Amy Scribner

NonfictionNature

Before and after Mount St. Helens

Review by Amy Scribner

I was 5 years old when Mount St. Helens blew its top in southwest Washington State in 1980. Although I lived nearly 300 miles away, I remember my hometown of Spokane going dark in the middle of that Sunday and ash falling from the sky like eerie, gray snow.

Everyone who experienced the massive blast remembers that 57 people died that day. But what struck me after reading Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens is that, aside from the famously cantankerous octogenarian Harry Truman, who refused to leave his lodge near the mountain, we know very little about those who died. We assume that they took unnecessary risks that cost them their lives. 

In this captivating and damning book, Steve Olson examines why people were near the mountain despite warnings from geologists after a series of quakes and smaller eruptions. Government officials didn’t want to appear overzealous or hurt the already shaky timber industry by overstating the danger zone. The resulting hazard map made it appear that people could get close to the mountain on the west and northwest sides and be safe. That misleading information would have deadly consequences. 

Dozens of individuals who thought they were following the rules ventured dangerously near the volcano to camp, hike or simply take a curious peek at the awakening mountain. They were unaware that a blast would flatten the landscape for miles around, sending a cloud of searing crushed pumice zooming over the nearby ridges. One couple was camping nine miles away from the summit of the mountain. The husband, John Killian, was never found. His wife’s left arm was recovered months later. Many of the victims burned to death or were suffocated by the blast cloud. Others were crushed by falling debris.

Olson, an award-winning science writer, brings a new perspective to the navigation of natural disasters, drawing a clear picture of how industry and politics affected who lived and died that day. Eruption is an eye-opening and dramatic read that reminds us of nature’s power and unpredictability—and our human propensity for underestimating it.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Olson about Eruption.
 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

I was 5 years old when Mount St. Helens blew its top in southwest Washington State in 1980. Although I lived nearly 300 miles away, I remember my hometown of Spokane going dark in the middle of that Sunday and ash falling from the sky like eerie, gray snow.
FictionHistorical Fiction

A life written in the stars?

Review by Amy Scribner

Caroline Herschel’s prospects as a plain, poor and pox-scarred woman in 19th-century Germany are not good. Living in a cramped home surrounded by siblings and an affectionless mother, her only saviors are her brilliant older brother William—who moved to England—and her loving but sickly father, who after attending the wedding of a neighbor’s daughter wails to Caroline, “Oh, my dear. You are neither handsome nor rich. What is to be done?”

After Caroline sends her attractive, eccentric brother a letter in which she pleads, “Save me,” he brings her to England to serve as his assistant. An astronomer of growing renown, William teaches Caroline (he calls her Lina) to help him chart the skies. She also cooks, cleans, handles his records and keeps the household accounts, while managing to become an accomplished astronomer in her own right. When William decides to marry—it is not coincidental that his betrothed has inherited a sizable estate—Caroline finds herself on her own for the first time in her life, faced with deciding who she is.

The Stargazer’s Sister is a lovely addition to Carrie Brown’s works of historical fiction. Brown brings the true story of the Herschel siblings to life in exquisite detail and deftly explores what it meant for Caroline to be an intelligent woman far ahead of her time. 

 

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Caroline Herschel’s prospects as a plain, poor and pox-scarred woman in 19th-century Germany are not good. Living in a cramped home surrounded by siblings and an affectionless mother, her only saviors are her brilliant older brother William—who moved to England—and her loving but sickly father, who after attending the wedding of a neighbor’s daughter wails to Caroline, “Oh, my dear. You are neither handsome nor rich. What is to be done?”
FictionHistorical Fiction

A mystery on Alcatraz

Review by Amy Scribner

Kristina McMorris evokes such a strong sense of place in her writing that to open her books feels less like reading and more like traveling.

