Alice Cary

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A young girl confronts injustice to save her friend

Review by Alice Cary

Quicksand Pond, hidden off the Rhode Island coast, is a place of lingering mystery and illumination for a pair of 12-year-old girls.

When Jessie Kettel arrives with her family to spend the summer in a rental cottage, she finds an old raft and meets Terri Carr, who tells her about two boys who drowned there and a long-ago murder in a huge house on the edge of the pond. The daughter of those murdered parents survived, and old lady Henrietta Cutting still lives in the house.

Jessie learns that the wrong person was imprisoned for the murders: Terri’s great-great-grandfather. The consequences of this injustice continue to the present, as Terri’s family is still considered “no good.” When Terri is forced to hide from her abusive father in a makeshift camp on the edge of the pond, she and Jessie form a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn-type friendship. Meanwhile, Henrietta watches the pair through binoculars, struggling to find a way to make her long-ignored voice heard. Gradually, Jessie finds herself becoming “sucked into” Terri’s messy, difficult life, and so she retreats from her friend just when she is needed most. Quicksand is everywhere, it seems.

When Terri is accused of setting fire to the Cutting home, history seems to be repeating itself. Jessie learns some wrenching lessons about discrimination and judgment, and her testimony becomes crucial to her friend’s future.

Newbery Honor winner Janet Taylor Lisle has written a riveting chronicle of a monumental summer, one with no easy answers.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Quicksand Pond, hidden off the Rhode Island coast, is a place of lingering mystery and illumination for a pair of 12-year-old girls.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Fortune-telling and guardian owls

Review by Alice Cary

Three Pennies by Melanie Crowder is a gorgeously told orphan’s tale, with an old-fashioned ring that pairs with modern elements to create a fast-moving, carefully structured plot.

Eleven-year-old Marin Greene lives in a foster home in San Francisco where she tries to tell her fortune using the I Ching book that once belonged to her mother, who abandoned Marin at age 4. When a single, lesbian surgeon named Dr. Lucy Chang hopes to adopt Marin, the preteen becomes more determined than ever to reunite with her birth mother, despite the appeal of this extraordinarily kind, loving physician.

With short chapters that keep the action rolling, the story unfolds from multiple viewpoints that include Marin, Dr. Lucy and Gilda, a hardworking social worker who gives readers an informative peek into the thorny world of foster care. Marin also has a guardian angel in the form of an owl who watches her carefully, adding yet another uniquely wise voice to the mix.

Neither Marin’s nor Dr. Lucy’s life has gone as planned (the doctor loved a woman who died), but when an earthquake strikes, they realize that they’ve found each other. Three Pennies is an enjoyable reminder that despite the many “topsy-turvy changes that come with this life,” unexpected guardians are often waiting to guide us.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Three Pennies by Melanie Crowder is a gorgeously told orphan’s tale, with an old-fashioned ring that pairs with modern elements to create a fast-moving, carefully structured plot.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A colorful lesson on creativity

Review by Alice Cary

What’s it like inside the mind of an artist at work? Readers will get an uplifting look at the process in Corinna Luyken’s debut picture book, The Book of Mistakes.

“It started with one mistake,” the book begins, showing a small face on a big white page with one eye noticeably larger than the other. Even the correction fails, as the new eye is even larger than the first. Then voilà, a pair of bright green glasses fixes everything.

As this face evolves into a girl, clever fixes cover additional mistakes: a lacy collar on a too-long neck, elbow patches that disguise a misshapen elbow, roller skates on shoes that don’t touch the ground. Mistakes pile on as the roller-skating girl gradually becomes part of an elaborate, poster-worthy scene: a giant tree full of kids floating through the sky on wildly imagined, balloon-powered contraptions. Anticipation and excitement mount as each part of the scene unfolds through Luyken’s striking use of black ink, white space and deft additions of soft green, yellow and pink watercolor and colored pencil.

Just when you think the scene is complete, Luyken has another trick up her sleeve, deflecting readers’ attention back to the artist and how art is made, warts and all.

Mistakes in art—as in life—happen, and Luyken shows young readers in a glorious way how they often lead to bigger and better outcomes than anyone could imagine.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What’s it like inside the mind of an artist at work? Readers will get an uplifting look at the process in Corinna Luyken’s debut picture book, The Book of Mistakes.

