s despite the fact that one of her earliest memories is of nearly drowning and that she failed her first swimming lesson—because she was, of course, so busy floating and gazing intently at the underwater world that she didn’t bother to attempt any strokes. As a young woman, she sold a successful advertising business in Toronto and bought a ticket to the Cayman Islands in hopes of becoming a diver, shocking family and friends.

Her wild gamble paid off, and Heinerth has spent the rest of her life “swimming through the veins of Mother Earth,” as she calls it, delighting in the wonders of ice-filled caves beneath Siberia’s Ural Mountains and lava tubes inside a Spanish volcano.

Such wonders and achievements have not come without dramatic, dire sacrifices, particularly as a woman in a testosterone-heavy field. A number of close friends have perished in diving accidents; she has repeatedly helped with the heartbreaking task of body recovery. After she suffered a severe case of the bends, a doctor advised Heinerth to “never dive again,” which she ignored. She narrowly escaped death several times amid the caves and crevices of an Antarctic Circle iceberg, all while suffering a leaky glove in the icy 28–degree waters, just one-tenth of a degree away from the freezing point of salt water. After her narrow escape, she commented, “The cave tried to keep us today.” Hours later, as she and her team were preparing to dive yet again, they watched the iceberg completely collapse, which would have meant certain death had they been in the water.

There’s never a dull moment in Into the Planet, which bursts with full-throttle exuberance for the highs, and sometimes even the lows, of being a pioneering, modern-day explorer. As Heinerth concludes, “When we transcend the fear of failure and terror of the unknown, we are all capable of great things, personally and as a society.”

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

Body Leaping Backward

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

Maureen Stanton’s childhood started out fairly idyllic. She grew up in a New England town in the 1960s as the third of seven children, living on a cul-de-sac, gathering around the piano and dancing to her father’s music, playing kickball and flashlight tag with the neighborhood gang and taking family trips to the beach. Nonetheless, Stanton’s mother often liked to remind her rowdy brood of the omnipresent state prison in their Massachusetts town, warning, “If you don’t behave, I’ll put you in Walpole Prison!”

Stanton’s family life took an abrupt turn one spring night just before she turned 12, when her parents announced, out of the blue, that they were separating. Money became tight, and Stanton’s mother returned to school to become a nurse. Before her mother achieved that goal, however, she started shoplifting. Stanton’s own life unraveled from that point, as she so eloquently describes in her mesmerizing memoir, Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood.

Stanton’s account is an informative, intelligent read for anyone, young or old, trying to make sense of teenage rebellion. She spent most of her teen years high on angel dust, taking every drug available, including crystal meth, cocaine and acid. Teenage mischief became self-destructive and even criminal as she and her friends went on vandalism sprees.

Thankfully, this is a tale of redemption. By the end of high school, Stanton got a job, began counseling and rediscovered her love of learning. She realized that her parents’ divorce had broken her heart and that by suppressing her anger and sorrow, “I’d been inventing someone who was not me; no wonder I did not like that girl.” Decades later, as an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Stanton muses, “When I hear about so many people addicted to opiates now, I wonder if that would have been me.” Body Leaping Backward is a well-told, insightful memoir that could hardly be more relevant today.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

A Tale Magnolious

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

Life looks bleak for 10-year-old Nitty Luce, who, after escaping Grimsgate Orphanage, steals a pouch full of strange, shimmering seeds. Things take an even stranger turn when she encounters a circus elephant about to be hanged for supposedly killing her trainer. In a moment of mutual desperation, Nitty befriends the elephant, named Magnolious, and the pair makes a bold escape.

That’s the action-packed opening of Suzanne Nelson’s tender-hearted Dust Bowl fantasy, A Tale Magnolious. The runaways are taken in by a brusque, lonely farmer named Windle Homes in the dying town of Fortune’s Bluff. Nitty also befriends Twitch, a sickly boy determined to bring down dastardly Mayor Neezer Snollygost, who wants to flatten the town and build high-rises.

