Amy Scribner

NonfictionPolitics

How to rise above

Review by Amy Scribner

Dan Rather has enjoyed something of a renaissance recently, emerging as the leading force behind News and Guts, an online outlet that provides critiques of and insights into current happenings in Washington, D.C. It’s been gratifying to see this lion of the press corps get a second act, after a semi-scandal involving his reporting of unverified documents relating to President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service hastened his exit from CBS News in 2007.

Now, Rather delivers What Unites Us, in which he reflects upon what it means to be a patriotic American. Written with collaborator Elliot Kirschner, the book is a deeply felt reminder of what is the best of America.

“Our Constitution, our rule of law, our traditions, our work ethic, our empathy, our pragmatism, and our basic decency,” he writes. “As I have seen over the years, when we cultivate these instincts, we soar. When we sow seeds of division, hatred, and small-mindedness, we falter.”

Given the Twitter wars, the tragedy in Charlottesville and the general vitriol currently ruling our national conversation, What Unites Us is at times almost unbearably poignant. Yet Rather’s words provide a sort of salve—and clear thinking about how to recover from these ugly times. He reflects on the role of the press, the need for sound science in making policy and public education as a pillar of patriotism. Deeply grounded in his upbringing in segregated Houston, Rather reminds us how far we have come as a nation.

Although this is a set of essays, not a memoir, Rather adds another dimension to the book by sharing remembrances from his remarkable life. This is a man who has so often been in the front row of history. He recalls drinking cola with civil rights activist Medgar Evers as they talked about voter repression in the 1960s South and rushing to the studio the morning of September 11, 2001.

What Unites Us is a passionate treatise on preserving the best of America and letting go of that which makes us weaker.

Dan Rather reflects upon what it means to be a patriotic American in What Unites Us. Written with collaborator Elliot Kirschner, the book is a deeply felt reminder of what is the best of America.

FictionDebut Fiction

Visions of a midlife crisis

Review by Amy Scribner

Andrew Cohen is part of the New York City cultural elite—a New York University professor and prominent thinker who has designed his whole life around optimum comfort and aesthetics. His urban apartment is sleek—albeit unwelcoming to his two daughters—and he enjoys a relationship with a former student nearly half his age.

Andrew’s well-curated life is flipped on end when he starts having disturbing visions that leave him shaken and physically ill. They appear to be connected to an ancient ritual taking place in a Jewish temple. A secular Jew, Andrew doesn’t know what to make of the scenes flashing through his mind.

The Ruined House, which won Israel’s biggest literary award (the Sapir Prize), is a fascinatingly claustrophobic year inside Andrew’s mind. He is not a particularly likable man, focused as he is solely on his reputation and physical appearance. Yet, as he descends into the hellish clutches of increasingly frequent visions, one can’t help feeling for him.

The story is in part a meditation on the isolation of the modern age, when one can live among millions of people in a vibrant city, yet still be utterly alone. It’s also, not coincidentally, set in the year before September 11, 2001, and a sense of doom hovers over every lyrical page: “The sky blue of the river meets the water blue of the sky, divided only by the thin filament of the George Washington Bridge, stretching from bank to bank like the hint of a knowing smile: The day would come when all would return to what it had been and the world would revert to chaos.”

But at its core, The Ruined House is an examination of one man’s midlife crisis, and how we all are the sum of our inescapable, barely beneath-the-surface history.

The Ruined House is an examination of one man’s midlife crisis, and how we all are the sum of our inescapable, barely beneath-the-surface history.

FictionFamily Drama

We’re all in this together

Review by Amy Scribner

Abel Campbell is the patriarch of a mightily dysfunctional yet close-knit Midwestern family, “the sun around which their lesser planets circled, the god they hoped to please.”

A retired attorney and judge, Abel presides over his mild and devout wife, Hattie, and their grown children: Doro (successful college dean who stoically wears the mantle of oldest living child with a whiff of martyrdom), Jesse (farmer and alcoholic in recovery), Gideon (wanderer not in recovery), ClairBell (divorced mom with a secret addiction to painkillers) and Billy (underemployed masseuse with a not-so-secret addiction to anything he can ingest).