Nonfiction

A case that hit uncomfortably close to home

Review by Alice Cary

During a summer internship in Louisiana in 2003, Harvard law student Alexandria Marzano-Les­nevich heard about a case involving a pedophile who murdered a 6-year-old boy in 1992. When she watched the recorded confession of Ricky Langley, she writes that it “brought me to reexamine everything I believed not only about the law but about my family and my past.”

Marzano-Lesnevich lays out that re-examination in her unusual and riveting book, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, in which she interweaves the story of Langley’s crime with her own personal trauma.

The author, the daughter of two lawyers, grew up in a New Jersey family that was loving but refused to look back at the past. Problems such as her father’s depression and the death of Alexandria’s triplet baby sister were rarely, if ever, discussed. Marzano-Lesnevich, however, couldn’t stop looking back. Her grandfather sexually abused her and her sisters, and her parents tried to bury this fact. Later, they tried to ignore her anger. Despite this and other challenges, including tumultuous years spent dealing with undiagnosed Lyme disease and an eating disorder, Marzano-Les­nevich made a “Hail Mary pass to the future” by enrolling in Harvard Law School.

Marzano-Lesnevich’s triumph is in the way she simultaneously tells her story and Langley’s, showing how in both cases the past haunts the present, and how facts, memories, guilt, responsibility and forgiveness can be impossibly hard to pinpoint or fully understand. Her recounting of her grandfather’s abuse is a haunting exposé of what it feels like to be a victim. And while Langley will spend his life in prison, her grandfather, she writes, “got away with it.”

The author tells Langley’s story by reconstructing scenes based on court documents, transcripts, media coverage and even a play based on the case. She also relies heavily on the “creative” part of creative nonfiction—a method some may question—layering her “imagination onto the bare-bones record of the past to bring Langley’s past to life.”

Both stories are gripping enough in their own right to fill a book; Marzano-Lesnevich’s artful entwining enriches them both.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

During a summer internship in Louisiana in 2003, Harvard law student Alexandria Marzano-Les­nevich heard about a case involving a pedophile who murdered a 6-year-old boy in 1992. When she watched the recorded confession of Ricky Langley, she writes that it “brought me to reexamine everything I believed not only about the law but about my family and my past.”

Children's & YAPicture Book

A musical elegy for the victims of war

Review by Alice Cary

When young children ask about the violence that fills our world, what do we say? Folksinger John McCutcheon’s picture book Flowers for Sarajevo provides an insightful response, combining history, humanity and music in a memorable picture book that’s perfect for young elementary school students.

The narrator is a young boy named Drasko who helps his father sell flowers in the Sarajevo marketplace. Their world changes overnight when war arrives and Drasko’s father heads to the battlefield, leaving his son in charge of the flower cart. The mood of the city has changed, as well, making Drasko’s job harder than ever, but he takes refuge near an open window outside a building where the orchestra practices. Drasko bears witness to real-life events as he describes a 1992 explosion, when 22 people waiting in a breadline were killed in a mortar attack. The next day Drasko watches a cellist dressed in a tuxedo make his way through the rubble to the scene of the explosion, where he plays “the most beautiful and heartbreaking music anyone could ever imagine.” Drasko notes: “All of us―Serb and Croat, Muslim and Christian―stand side by side, listening to a language we all understand.” That musician was Vedran Smailovic, and Drasko explains that he returns to play for 22 days, one day to honor each of the victims. Kristy Caldwell’s illustrations add dimension to the story by imbuing the central action on each spread with color, leaving the rest of the scene in muted tones. She brings the busy marketplace to life, depicting the mortar explosion and its destruction without being gruesome. Drasko and other characters possess the energy and emotion of a graphic novel, perfect for the slightly older picture book audience for whom this book is aimed.

While the narrative is simple and accessible, end notes round out the educational experience, including an author’s note about the mortar attack and Smailovic’s musical memorial, a discussion (with maps) of the Balkan’s history of unrest, suggestions of books and websites for further learning and a short biography of Smailovic.