In an intriguing author’s note, Nelson explains that her fantastical novel was inspired by a photograph of a circus elephant named Mary who was publicly executed in 1916 in Erwin, Tennessee, after killing her trainer. Once Nelson saw the horrific image, she dreamed of a girl running through a town square, carrying a mysterious stolen object, finding shelter between an elephant’s front legs. The tale Nelson went on to write has an old-fashioned, Dickensian feel and plenty of vocabulary flair, with names like Miz Turngiddy and words like catawampus. It’s also an allegory about empowerment when adults are intimidated by an evil politician. In Fortune’s Bluff, it’s kids to the rescue, with the help of one mighty elephant.

This is a walloping romp that delivers an important message: “Each and every one of us has a say when it comes to what is right.”

Nonfiction, Social Science

Nonfiction Social Science

In Pain

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

May 23, 2015, started out as a particularly good day for Travis Rieder. He enjoyed the early morning hours with his toddler daughter while his wife slept, then set out for a motorcycle tour in the mountains. Less than three blocks into his ride, however, disaster struck when a van pulled out of an intersection and broadsided Rieder, traumatically injuring his left foot. While doctors were able to salvage the limb, he was left with an open wound for a month and faced multiple surgeries, years of recovery and the news that he was unlikely to ever walk unaided.

Sadly, there was even more to this nightmare. Those first months of seemingly endless, searing pain left Rieder addicted to opioids, with no medical professionals willing or able to help him withdraw from his medications, despite his and his wife’s desperate pleas for help. “I thought I would die—either from the withdrawal itself or by my own hand,” Rieder writes in his powerful, informative memoir, In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle With Opioids.

A research scholar at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, Rieder is uniquely equipped to narrate not only his own story but also a broader look at America’s opioid problem. His prose is clear and compelling, whether he’s describing a torturous night spent writhing on the bathroom floor, not sure he can survive until morning, or examining the science and history of addiction and the changes needed in our health care system and society’s approach to the issue. Never pedantic, Rieder eloquently explains that addiction is “a health problem rather than a criminal justice problem” that needs to be addressed “with evidence-based therapies rather than punishment.”

Rieder was lucky. His unyielding determination allowed him to kick his opioid habit and learn to walk without assistance. Realizing that he was hardly alone in his addiction struggle, he listened to the advice of his colleagues: “Tell the story. Shine a light. Don’t let the suffering of people . . . exist in darkness anymore.”

The result is an important book that goes hand in hand with Beth Macy’s Dopesick. Readers of both will not only be enlightened but likely find their attitudes about this devastating crisis transformed.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

Mr. Know-It-All

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

If you’re a John Waters fan, you have a good idea of what to expect in a book of essays by this Baltimore film producer and proud provocateur. Famous for movies like Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom and Polyester, he’s been called the Pope of Trash, the Prince of Puke, the Ayatollah of Crud—and tours with a comedy show he calls This Filthy World. So if you’re a person who’s easily offended, take it from me: Don’t even read the reviews, much less crack open the cover of Waters’ latest book, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder.

But if you’re still with me, there’s no denying that Waters is a whip-smart (he’d no doubt like that description), funny, multitalented and unique cultural icon. He’s also an artist and book collector, and these essays reflect his endless assortment of interests—ranging from his movie-making memories (Patty Hearst thought he was kidding when he asked her to be in a movie) and music preferences (including Glenn Gould, Maria Callas, Eminem and Alvin and the Chipmunks) to his planning of and taking what he calls “a senior-citizen acid trip.” (“I had made it,” he notes afterward. “But there was absolutely no reason to ever do it again.”)

“Somehow I became respectable,” Waters notes in his opening essay. “What the hell has happened?” He later counters with a chapter called “The Toilet,” which begins, “OK, if you ever write a book, you must have a dirty chapter. Here’s mine.” Enough said.