Her absorbing new novel, The Edge of Lost, opens on Alcatraz Island in 1937, where on a foggy night the warden’s 10-year-old daughter has gone missing. An inmate working in the warden’s greenhouse is hiding information about where she is. We are quickly zipped back to 1919 Dublin, meeting Shanley Keagan, a 12-year-old orphan whose vicious Uncle Will forces him to perform in pubs for spare change. Shan grabs an opportunity to get on a ship to America, scrabbling to forge a future in New York.

How those two storylines intersect is at the heart of this epic, deeply felt tale of struggle and second chances, where Shan goes from a boy with dreams of Broadway to an inmate who “waited for the steel bars to slam” while he served 15 to 25 years.

McMorris has made a name for herself with beautifully written World War II fiction, including her debut, Letters from Home, which was based upon her grandfather’s wartime letters to a girlfriend. Her latest novel was inspired in part by McMorris’ reading about children who grew up on Alcatraz Island, whose parents were employed at the infamous prison. Some of the children claimed to be friends with inmates, although they were forbidden to talk to them.

But Alcatraz is just one of many places in The Edge of Lost, a transporting piece of historical fiction in which America is a melting pot, a place of supper clubs and Model Ts, Prohibition and fedoras, dreams and disappointments. 

This article was originally published in the December 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Kristina McMorris evokes such a strong sense of place that to open her books feels less like reading and more like traveling.
NonfictionMemoir

Joining Team Terminal

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, November 2015

Home Is Burning is perhaps the funniest book about dying I’ve ever read. Dan Marshall deftly chronicles the months he and his four siblings dealt with the terminal illness of not one but both of their parents. His beloved father, Bob, has held the family together for more than a decade while his mom, Debi, fights non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. So when Bob is diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), it’s a punch in the gut for a family already dealing with bad news.

Marshall, 25, moves home to Salt Lake City from Los Angeles, where his public relations career was blossoming and he had a serious girlfriend. He joins his brother Greg, fresh out of undergrad, and sister Tiffany, already burned out from dealing with the parents, to care for Bob as his disease progresses faster than any of them could have expected. Within months, Bob goes from running marathons and shuttling his younger daughters, Chelsea and Michelle, to school and dance class to being unable to lift his arms or breathe without a respirator.

So what’s possibly funny about all that, you ask? For one, the Marshall clan has one of the filthiest collective mouths in history. Even Debi chimes in with well-placed f-bombs from the chemo chair. They also have a pitch-black sense of humor that holds them together through the worst time of their lives. When Bob insists on going to daughter Michelle’s hearing on a drinking violation—no matter that he can barely speak—Marshall’s response is, “Really? Why don’t you rest up so you can try to not die later today?”

Bob is so insistent on getting to that court date, Marshall realizes, because “the disease made it so he could no longer parent his children the way he wanted to. He could no longer drive them to school. He could no longer patiently help them with their homework. . . . But he was still our dad. He wasn’t dead yet. He was still capable of flashes of greatness, flashes of his old self.”

Home Is Burning packs a wallop. Marshall doesn’t hold back in his descriptions of how a horrific illness wreaks havoc on his dad’s body, and he takes an unflinching look at how real families fall apart—and pull together—in their own ways.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Home Is Burning is perhaps the funniest book about dying I’ve ever read. Dan Marshall deftly chronicles the months he and his four younger siblings dealt with the terminal illness of not one but both of their parents. His beloved father, Bob, has held the family together for more than a decade while his mom, Debi, fights non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. So when Bob is diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), it’s a punch in the gut for a family already dealing with bad news.
NonfictionEssays

How we see our hair

Review by Amy Scribner

“Gorgeous hair is the best revenge,” said Ivana Trump, she of the platinum blonde, sky-high hair. Hair as tool of revenge, as obsession, as embarrassment, as source of pride: Why does a long string of protein absorb so much of our attention? 