Flowers for Sarajevo also includes a CD recording of Smailovic playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor as well as McCutcheon’s own composition, “Streets of Sarajevo,” accompanied by Smailovic. A final spread contains McCutcheon’s lyrics and music.

This book offers no easy answers or happy endings; instead, it’s a powerful story about persevering in the face of tragedy and war. Drasko and his flowers provide a sense of hope and humanity, as the boy explains: “And tomorrow―like my father, like the cellist―I’ll do my own small part to make Sarajevo beautiful once again.”

When young children ask about the violence that fills our world, what do we say? Folksinger John McCutcheon’s picture book Flowers for Sarajevo provides an insightful response, combining history, humanity and music in a memorable picture book that’s perfect for young elementary school students.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Checking in to a makeshift family

Review by Alice Cary

“I loved my dad’s tattoos―they told the story of his life,” writes eighth-grader Stevie (named after Stevie Nicks), narrator of Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel. She adds, “Tattoos covered most of his upper body from his neck down to his belly button. He said he’d eventually make it to his toes but he still had a lot of living to do.”

Sadly, her father doesn’t get that chance. And, as it turns out, there’s quite a lot that Stevie doesn’t know about his life, or her mother’s, for that matter. Settle in for the latest offering by National Book Award-winning author Kimberly Willis Holt (When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, Dear Hank Williams); you’ll be in good hands as mysteries, as well as people, reveal themselves.

Stevie’s world―on a small farm near Taos, New Mexico, where her parents have a fruit and flower stand―is shattered when a drunk driver crashes into the stand and kills her parents. She’s sent to live with her estranged, crusty grandfather, Winston, who runs a ramshackle motel in a small Texas town. As they subsist on cans of Campbell’s soup, Winston can’t seem to look Stevie in the eye nor stand to mention her parents.

Thankfully, a host of kind people welcome Stevie, including a handyman and his eighth-grade son Roy; a classic movie fanatic receptionist named Violet; and Horace and Ida, a wheelchair-bound couple who live at the motel. Winston sends Stevie to be home-schooled with Mrs. Crump, an elderly narcoleptic who once taught her mother. As always, Holt adeptly turns her quirky characters into a multidimensional, believable cast.

As with previous novels, Holt sensitively portrays a teen attempting to navigate the world without parents. Carrying on with the gardening skills learned from her parents, Stevie gradually starts building a new life and trying to get to know her grandfather, while secretly working hard to unravel the mysteries of her parents’ past. Stevie’s story begins with tragedy, but Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel remains firmly rooted in hope and perseverance. As Stevie concludes, “Even if life doesn’t turn out exactly like we thought it would, it can still be wonderful.”

“I loved my dad’s tattoos―they told the story of his life,” writes eighth-grader Stevie (named after Stevie Nicks), narrator of Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel. She adds, “Tattoos covered most of his upper body from his neck down to his belly button. He said he’d eventually make it to his toes but he still had a lot of living to do.”

Business & Finance

New frontiers in medicine and law

Review by Alice Cary

Herbert Weinstein was a charmer whose two adult children called him "Mr. Zen" because of his easygoing ways. They and everyone else who knew him were flabbergasted when, in 1991, during an argument, the 65-year-old retired advertising salesman strangled his second wife then threw her body out the window of their 12th-story Manhattan apartment in an attempt to make her death appear a suicide.

Weinstein's legal defense made history when his lawyer claimed that a benign brain cyst had caused him to go temporarily insane and commit the murder. As Kevin Davis explains in The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms, this was the first U.S. case in which a judge ruled that PET scan (positron-emission tomography) images could be shown to a jury determining a verdict.

The case is compelling, and Davis eloquently chronicles the many personal, medical, and legal details involved. A jury found Weinstein guilty; he served 14 years in prison before being released on parole in 2006 and dying in 2009.

The Brain Defense examines a variety of additional legal cases in which neuroscience has played a role, including those committed by veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and TBI (traumatic brain injury), and athletes suffering from concussions and TBI. One mystifying crime involved a New Jersey man who in 2012 hit his head and fell into a brief coma for six hours, then awakened feeling unsteady, tired, and paranoid. Five days later in the middle of the night he inexplicably beat his wife, his 24-year-old daughter and himself with a 5-pound metal dumbbell, sending all three to intensive care. In this case, the defendant was found not guilty by reason of insanity, given psychiatric treatment and welcomed home by his family.