Abel and Hattie’s eldest son, Nick, died 40 years before after a lifetime of health issues, and it’s clear their youngest, Billy, is next. Diagnosed with AIDS in his 20s, Billy “endured his fate with a shifting array of denial, humility, gallows humor, despair and hope, but from time to time things could get dicey, for in addition to his precarious health he was an addict. Painkillers, black tar, methadone, drink—any substance at hand. Cough syrup, cigarettes, codeine, cocaine. On a lean day even candy.”

The story begins with a family dinner, the most Norman Rockwellian of scenes: All except Gideon are gathered around the Campbell table in Amicus, Kansas, to celebrate Abel’s birthday. When Billy passes out face-first in his serving of cake, it sets in motion a series of clumsy interventions and accusations that threaten to fracture the family.

A National Book Award finalist for The River Beyond the World, Janet Peery is a masterful, poetic storyteller with a sharp eye for details that draw the reader into any scene. The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs is a heartbreakingly spot-on portrait of the ways families support and enable each other. It’s also a timely depiction of the ravages of opioid addiction on average American families, in a time when our nation faces a worsening crisis.

Abel Campbell is the patriarch of a mightily dysfunctional yet close-knit Midwestern family, “the sun around which their lesser planets circled, the god they hoped to please.”

NonfictionSelf-Help

Step away from the screens

Review by Amy Scribner

My name is Amy, and I’m a Candy Crush addict.

Whenever I pick up my phone, those brightly colored, glossy squares beckon, and I can easily squander 30 minutes mindlessly swiping at the screen. It’s soothing—and hugely unproductive. In Bored and Brilliant, Manoush Zomorodi argues that stepping away from technology is not just healthy, it is essential for creativity and productivity. Research shows that people are now shifting their focus every 45 seconds while working online due to interruptions and competing messages. But being constantly tethered to a phone or tablet is no way to treat our brains if we want to foster new ideas.

Zomorodi, who hosts the popular podcast “Note to Self,” writes, “Creativity—no matter how you define or apply it—needs a push, and boredom, which allows new and different connections to form in our brain, is a most effective muse.” More than 20,000 people around the world signed up when Zomorodi launched the Bored and Brilliant Project, a weeklong challenge to get people to disconnect from their gadgets and tune in to their own thoughts. Challenges like going photo-free for a day are all specifically designed to reconnect us with the world.

In this age of information, Zomorodi’s book seems revolutionary, almost subversive. Sprinkled liberally with research and insights from some of the leading minds in technology and futurism, Bored and Brilliant is an important reminder that we are not beholden to our devices. As for me, I’ve deleted the Candy Crush app from my iPhone . . . for now.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Manoush Zomorodi for Bored and Brilliant.

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

In Bored and Brilliant, Manoush Zomorodi argues that stepping away from technology is not just healthy, it is essential for creativity and productivity. Research shows that people are now shifting their focus every 45 seconds while working online due to interruptions and competing messages. But being constantly tethered to a phone or tablet is no way to treat our brains if we want to foster new ideas.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

A woman’s work

Review by Amy Scribner

“Children are not on the table,” Joan Ashby tells her future husband, Martin. “I possess no need, primal or otherwise, for motherhood.” This is no surprise, given Joan’s white-hot career as a writer of short stories—and her own lonely childhood with two loveless parents. Yet, when she finds herself pregnant shortly after she and Martin marry, she sets aside her fame to raise one, then two boys in the suburban Virginia town of Rhome.

While Martin’s soaring surgical career takes him around the world, the famous Joan Ashby becomes Joan Manning, a housewife who takes yoga classes and shuttles her boys to school and swim lessons. She tells no one when, during the days while the boys are at school, she comes back to her writing. To her, the act of writing is “exquisitely important, so much like prayer.” Over nearly a decade, she writes a remarkable novel that she feels sure will signal her return as a force in the literary world.

But the time never seems right to publish. Younger son Eric blossoms into a gifted computer programmer who makes his first million (and many more) while still a teenager. Joan finds herself a stranger in her own home when a gaggle of coders move in seemingly overnight, much to Martin’s delight.