In “Going Hollywood,” he notes that he may be the only casting director to give a young (and unknown) Brad Pitt the boot, finding him too handsome for the quirky character he needed in Cry-Baby. Waters’ homage to art created by animals is not only fun but fascinating. (“Want to speculate in the art market? I’m telling you what to buy―monkey art. Yes, paintings by chimpanzees.”) In “Overexposed,” a discussion of his speaking and comedy tours, Waters observes, “librarians are always smart, a little nuts, and know how to party.” His multitude of descriptions never cease to amuse; he calls singer 50 Cent “a nouveau-riche, homophobic braggart―the Donald Trump-meets-Chick-fil-A of rap.”

While it’s certainly not a book for everyone, Waters’ legion of admirers will be lining up in droves to hop aboard the Mr. Know-It-All bus.

If you’re a person who’s easily offended, don’t even read the reviews, much less crack open the cover of John Waters’ latest book, Mr. Know-It-All.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Hum and Swish

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

A young girl named Jamie digs sand and shells on a rock-strewn, sandy beach, completely immersed in the rhythm of her own creative world in Hum and Swish, a reflective picture book from author-illustrator Matt Myers.

“Jamie and the sea are friends. Jamie hums. The waves swish,” writes Myers. As Jamie’s unique rock and shell creations take shape―some resembling people, others resembling increasingly elaborate creatures―a parade of passersby and even her parents cheerily inquire about what she’s making, much to Jamie’s increasing ire. She’s not sure, and no one seems to understand that until a woman sets up her easel nearby. When Jamie asks what she’s making, the woman says, “I don’t know yet,” and both continue to work side by side, quietly enjoying each other’s presence until each proudly completes and shares her masterpiece.

Myers’ understated storyline and moody ocean scenes perfectly complement Jamie’s introspective world and her desire to follow her own artistic instincts. The story’s natural simplicity and Myers’ intriguing illustrations make for a kid-pleasing examination of both the joy and marvelous uncertainty of the artistic process.

Nonfiction, True Crime

Nonfiction True Crime

Furious Hours

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

While Harper Lee fans were almost unanimously disenchanted with the 2015 publication of her eons-awaited second novel, Go Set a Watchman, they’ll likely be intrigued by Casey Cep’s account of the true crime book that Lee attempted but ultimately failed to write.

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee tells the strange saga of Reverend Willie Maxwell, a black Alabama preacher accused of murdering five members of his family for insurance money in the 1970s. Law enforcement officers and insurance officials suspected something was up but had no hard evidence, while Maxwell’s followers whispered rumors of voodoo after his relatives kept turning up dead by the side of the road.

At the funeral of Maxwell’s last victim, his 16-year-old stepdaughter, he was shot dead by one of the girl’s relatives, Robert Burns, who until that moment had been a hardworking, law-abiding family man. Amazingly, despite the fact that hundreds of mourners witnessed the shooting, Burns was ultimately acquitted of his crime.

Attending the trial was Lee, who wrote that Maxwell “might not have believed in what he preached, he might not have believed in voodoo, but he had a profound and abiding belief in insurance.” After studying law at the University of Alabama, Lee was naturally intrigued by the Maxwell story—although she realized “all too well that the story of a black serial killer wasn’t what readers would expect from the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.” She spent nearly a decade working on a manuscript she called “The Reverend” but ultimately abandoned the project, much to the disappointment of many of the citizens of Alexander City, where Maxwell’s murder took place.

Cep, a thorough researcher and polished writer, divides this sprawling tale into three parts: first telling Maxwell’s story, then chronicling the lawyer who once had Maxwell as a client and ultimately represented Maxwell’s killer, and finally explaining the famous novelist’s fascination with and involvement in the case.

Harper Lee fans may find themselves impatient to read about her, as she doesn’t appear until more than halfway through the book, but they’ll be rewarded for the wait. While the myriad mysteries about Lee’s life seem unlikely to ever be resolved, Furious Hours offers an absorbing glimpse into the gifted but guarded life of this enigmatic literary hero.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Casey Cep for Furious Hours.