Davis interviews a variety of experts who work at the increasingly common intersection of neuroscience and law, including a Florida defense attorney who asks every one of his clients to undergo a brain scan. Davis notes that while brain science can sometimes be misused, it can be vital in deciding how to handle juvenile defenders, whose brains aren't fully formed, and in redefining "society's concepts of guilt and punishment." While neuroscience can't currently determine a person's thoughts or intent when a crime is committed, it can be extraordinarily useful in reducing incarceration rates and improving rehabilitation.

As one federal judge says, "The worst thing that can happen with neuroscience is that it gets into the courtroom before it's ready. There is a communication barrier between lawyers and scientists. We need to learn to speak the same language."

Herbert Weinstein was a charmer whose two adult children called him "Mr. Zen" because of his easygoing ways. They and everyone else who knew him were flabbergasted when, in 1991, during an argument, the 65-year-old retired advertising salesman strangled his second wife then threw her body out the window of their 12th-story Manhattan apartment in an attempt to make her death appear a suicide.

NonfictionMemoir

Looking back on a poignant romance

Review by Alice Cary

Love came quite late and unexpectedly for famed author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose many bestselling books include Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. And it came in the form of writer Bill Hayes, a man 30 years his junior, as Hayes poignantly chronicles in his memoir Insomniac City. Sacks himself had revealed his homosexuality in a book published just months before he died―On the Move: A Life―explaining that after 30 years of celibacy, he and Hayes were sharing their lives.

Insomniac City begins as an illuminating treatise on grief. In 2009, after Hayes' partner of 16 years died of sudden cardiac arrest, the 48-year-old decided to leave his San Francisco home and start life anew in New York City. There Hayes' and Sacks' writerly friendship developed into love, chronicled here in chapters interspersed with Hayes' journal entries. The result is an intimate look at what life was like with the lovable, brilliant Sacks, whose terminal cancer diagnosis didn't stop him from writing, learning and soaking up the world's delights, or saying things like: "Wouldn't it be nice if there were a planet where the sound of rain falling is like Bach?"

An adept writer, Hayes weaves many threads into his latest book. In addition to honoring Sacks, it's a delicately woven love letter to New York City, a city he came to cherish. Included are black and white photos of not only Sacks, but the cityscapes and people with whom Hayes crossed paths, some of whom he describes in passages reminiscent of Humans of New York. His many encounters range from an evening spent driving supermodel and actress Lauren Hutton home from a chamber orchestra concert to a chat with young man on the street smoking a joint laced with crack. Of Hutton, Sacks commented, "I don't know who that was, but she seems like a very remarkable person."

Despite being a book that begins with one lover's death and ends with another, Insomniac City overflows with moment after moment of unexpected wonder and joy. Sacks, for instance, composes a list of eight and a half reasons to be hopeful soon after learning that his death was imminent. Hayes tenderly chronicles Sacks' last months and days, sharing moments like these: "He reaches for my hand when we walk, not just to steady himself but to hold my hand."

Love came quite late and unexpectedly for famed author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose many bestselling books include Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. And it came in the form of writer Bill Hayes, a man 30 years his junior, as Hayes poignantly chronicles in his memoir Insomniac City. Sacks himself had revealed his homosexuality in a book published just months before he died―On the Move: A Life―explaining that after 30 years of celibacy, he and Hayes were sharing their lives.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A Hitchcockian story with an unlikely hero

Review by Alice Cary

Calling all Alfred Hitchcock fans: In her debut novel, British writer Lisa Thompson has brilliantly borrowed the director’s Rear Window plot, adapting it into a middle grade novel called The Goldfish Boy. Not only is this a riveting mystery filled with twists, turns and red herrings, it’s an emotionally complex tale centered on a 12-year-old narrator suffering from severe OCD.

Matthew Corbin feels safest in his home, where he constantly worries about germs and feels responsible for the death of his baby brother. He wears latex gloves and refuses to go to school, so his parents are in the process of lining up therapy. Meanwhile, Matthew watches his neighbors, taking notes about their comings and goings.