In a family of extraordinarily accomplished people, Joan’s other son, Daniel, struggles to find his identity. After showing early promise as a writer, a well-meaning teacher mentions Daniel’s mother’s fame. Daunted, he sets aside his stories and embarks on an ill-suited career in venture capital.

After a breathtaking betrayal threatens to fracture the family, Joan retreats to India and reclaims a room of her own.

It’s almost impossible to believe that The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is the first novel by Cherise Wolas, a lawyer and film producer. Gorgeously written and completely captivating, the book spans decades and continents, deftly capturing the tug so many women feel between motherhood and self-identity.

 

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

“Children are not on the table,” Joan Ashby tells her future husband, Martin. “I possess no need, primal or otherwise, for motherhood.” This is no surprise, given Joan’s white-hot career as a writer of short stories—and her own lonely childhood with two loveless parents. Yet, when she finds herself pregnant shortly after she and Martin marry, she sets aside her fame to raise one, then two boys in the suburban Virginia town of Rhome.

FictionPopular FictionDebut Fiction

Lots of books and a little romance

Review by Amy Scribner

In this charmer of a story, Nightingale Books is in many ways the main character. A beloved if slightly rundown shop run by Julius Nightingale, it is a central meeting place in the British village of Peasebrook. Gossip is exchanged, tea is consumed, and occasionally, books are purchased. When Julius succumbs to cancer, his adult daughter, Emilia, inherits the business.

Julius had impeccable taste in literature, but his bookkeeping left much to be desired. Emilia is left to figure out whether she can keep the store afloat—or if she should sell the property to an eager real estate investor and flee her grief. Even as she grapples with this decision to stay or go, it’s complicated by her deepening friendships with some of the bookshop regulars: the shy but sweet chef Thomasina; the brilliant and bored housewife Bea; and the wealthy lady of the manor, Sarah, who has a secret connection to Julius. There’s also Emilia’s growing attraction to Marlowe, a violinist in the Peasebrook Quartet, of which Julius had been a member.

It truly takes a village for Emilia to untangle her finances, create a publicity campaign to bring in new customers and design a physical makeover that dusts off Nightingale Books but stays true to its history. As she slowly develops a plan to give the shop a new life, Emilia finds her own life in the process.

Veronica Henry is an award-winning romance novelist in her native United Kingdom. In How to Find Love in a Bookshop, her first novel to be released in the U.S., she takes the best of romance novels—the dashing figures, the complicated love triangles—and smartly ditches the clichéd sex scenes and overwrought dialogue. The book is reminiscent of the very best Maeve Binchy novels. It’s an enchanting story about the power of community—and books—to help heal a broken heart.

In this charmer of a story, Nightingale Books is in many ways the main character. A beloved if slightly rundown shop run by Julius Nightingale, it is a central meeting place in the British village of Peasebrook. Gossip is exchanged, tea is consumed, and occasionally, books are purchased. When Julius succumbs to cancer, his adult daughter, Emilia, inherits the business.

FictionDebut Fiction

A slow, complicated farewell

Review by Amy Scribner

A slim but powerful volume, Goodbye, Vitamin is written in journal-like dispatches as Ruth watches her father, Howard, slide down the tunnel of Alzheimer’s disease. Ruth, a 30-year-old sonographer whose own path was derailed by an unexpected breakup, moves home for a year to help care for Howard.

A recovering alcoholic, occasional philanderer and well-loved professor, Howard is a complicated father figure. He kept mustard packets in his glove compartment to disguise alcohol breath, but also kept in that same glove compartment a photo from an old family vacation to Washington, D.C. He is also somewhat of an idol for Ruth, who left for college before his father’s behavior really escalated.

“Okay, but listen: this is why I so seldom visited,” Ruth explains. “I wanted to preserve my memory of my perfect father. I didn’t want to know the many ways he’d hurt my mother. I didn’t want to have to pick sides.”

Ruth drifts through the first weeks at home, but is then approached by Howard’s teaching assistant, who proposes setting up a fake class for the languishing Howard to teach. The class is populated with graduate students who know Howard, including, Ruth realizes, one woman who recently had a dalliance with him. As Ruth comes to grips with the messy reality of her family, she strengthens her ties with her long-suffering mom and younger brother.

