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by MiChelle Jones

Echoes of the South’s troubled past The central story of Blood Done Sign My Name sounds distressingly familiar the murder of a young man by a reputed Klansman and his sons in a small Southern town. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss Timothy Tyson’s book as the same old, same old. For one thing, the murder did not take place in the early days of the civil rights era; it occurred at the start of a decade more often associated with gas shortages, Watergate and Vietnam protests than with sit-ins. As Tyson explains, however, there were many civil rights issues left to be resolved in 1970.

"Many people nowadays think that after the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964," he writes, "cafÅ½ owners and city officials read the news in the morning paper and took down all those WHITE ONLY and COLORED signs by lunchtime. But this landmark legislation did not make a dent in Oxford." Lingering racial tensions in the North Carolina town are only part of the story told in Blood Done Sign My Name. This is also a history of Tyson’s family and an exploration of how the killing of Henry "Dicky" Marrow affected Tyson, who first learned of it from a fellow nine-year-old the son of the accused. Tyson goes off on many tangents while meting out details of the murder and subsequent trial, but the crime is always lurking in the background.

If his reportage is reminiscent of Truman Capote and his storytelling evocative of Harper Lee, Tyson’s use of colorful phrases and wry observations bring to mind Homer Hickam’s depictions of Coalwood, West Virginia. Tyson describes the setting of the murder, for example, as a place where "the Great Depression came early and stayed late." His father, he writes: "drew on a deep well of spiritual strength, and was a Tyson from eastern North Carolina and therefore half crazy besides." While an entertaining read, Blood Done Sign My Name is, of course, a disturbing reminder of the country’s not-too-distant segregated past. It is also an insightful commentary on the latent issues still at work in today’s society.

Echoes of the South's troubled past The central story of Blood Done Sign My Name sounds distressingly familiar the murder of a young man by a reputed Klansman and his sons in a small Southern town. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss Timothy…

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Take a trip with the Tates

Review by bookpagedev

by Deborah Hopkinson

Scrapbook lovers, rejoice! In this new novel by popular children’s author Paula Danziger, the hobby of scrapbooking comes into its own. In fact, in a delightful touch, Danziger has even included her own colorful scrapbook art.

The heroine of United Tates of America is Sarah Kate Tate, better known as Skate Tate. Skate lives with her limelight-loving little sister and parents in New Jersey, where she has just entered middle school, Biddle Middle to be precise. And Skate is not at all sure she likes the changes this move brings. From the very first day Skate’s cousin and best friend, Susie, is swept away by a new group of friends and seems to lose interest in Skate. And then there is the D.D.

T., the Donald Duck Trio, who go out of their way to quack annoyingly at Skate on the bus each morning. On the bright side, Skate takes a chance and lands the position of co-art director on the student newspaper, along with the talented (and nice-looking) Garth Garrison. At the center of Skate’s life, though, has always been her great uncle Mort, whose nickname is GUM. In his mid-50s, GUM has made enough money in the computer field to spend most of his time traveling the world, and he brings back not just mementos from other places, but words of wisdom. He encourages Skate to embrace change and challenge: The future is not to be feared but to be explored and celebrated . . . I really believe that we should be excited by what’s just around the corner. GUM’s words become especially meaningful when, a short while later, he dies of a heart condition. In his will, he leaves Skate’s family some money and a request: use the funds to travel and explore the places he wishes he could have shown them himself. Adjusting to GUM’s death is hard for Skate, but she gets up enough courage to propose a travel column for her school paper based on the trips she and her family will take. This warm and accessible story closes with the family’s trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts, leaving the door open for more Tate family trips, just around the corner.

Scrapbook lovers, rejoice! In this new novel by popular children's author Paula Danziger, the hobby of scrapbooking comes into its own. In fact, in a delightful touch, Danziger has even included her own colorful scrapbook art.

The heroine of United Tates of…

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Coping with the harsh truths of autism

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Gerber

Although Marti Leimbach’s Daniel Isn’t Talking is fiction, the engrossing story reads like the real-life diary of a mom at her breaking point. The author, whose first novel, Dying Young, was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts, admits the story is taken in part from her own life. Her son was diagnosed with autism five years ago, and the reactions of her friends and family shocked, surprised and saddened her. That experience has infused this novel, which follows a funny and courageous mother fighting to give her child a normal life.

Melanie Marsh, mother of two, has become a shadow of her formerly confident, breezy self, reduced to begging her shrink for medication to cope with her constant anxiety and increasing desperation. The reason: her 19-month-old son Daniel is obsessed with just one toy, won’t stop crying, and, unlike his bubbly older sister Emily, doesn’t talk or play with other children. Melanie’s British husband Stephen is dismissive of her concerns. When Daniel is finally diagnosed, Mom wants the harsh truth and Dad prefers denial. Their beloved little boy has turned into a slightly alien, uneducable time bomb, and the blame and fear rip apart their marriage. Preferring work to the new reality at home, Stephen withdraws from his family and demands that Daniel be sent away to a special school. It is an interesting dissection of two divergent methods of coping. But while we see Melanie struggle with complex emotions as she learns to see her boy as more than different, Stephen is too easily reduced to a selfish two-dimensional character. The most intriguing character here is autism itself, the mysterious condition that cannot be cured, or even effectively mitigated . . . a genetic mistake for which we will forever pay the consequences. Fans of Mark Haddon’s A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will appreciate the portrait of an autistic toddler, this time from the point of view of a mother who stuck around. Readers will laugh as Melanie gives attitude to the experts and cry as the exhausted mother struggles to survive the screaming fits and odd looks that accompany an ordinary trip to the supermarket. This novel is bittersweet, resilient and not to be missed. Former BookPage business columnist Stephanie Gerber writes from Louisville, Kentucky.