In Me, My Hair, and I, authors including Anne Lamott, Adriana Trigiani, Jane Smiley and Hallie Ephron explore women’s unique relationships with their hair. As Elizabeth Benedict, who edits this glowing collection of essays, writes in the introduction, “Hair matters because it’s always around, framing our faces, growing in, falling out, getting frizzy, changing colors—in short, demanding our attention: Comb me! Wash me! Relax me! Color me! It’s always there, conveying messages about who we are and what we want. Invite me to the prom! Love me! Hire me! Sleep with me! Don’t even think about sleeping with me! Take me seriously! Marry me! Mistake me—please!—for a much younger woman.”

The essays range from poignant—Suleika Jaouad writes about losing her hair to chemo at age 22—to hilarious—Alex Kuczynski explores trends in pubic hairstyling. All of them are illuminating, revealing that for women, hair is inextricably linked to identity, a visual cue to who they are and what matters to them. 

“I wanted so badly to be someone I wasn’t, wanted so badly to find a way to be comfortable in my skin,” writes novelist Jane Green in an essay that chronicles how her hair has changed to mirror her life circumstances over the years. “Hair was simply the easiest thing to change, the most obvious aspect of my appearance to alter.”

Thought-provoking and insightful, Me, My Hair, and I is a must-read for anyone who has ever dealt with frizz, gray hair, mothers insisting we get a haircut, fathers insisting we not, hair envy or hair disasters. In short, all of us.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“Gorgeous hair is the best revenge,” said Ivana Trump, she of the platinum blonde, sky-high hair. Hair as tool of revenge, as obsession, as embarrassment, as source of pride: Why does a long string of protein absorb so much of our attention?
NonfictionTravel

Journey to a ‘nice Pacific island’

Review by Amy Scribner

Call it the male answer to Eat, Pray, Love. 

Alex Sheshunoff was running a not-particularly-successful Internet startup in the late 1990s when he decided to walk away from it all: his Manhattan apartment, his girlfriend, his world. A health scare had landed him in the emergency room, where he vowed to turn his life upside down if he survived.

“I’d been screwing up my life, I thought, pissing away years on this failing company, this failing relationship, this . . . materialistic city and its dead-end ideas of success, this hope that enough hours at work could make me rich, my parents proud, and democracy stronger,” Sheshunoff writes.

His plan, as much as he had one, was to find paradise and move there. To give this journey a little more heft, he would read 100 great books while traveling. He started where any 20-something probably would: He googled “nice Pacific island” and eventually found a message on a travel site pointing him to an island called Yap. 

Sheshunoff traveled to Yap, which was interesting in that the island’s residents used enormous round stones as currency and the women all went topless. But it was not quite paradise. He meandered on to other hot, tiny islands with names like Pig and Tinian, making some quirky friends along the way. It was on the island of Koror, in the Republic of Palau, that he met Sarah. They hiked, they kayaked, they swam with jellyfish, and bit by bit, they fell in love. 

A Beginner’s Guide to Paradise is extraordinarily entertaining, one part guidebook to two parts love story. This heartfelt account reveals what can happen when you leave everything behind—and find more than you ever hoped for.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Call it the male answer to Eat, Pray, Love.
FictionPopular Fiction

A satisfying story of a lifelong romance

Review by Amy Scribner

 

As the stack of Jennifer Weiner bestsellers grows (14 and counting), one wonders how many more tricks she has up her sleeve. When will her books start feeling like retreads? How many times can she write about women, love and Philadelphia?

The answer, it seems, is as many times as she wants. Weiner delivers yet another fresh, funny winner in Who Do You Love, the story of Rachel Blum, who grows up with a heart defect, and Andy Landis, the biracial son of a single mom. Rachel and Andy both feel perpetually different from other kids at school, so they instantly bond when they meet as kids in the hospital, where Rachel is having yet another surgery and Andy is brought to the ER with a broken arm after falling off a hotel balcony.

Rachel lives in Florida, and Andy lives in Philadelphia. It’s several years later and totally by chance when they meet up during a youth group mission trip to Atlanta. They engage in heavy flirtation and even heavier petting, but then go their separate ways. Fate continues to bring them together and push them apart over the years, even as they go to college, find partners and careers, and, in Rachel’s case, have children. Andy becomes an Olympic runner and Rachel a social worker, both finding satisfaction in their work but not their love lives.