Rachel Khong’s first novel (she also authored the wonderfully titled All About Eggs: Everything We Know About the World’s Most Important Food) offers the fresh, quirky voice of a young woman who is straddling wide-eyed youth and world-weariness. She’s given to random ruminations, such as, “Something else I appreciate about hangovers: You are given the chance to value your regular things. Water, for instance, becomes so delicious and appealing.” Goodbye, Vitamin is a funny and beautiful meditation on family bonds and finding one’s place in an ever-changing world.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Rachel Khong for Goodbye, Vitamin.

A slim but powerful volume, Goodbye, Vitamin is written in journal-like dispatches as Ruth watches her father, Howard, slide down the tunnel of Alzheimer’s disease. Ruth, a 30-year-old sonographer whose own path was derailed by an unexpected breakup, moves home for a year to help care for Howard.

NonfictionEssays

Don’t look away

Review by Amy Scribner

Mandy Len Catron’s essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” went viral after being published in the New York Times Modern Love column in 2014. In it, she details a study in which couples sit face to face, asking and answering progressively more personal questions. Six months after the study, two participants were married.

Catron tried the questions out with an attractive acquaintance named Mark, and lo and behold, they are now a couple. (She is the first to admit, in the last paragraph of the essay, that love didn’t happen to them because of the questions—they chose to be together.)

Now Catron is tackling the many facets of love in a book that builds upon her famous essay.

In truth, the book’s name is a bit of a misnomer. Catron, a professor in British Columbia, is not making the case, as the title suggests, that love is either random or formulaic. Rather, she examines what science tells us about the elements of lasting love, and explores why her Appalachian grandparents stayed married for life while her parents divorced after so many seemingly happy years and her own long-term relationship (pre-Mark) slowly crumbled.

She writes, “Deciding to break up, I thought, was like learning a star had burned out in a distant galaxy, even though you can still see it in the sky: You know something has irrevocably changed, but your senses suggest otherwise.”

Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation on the most universal topic.

 

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

Mandy Len Catron’s essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” went viral after being published in the New York Times Modern Love column in 2014. In it, she details a study in which couples sit face to face, asking and answering progressively more personal questions. Six months after the study, two participants were married.

Fiction

Heartbreak and secrets of four women in Las Vegas

Review by Amy Scribner

Four seemingly unconnected women’s lives intersect in ’Round Midnight, the moving new novel from the author of We Are Called to Rise. Readers first meet June, a beautiful but restless woman who owns the glittering El Capitan casino with her husband, Del, in dusty 1950s Las Vegas. She becomes pregnant and spends nine months praying it isn’t the child of their headlining act, a talented black singer. When the baby is born, Del takes it away, shattering June.

Honorata is a young Filipina woman whose cruel uncle arranges her marriage to a rich man in Chicago. When she hits a slot machine jackpot during a trip to Vegas, she leaves him and starts a new secret life, taking care to cover her tracks so he’ll never find her.

Coral is raised in a large, loving African-American family. She knows she’s different from her three siblings—her skin is markedly lighter—but her mother insists it doesn’t matter how Coral came to be a part of their clan. She searches for the truth of her heritage, ultimately stumbling across it in the most unexpected way.

Engracia is a hotel maid, an undocumented worker from Mexico who is grieving the loss of her young son after a freak accident. She’s not sure whether she even wants to live—until she’s caught in someone else’s domestic drama and her next steps become clear.

Each of these women is quietly extraordinary in her own way. As their stories unfold, we come to understand their bonds, through community, compassion and, in one case, blood. They are women of different eras, all doing the best they can with their own flawed choices and circumstances, all woven together in this jewel of a novel. Haunting and unpredictable, ’Round Midnight is the beautifully told story of how fates intertwine in ways we can’t plan.

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

Four seemingly unconnected women’s lives intersect in ’Round Midnight, the moving new novel from the author of We Are Called to Rise. Readers first meet June, a beautiful but restless woman who owns the glittering El Capitan casino with her husband, Del, in dusty 1950s Las Vegas. She becomes pregnant and spends nine months praying it isn’t the child of their headlining act, a talented black singer. When the baby is born, Del takes it away, shattering June.