When a toddler goes missing, Matthew is the last to see him, and he knows what all the neighbors were doing at the time of the disappearance. He works diligently to solve the case, eventually joining forces with a lonely neighborhood girl, Melody, and a former friend, Jake, who’s been bullied so much that he’s become a bully himself.

Despite the severity of his problems, Matthew is an energetic, likable character whose adolescent voice and increasing self-awareness ring true. Rare is the book that manages to be an entertaining page-turner while also offering meaningful insight into a serious disorder. The Goldfish Boy manages to do both in a masterful way.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Calling all Alfred Hitchcock fans: In her debut novel, British writer Lisa Thompson has brilliantly borrowed the director’s Rear Window plot, adapting it into a middle grade novel called The Goldfish Boy. Not only is this a riveting mystery filled with twists, turns and red herrings, it’s an emotionally complex tale centered on a 12-year-old narrator suffering from severe OCD.

NonfictionNature

The secrets of a secluded life

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, March 2017

If you’re a fan of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, you might like The Stranger in the Woods even better. Once you start, in fact, you’ll likely have a hard time putting down Michael Finkel’s fascinating new book.

For decades, cottages on North Pond in Central Maine had been broken into, with food, flashlights, clothes, books and many other items stolen. In April 2013 a Maine game warden set a high-tech surveillance trap at a camp that had been repeatedly burglarized. The trap worked, and the mysterious culprit was finally arrested: 47-year-old Christopher Knight.

This “North Pond Hermit” had been living in a carefully camouflaged tent for 27 years, since the spring day in 1986 when the then-20-year-old abruptly left his job with a security company, drove his car into the backwoods of Maine and abandoned it. (Knight’s expertise with alarm systems proved particularly helpful during his more than 1,000 burglaries to stockpile food and supplies.) Even Knight wasn’t exactly sure why he abandoned both his family and society so suddenly, except to say that he felt like a “square peg.” 

Finkel, a journalist and author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, heard about Knight’s arrest and wrote to the jailed hermit. Surprisingly Knight wrote back. They exchanged several letters, and when Knight stopped writing, Finkel flew from his Montana home to visit the inmate in person.

During the course of their visits, Finkel managed to elicit details about the life of the man he calls the “most solitary known person in all of human history.” Finkel’s account artfully blends the details of Knight’s childhood, how he survived in the woods, his legal proceedings and his eventual uneasy return to society, along with informative descriptions of various hermits throughout history and their motivations. 

Well researched and compassionate, The Stranger in the Woods is a thought-provoking account that will make you thankful for your next hot meal and warm bed, especially on a stormy, bone-chilling night.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Michael Finkel about The Stranger in the Woods.

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re a fan of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, you might like The Stranger in the Woods even better. Once you start, in fact, you’ll likely have a hard time putting down Michael Finkel’s fascinating new book.

NonfictionMemoir

A heart-wrenching look at sisterhood

Review by Alice Cary

At first glance, life seems idyllic for golden-haired sisters Sheila and Maxine, daughters of privilege growing up in the 1940s and ’50s on a large estate near Johannesburg, South Africa. As Sheila Kohler notes in Once We Were Sisters, their family homestead was complete with “an army of servants,” swimming pool, tennis court and nine-hole golf course. While leaning on each other for love, laughter and support, the sisters studied in France, went to finishing school in Italy, married, bought homes in several countries and had children.

Sheila’s world was shattered in 1979 when Maxine, mother of six children, was killed in a car accident at age 39. Maxine’s husband Carl, a protégé of famed heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard, had driven their car off a deserted road and into a lamppost. Kohler believes the act was murder.

Maxine had confessed repeatedly that her husband beat her “Black-and-blue!” and during a visit in Sardinia, admitted that she was afraid to go home. To her eternal regret, Sheila advised her sister to return to her children.

Maxine’s death propelled Sheila into a life of writing: an MFA at Columbia followed by award-winning short stories, nine novels and her riveting new memoir.

“In story after story,” Kohler writes, “I conjure up my sister in various disguises, as well as other figures from our past. Her bright image leads me onward like a candle in the night. Again and again in various forms and shapes I write her story, colored by my own feelings of love and guilt.”