Who Do You Love is a little steamier than most of Weiner’s books, which is to be expected in a story about two star-crossed lovers who don’t even live in the same town til they’re in their 20s. And while it is filled with Weiner’s sparkling brand of humor, it also delves into some heavy issues: Race, poverty, adultery, the perils of fame. (Although she is famously one of the godmothers of the chick lit genre, it is not unprecedented for Weiner to explore deep themes—prescription drug abuse in All Fall Down, rape in Best Friends Forever).

Although the ending feels hurried, Who Do You Love is, ultimately, a great summer read by a storyteller who may have big sales, but hasn’t always gotten enough credit for her ability to spin tales that are heartfelt, funny and satisfying. 

 

Weiner delivers yet another fresh, funny winner in Who Do You Love, the story of Rachel Blum, who grows up with a heart defect, and Andy Landis, the biracial son of a single mom.
NonfictionBiography

The woman behind the beautiful faces

Review by Amy Scribner

Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, Jean Shrimpton, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell: Name a famous model, and more likely than not, she was once represented by Eileen Ford, who started her eponymous modeling agency with husband Jerry in 1947 and built it into an international powerhouse.

In the fascinating Model Woman, author Robert Lacey paints Ford as an intriguing paradox. She was a ruthless businesswoman about whom rival John Casablancas once said, “I will fight. I will never sleep with both eyes closed as long as that woman is around.” She was a woman uncomfortable with her own history, whitewashing her Jewish heritage and erasing an impetuous early marriage from her biography. And she was a motherly figure who raised four successful children and many of her models to live with her family as they came to New York as mere teens.

 “She kept an eye out for me, and because she did, I think other male agents and photographers were more careful around me, more respectful,” Turlington said. “Every young model should have such protection.”

Ford, who died in 2014 at the age of 92, broke new ground in the modeling industry again and again. She was an early adopter of the practice of international scouting, plucking leggy blondes from obscurity in Scandinavia. She also was shrewd in the art of brand-building, launching a makeup line in the 1960s and writing a monthly beauty advice column that was syndicated nationwide. She and Jerry helped negotiate some of the earliest long-term makeup contracts, signing Lauren Hutton with Revlon for a record-setting $200,000 in 1973.

Lacey highlights the heady world of New York City modeling: The drug-fueled nights at Studio 54 in the 1970s, which Ford likened, not flatteringly, to the last days of the Roman Empire. The 1980s, when, “at one stage . . . every member of the pop group Duran Duran had a girlfriend who was on the books with Ford.” The 1990s, when supermodels danced in George Michael videos and didn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.

Model Woman is a wholly entertaining, insightful and slightly bitchy look inside the moneyed world of modeling.

 

Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, Jean Shrimpton, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell: Name a famous model, and more likely than not, she was once represented by Eileen Ford, who started her eponymous modeling agency with husband Jerry in 1947 and built it into an international powerhouse.
FictionDebut Fiction

And suddenly, you’re in the middle of adulthood

Review by Amy Scribner

A world-famous actor (a former Disney Channel star who’s back for a reunion special—think Ryan Gosling meets Justin Timberlake) walks into the small-town Florida bar where three 19-year-old friends are drinking their way through another dull night. 

He is, as narrator Maggie puts it, “a man who couldn’t part his hair differently without people demanding a press conference to fawn over him for it.” And now he’s at The Shamrock on what turns out to be the last night of his glamorous life. This is not a spoiler—it’s on page one.

In Local Girls, Henry Holt editor Caroline Zancan’s funny and poignant debut novel, Maggie, Nina and Lindsey are dead-end girls living in the recession-rotted Orlando suburbs. They didn’t do well in school and don’t really have any plans now that they’ve graduated. But as they get progressively drunker with Sam Decker, the story of their friendship unfolds.