NonfictionSportsMemoir

The beginning of a legend

Review by Amy Scribner

I may be getting cynical in middle age, but my first thought upon hearing that Tiger Woods was writing a memoir about his triumphant victory at the 1997 Masters was, “How clever! He gets to relive his glory days without having to address the mess that came later in his personal life.”

It’s true that Woods neatly sidesteps the revelations of his serial cheating that became a public spectacle and cast shadows on his storied career. The only mention is on the second-to-last page: “I’ve gone through a lot on and off the course, what with different injuries, changes in the game, and the equipment we use, as well as being married, having kids, and getting publicly divorced. It’s definitely been tough at times.”

To be fair, this book is clearly for fans of golf, not scandals. Woods dives deep into his preparations for and experience at the 1997 Masters. Just 21 at the time, he electrified fans with his decisive win and became a global icon.

At the start of the book, Woods writes compellingly, if briefly, about his childhood as a golf prodigy. Life wasn’t always perfect for the Woods family, who experienced racism after moving to a mostly white city in Southern California. “Some of the residents weren’t happy that a mixed-race family had moved in, and threw things at the house—lemons, limes, rocks,” Woods writes.

Still, Woods remained laser-focused on the sport he loved, dreaming about someday playing at Augusta. He finally did as an amateur, but it was in 1997 that the stars aligned for him. Woods takes readers behind the scenes at the legendary club, writing about the accommodations, his interactions with reporters and other golfers, the African-American staff at the club who snuck out to watch him play and even the types of clubs he chose for major shots throughout the four days.

Capped off by Woods’ reflections on his nagging injuries and what he would change about the course at Augusta, The 1997 Masters: My Story is a vivid and ultimately satisfying read about a singular event in American sports.

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

Woods dives deep into his preparations for and experience at the 1997 Masters. Just 21 at the time, he electrified fans with his decisive win and became a global icon.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Secrets in sanctuary

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, April 2017

What was Germany like for regular citizens in the months and years after World War II? In the enthralling The Women in the Castle, Jessica Shattuck paints a portrait of a postwar country wracked with guilt and confusion, trying to regroup and rebuild even as Allied forces require Germans to watch footage of the liberation of Buchenwald and paper villages with photos of concentration camp victims. In this uncertain world, where many Germans still believe these actions to be propaganda and don’t yet understand the full horror of what has transpired, three women come together through unlikely connections.

Marianne von Lingenfels is an aristocrat whose husband died due to his involvement in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life. Before he dies, Marianne pledges to take care of the wives and children of other resisters. Making good on that promise, Marianne retrieves Benita, who is being abused by Russian soldiers in Berlin, and locates Benita’s son, who’s being held in a Nazi children’s home.

The group makes its way to the von Lingenfels’ castle, where Marianne’s children also live. Then quiet Ania and her two shell-shocked boys arrive, ostensibly fleeing the Red Army. But there’s more to her story, and Benita’s, and it will take years for Marianne to fully understand the pasts of the women she’s been charged with protecting.

Shattuck, whose novel The Hazards of Good Breeding was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, sheds new light on World War II’s aftermath and the families left behind, and raises poignant questions about blind loyalty: “Could you see a person’s soul in their face? Marianne and Albrecht had often argued about this. Yes, she had insisted. Didn’t you know from the moment you saw Hitler’s photograph that he was bad? Albrecht wasn’t sure. If it was so obvious, he pointed out, how did he fool the rest of Germany?”

The Women in the Castle is haunting, a beautifully written and painfully vivid glimpse into one of the most horrific times in world history.

 

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

What was Germany like for regular citizens in the months and years after World War II? In the enthralling The Women in the Castle, Jessica Shattuck paints a portrait of a postwar country wracked with guilt and confusion, trying to regroup and rebuild even as Allied forces require Germans to watch footage of the liberation of Buchenwald and paper villages with photos of concentration camp victims. In this uncertain world, where many Germans still believe these actions to be propaganda and don’t yet understand the full horror of what has transpired, three women come together through unlikely connections.