Kohler is a thoughtful, lyrical writer who shares memories of her colorful life in artfully arranged chapters that intersperse past and present in careful layers, exploring myriad family secrets hidden beneath a gilded, guarded exterior. Her soul-searching memoir remains skillfully lean while evoking lush images of life with her beloved sister. Throughout the narrative, Kohler ponders her sister’s fate, asking tough questions and concluding, “I am still looking for the answers.”

 

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At first glance, life seems idyllic for golden-haired sisters Sheila and Maxine, daughters of privilege growing up in the 1940s and ’50s on a large estate near Johannesburg, South Africa. As Sheila Kohler notes in Once We Were Sisters, their family homestead was complete with “an army of servants,” swimming pool, tennis court and nine-hole golf course. While leaning on each other for love, laughter and support, the sisters studied in France, went to finishing school in Italy, married, bought homes in several countries and had children.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A gifted singer finds her voice

Review by Alice Cary

Life has been challenging for 10-year-old Cadence Mariah Jolly ever since her mother disappeared to pursue her musical dreams. As Cadence desperately yearns for her missing mom, she nurses her own musical and literary dreams in Sherri Winston’s heartfelt novel.

In a book brimming with musical allusions, Cadence lives in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and plans to become a “No.1 Bestselling Author of Amazing Stories.” Meanwhile, not even her family or best friends realize that she’s a gifted singer like her mom. Cadence—so shy that people call her Mouse—is trying hard to summon the gumption to change that.

Opportunity presents itself through youth choir auditions at Cadence’s lively, bustling church. Winston weaves occasional biblical references throughout the novel but still manages to create a story for all creeds and colors—a rare feat indeed. Too timid to audition in person, Cadence posts an anonymous video that soon goes viral, with news outlets vying frantically to identify the mysterious “Gospel Girl.” Ultimately, Cadence faces the agonizing choice of being true to herself or betraying one of her best friends.

Winston has a superb knack for creating intriguing middle school relationships, natural dialogue and an entire village of believable, multicultural characters. The Sweetest Sound is a deftly written saga that reads like a small symphony.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Life has been challenging for 10-year-old Cadence Mariah Jolly ever since her mother disappeared to pursue her musical dreams. As Cadence desperately yearns for her missing mom, she nurses her own musical and literary dreams in Sherri Winston’s heartfelt novel.

NonfictionEssays

A portrait of Michelle Obama as FLOTUS

Review by Alice Cary

As the Obamas leave the White House, their departure saddens many, as evidenced by the essays in The Meaning of Michelle, a diverse collection united by admiration in a “praise song” anthology. Whether discussing Michelle Obama’s shapely arms, her fashion sense or her “Evolution of Mom Dancing” with Jimmy Fallon, these 16 writers would all agree with chef Marcus Samuelsson’s observation: “It’s nothing short of stunning the way she manages a 24/7 news cycle.”

Samuelsson got to know the first lady in 2009 while planning and cooking the Obamas’ first state dinner, for the prime minister of India and 400 guests. He concludes, “I think she embodies the ability to shape the conversation around her better than any person that I know.”

Here and there, we learn interesting tidbits of Michelle’s past, such as the horrifying fact that when she attended Princeton as an undergraduate in the 1980s, the family of her first roommate protested to the administration that their daughter had been assigned to room with a black person. (It would certainly be interesting to check in on this family now.) We’re also reminded of smile-worthy moments, such as the self-proclaimed mom-in-chief’s response that if she could be anyone other than herself, it would be Beyoncé.

Those who feel despondent about FLOTUS leaving the White House are likely to rally behind novelist and essayist Cathi Hanauer’s closing plea: “She has said she’ll never run for president herself. To that I say: Never say never, Michelle. Let’s just see where we all are a decade from now.”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As the Obamas leave the White House, their departure saddens many, as evidenced by the essays in The Meaning of Michelle, a diverse collection united by admiration in a “praise song” anthology. Whether discussing Michelle Obama’s shapely arms, her fashion sense or her “Evolution of Mom Dancing” with Jimmy Fallon, these 16 writers would all agree with chef Marcus Samuelsson’s observation: “It’s nothing short of stunning the way she manages a 24/7 news cycle.”

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