None of them are flying these days—Nina is teaching Jazzercise at the local gym, Lindsay still lives at home with her dad and many brothers, and Maggie wants nothing more than to ditch her boyfriend and coffee shop job and head, well, anywhere but here. A prank gone horribly wrong alienated them from the fourth member of their group, Lila, and when she walks into the bar that night, we start to learn more about how they came to this moment in their young lives. 

Local Girls is an achingly good, ennui-drenched story of friendship and shared history in the humid depths of Florida. It’s a perfect summer read about the moment when, just like that, you’re an adult.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A world-famous actor (a former Disney Channel star who’s back for a reunion special—think Ryan Gosling meets Justin Timberlake) walks into the small-town Florida bar where three 19-year-old friends are drinking their way through another dull night.
NonfictionMemoir

The long road from the Midwest to mega-success

Review by Amy Scribner

Blonde, svelte, former Miss America, musical prodigy, successful news anchor on national network with a hot husband: I was, quite honestly, prepared to hate (or at least strongly resent) Gretchen Carlson. But darn it if she didn’t charm me from the first page of Getting Real, her memoir of growing up wholesome in Minnesota. 

Carlson, who hosts her own show on Fox News called “The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson,” grew up in a loving, devout Lutheran family. She emerges as a violin virtuoso by the time she’s 7, paving the way for a lifetime of larger-than-life achievements. She attended Stanford University before taking time away to train for, compete in—and win—the Miss America pageant at 21. 

But Carlson’s saving grace is that she isn’t perfect, and she hits bumps in her road. Overweight throughout junior high and high school, she recalls being mortified when a sales lady called out that she needed a bigger size “for the chubby girl in the dressing room.” As she launches her reporting career, she loses broadcasting jobs and is the victim of sexual intimidation by men in power.

Carlson is frank and open about her struggles (“I was so confused about who I was and what I would face as I moved forward in what appeared to be a really scary world,” she writes about a top television exec trying to force himself on her in the back of a car). But mostly, she conveys a steely determination and clear-headed sense of self-worth that is inspiring and refreshing. She is unapologetic about her drive for success, pursuing ever bigger career goals while raising two small children. She even displays an intriguing feminist streak. 

Carlson may have pageant looks and a megawatt career, but in this memoir, she does indeed get real.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Blonde, svelte, former Miss America, musical prodigy, successful news anchor on national network with a hot husband: I was, quite honestly, prepared to hate (or at least strongly resent) Gretchen Carlson. But darn it if she didn’t charm me from the first page of Getting Real, her memoir of growing up wholesome in Minnesota.
FictionHistorical Fiction

A brother’s view

Review by Amy Scribner

Teddy Todd, who first appeared in Kate Atkinson’s thrilling Life After Life (2013), served as a British pilot in World War II. As a young man in the throes of a brutal war, he “didn’t expect to see the alchemy of spring, to see the dull brown earth change to bright green and then pale gold.”

Teddy does survive the war, barely. In A God in Ruins, we follow the rest of his life as brother, husband, father and grandfather through the lovely, effortless story-telling of Atkinson (or, as I think of her whenever I glimpse one of her many near-perfect books on my shelves, She Who Can Do No Wrong).

Teddy wanders around Europe for a bit after the liberation, writing mediocre poetry at cafes on the Riviera. “If only he was an artist—paint seemed less demanding than words. He felt sure that Van Gogh’s sunflowers hadn’t given him as much trouble.”

A responsible British lad at heart, Teddy returns home to marry Nancy, literally the girl next door, and get a series of respectable if non-glamorous jobs. They have a volatile daughter, Viola, who lives with her boyfriend on a commune and gives Teddy and Nancy two grandchildren (their names, of course, are Sunny and Moon).

A God in Ruins is not so much a sequel as a companion to Life After Life, in which Teddy’s sister Ursula lives her life over and over. And Teddy’s story more than stands on its own. Atkinson effortlessly toggles to and from Teddy’s childhood, the war, and his daughter’s and grandchildren’s lives in a story so seamless that one barely notices skipping among decades.