FictionPopular Fiction

A dangerous obsession

Review by Amy Scribner

Meredith Oliver is the girl who got left behind. A normal teenager semi-successfully navigating the shark-infested waters of middle school, she is in a sandwich shop when the most popular girl in school is kidnapped at gunpoint. “Get up,” the man says to Lisa Bellow, who dutifully follows him out the door. Meredith, frozen with fear, doesn’t even see the man’s face or car.

Meredith is sure Lisa doesn’t know her, even though they’ve gone to school together since elementary school and their lockers are next to each other. The most contact they’ve had in recent years was when Lisa directed Meredith—in true mean-girl style—to sit differently on her cafeteria chair so her butt didn’t hang over the edge.

The Oliver family has already seen its share of tragedy—older son Evan was a promising baseball player until an errant fly ball ended his dreams. Their parents, Claire and Mark, stagger under the weight of the kidnapping, simultaneously thrilled that Meredith was spared by the kidnapper and guilty that another girl is likely gone forever.

“No, she didn’t care one bit who Lisa Bellow was; the only important thing about Lisa Bellow, to Claire, was that she, not Meredith, was the girl who was taken. Certainly it would be better if she were found alive, better for Meredith, but all that really mattered was that Meredith was alive. Meredith was safe. Meredith, her baby, her baby girl, was down the hall.”

Once Lisa is taken, Meredith begins envisioning Lisa trapped in a dark, cold apartment with her abductor and abuser. The visions soon morph as Meredith grows desperate to reach Lisa before it’s too late. She retreats into her own mind, searching for clues that might lead her to Lisa.

The second novel from writer Susan Perabo (best known for her short stories) is wrenching, a dark yet beautifully told story of family, fear and grief. In the end, the question isn’t whether Meredith can save her classmate, but whether the Olivers can save Meredith.

 

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

Meredith Oliver is the girl who got left behind. A normal teenager semi-successfully navigating the shark-infested waters of middle school, she is in a sandwich shop when the most popular girl in school is kidnapped at gunpoint. “Get up,” the man says to Lisa Bellow, who dutifully follows him out the door. Meredith, frozen with fear, doesn’t even see the man’s face or car.

NonfictionMemoir

A long, strange trip to wellness

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, February 2017

Depressed, suffering from premenstrual dysphoric disorder and wrought with pain from a frozen shoulder, Ayelet Waldman was on a steady diet of antidepressants, estrogen patches and sleeping pills. Yet her pain and wild mood swings persisted. Her four children and husband (writer Michael Chabon) were the targets of most of her wrath.

“I found myself in a state of seemingly perpetual irritability,” she writes. “I seethed, I turned that fury on the people around me, and then I collapsed in shame at these outbursts. . . . I couldn’t manage to lift the grimy curtain of my unhappiness.”

Then she stumbled on a book about microdosing—taking tiny amounts of LSD, ofterwise known as acid. The doses are so small that they don’t cause hallucination but improve mood and focus. The process of microdosing was “not so much going on an acid trip as going on an acid errand,” she writes.

Following a strict dosing protocol, she experienced decreased physical pain and increased joy. Waldman, author of Bad Mother and a series of entertaining mysteries about a public defender turned stay-at-home mom, began her career as a lawyer and taught a college class on the war on drugs. She struggles with the morality of purchasing and taking illegal drugs, albeit for a good cause. She also writes openly about how her mental health has impacted her marriage; Chabon is portrayed with near-saintly patience, and a scene where they attend therapy is a lovely glimpse at a couple in it for the long haul.

A Really Good Day is a surprisingly poignant, funny and deeply introspective journal of Waldman’s month of treatment. Ultimately, her story is about family, marriage and dealing with modern life, with all its stressors and moments of beauty.

 

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

Depressed, suffering from premenstrual dysphoric disorder and wrought with pain from a frozen shoulder, Ayelet Waldman was on a steady diet of antidepressants, estrogen patches and sleeping pills. Yet her pain and wild mood swings persisted. Her four children and husband (writer Michael Chabon) were the targets of most of her wrath.

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