And Teddy . . . it is hard to stop thinking about the steadfast yet slightly poetic Teddy. He apparently has that effect on women. When Viola unceremoniously moves him into a retirement home, the women flock to him: “Of course he was still pretty spry then, and competent, and the women belonged to a generation that could be impressed if a man simply knew how to flick a switch on a kettle. He set quite a few frail hearts a-flutter in Fanning Court.” He is a singular character in an extraordinary story.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Teddy Todd, who first appeared in Kate Atkinson’s thrilling Life After Life (2013), served as a British pilot in World War II. As a young man in the throes of a brutal war, he “didn’t expect to see the alchemy of spring, to see the dull brown earth change to bright green and then pale gold.”
Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

Where They Found Her

Review by Amy Scribner

The body of a newborn girl has been found in an idyllic New Jersey town. It’s not the best assignment for a newspaper reporter who so recently delivered a stillborn child, but Molly Sanderson wants to prove to her editor that she can cover hard news. So—despite her husband Justin’s trepidation that covering this story might cause Molly to lapse back into serious depression—she dives in, determined to find out how the child ended up abandoned beneath a bridge.

Was it a homicide? Could it have been a panic-stricken student at the town’s prestigious Ridgedale University? Is there a connection to another death under the bridge two decades before? What about the mysterious mother and daughter who recently returned to a rundown apartment on the edge of town?

As Molly tracks down leads and interviews anyone who might have a connection to the mystery, she becomes immersed in the intrigue and politics of a tight-knit community. But then things take a more menacing turn, with college officials watching her every move and seemingly unconnected people coming together. When a mysterious package appears in their home, Justin fears for her safety—and her sanity. And Molly has no way to know just how close to home the story will hit.

Author Kimberly McCreight is well known for her 2013 best-selling debut, Reconstructing Amelia. With Where They Found Her, she has delivered another eerie, harrowing read. Through flashbacks and multiple narrators—some more reliable than others—McCreight weaves a deeply satisfying spellbinder that unfolds deliciously to the very last chapter.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our web-exclusive Q&A with McCreight about Where They Found Her.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A small-town tragedy reveals buried secrets.
FictionPopular Fiction

A family unmoored

Review by Amy Scribner

Lizzie Vogel has grown up in what she, even at age 9, understands is “a very good situation.” She has a nice home with a nanny and a chauffeur, two siblings and a dog. Then one day, her mother learns that Lizzie’s father has had an affair. The next thing Lizzie knows, her parents have split and she has been shuffled off to live in the country with her mother, brother and sister.

Things unravel pretty quickly in this village outside of London, where Lizzie’s broken mom pops pills, drinks whiskey and writes bad plays while Lizzie and her sister attempt to keep the household running.

 “We went to our mother and asked how she thought we might cope now she was semi-conscious much of the time,” says Lizzie. “She explained that she herself was temperamentally unsuited to housework and laundry and always had been—even before the pills had kicked in.”

Clearly, there is a need for a man of the house. Lizzie and her sister start a list of eligible (or even sort of eligible) men in the village who might make their mother happy again. They try—and fail—to connect their mother with Mr. Lomax the handyman; Phil Oliphant, who likes horses; and Reverend Derek, the vicar. All the while, their mother sinks deeper into depression.

Those who have read Love, Nina, Stibbe’s wonderful 2013 memoir of nannying in London, will recognize her singularly witty voice here. While Man at the Helm is hilarious and heartfelt, it also offers a poignant peek into a not-so-distant time when women’s choices were limited and their dependence on men profound. Based on Stibbe’s childhood, Man at the Helm is a beguiling, often wickedly funny look at an unusual family trying to find its place in a conventional world.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lizzie Vogel has grown up in what she, even at age 9, understands is “a very good situation.” She has a nice home with a nanny and a chauffeur, two siblings and a dog. Then one day, her mother learns that Lizzie’s father has had an affair. The next thing Lizzie knows, her parents have split and she has been shuffled off to live in the country with her mother, brother and sister.

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