Although Marti Leimbach's Daniel Isn't Talking is fiction, the engrossing story reads like the real-life diary of a mom at her breaking point. The author, whose first novel, Dying Young, was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts, admits the story is taken in part…

History

History

The people who paved the way for a momentous invasion

Review by bookpagedev

by Roger Bishop

In the days before D-Day, everyone knew that a seaborne invasion of Europe by the Allies was coming. The big questions were when and where. We now know that the landings on the beaches of Normandy were crucial to eventual victory in World War II. But what was life like in the days just before D-Day? Drawing on a wide range of sources, including letters, diaries, contemporary documents and interviews, historian and former diplomat David Stafford takes us into the lives of ordinary people and military personnel in his Ten Days to D-Day: Citizens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion. The result is a narrative that flows easily, much like an engrossing documentary film, from one person and country to another.

The many profiles include men like Andre Heintz, a French schoolteacher in Caen, who was part of the Resistance. He forged identity cards for those in trouble, but also had the potentially more dangerous role of collecting intelligence about changes in the city’s German military installations. In an Oslo prison, there is Peter Moen, who had been one of the main editors of the most important of the clandestine newspapers in Norway before becoming a prisoner of the Gestapo. Women contributed as well. In the days before D-Day, there were more than 70,000 women working as spies, codebreakers, radio mechanics and in other nontraditional roles. Twenty-year-old Sonia d’Artois, from England and an expert on explosives, parachuted into France before D-Day. The remarkable Vera Atkins was in charge of the French intelligence section; female agents had been sent to France as early as 1942. Along with the personal stories of everyday citizens like those mentioned above, Stafford explores the concerns and frustrations of the leaders, in particular General Eisenhower, Prime Minister Churchill and General de Gaulle. The author also illuminates the central role of the Spaniard Juan Pujol, the double agent who supplied false information to the Germans under the alias of “Arabel,” while secretly submitting reports to the Allies. Pujol’s misinformation was necessary to keep the actual date and time of the invasion secret from the Germans.

Written with admirable clarity, Ten Days to D-Day helps us to appreciate the difficulties, ingenuity, personal courage and sacrifice of the many individual citizens in addition to the Allied leaders in the period just before the D-Day landing. Roger Bishop is a bookseller in Nashville and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Giving kids some space

Review by bookpagedev

by Karen Van Valkenburg

Have you ever met a child who doesn’t get into everything? A child who isn’t mischievous and curious? Of course you haven’t. Kids have a way of getting into anything and everything. In Robin’s Room, Margaret Wise Brown, author of such classics as Good Night Moon and The Runaway Bunny, captures the essence of a young boy whose curiosity gets the best of his parents.

This laugh-out-loud picture book focuses on Robin, who leaves things all over the house, puts a sneaker full of sand in his mother’s bed, paints the walls and plants flowers in the bathtub. His parents get fed up with his rambunctious behavior and present him with his own room. But he needs three carpenters to do some remodeling. After one week of locking himself in his room with the workmen, Robin has the most wonderful space in the house. There is a special closet for his jars of paint, a tree over his bed and a ledge planted with flowers in front of a giant window.

Best-selling author Margaret Wise Brown is known by many as the first lady of picture books. Robin’s Room, published for the first time, is a manuscript that was left behind after her death in 1952. Along with the marvelous story, the unique paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher make this book particularly inviting. Once Robin is inside his room, the pictures twist to the side, then upside down so that the reader actually has to turn the book in order to keep up with him. In the bottom corner of each illustration is a picture of Robin pointing his finger in the direction in which the reader should turn the page. Robin’s Room is perfect for teaching children ages 4-8 that using their imaginations and abilities is fantastic and fun. It also teaches adults that children need creative outlets. Although it’s difficult to give kids rooms of their own in reality, it’s important that they have space in which to be creative so that they’re not painting the walls and growing plants in the tub!

Karen Van Valkenburg writes from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Have you ever met a child who doesn't get into everything? A child who isn't mischievous and curious? Of course you haven't. Kids have a way of getting into anything and everything. In Robin's Room, Margaret Wise Brown, author of such classics as Good…

Lifestyles

Lifestyles

Inspiration for simply elegant projects

Review by bookpagedev

by Norah Piehl

Believe it or not, the low-tech craft of knitting has a high-tech presence on the Internet. Online knitting magazines, knitting podcasts and countless knitting blogs are great ways for those of us who practice this solitary craft to find ideas, inspiration and connection with other like-minded folks. No one knows this better than Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne, whose wildly successful blog masondixonknitting.com not only brings together two knitters one from New York, one from Nashville but also brings in knitters from around the world. In their new book, Mason-Dixon Knitting, Kay and Ann infuse every page with the friendly humor, personal stories and down-to-earth style that have made their blog so popular. This book is great for those of us who tend to take our knitting too seriously (one sidebar is titled "Mistakes You Will Definitely Make"), or who think knitting has to be difficult or complicated. The projects included here are mostly simple ones dishcloths, hand towels, felted baskets but, more importantly, they are projects that people will actually use, not just fold up in tissue paper and cherish from a distance. It’s also important to point out that simple does not equal boring. As Kay says, knitters can use their patterns like good cooks use recipes as inspirations to make the projects uniquely their own, as complicated or as straightforward as they like.

For me, the most motivational section of the book deals with the variations on the log cabin blanket pattern. For years, I’ve suffered from Fear of the Afghan even a baby blanket seems like an unbearably tedious process that results in one big square. The log cabin blankets that Ann and Kay include here, though, are exquisite in their simplicity but infinitely varied in their design. With Kay and Ann’s encouragement, humor and common sense, even new knitters can overcome their fears and feel capable of creating something entirely their own.

Memoir

Memoir

Wild things: a naturalist’s love story

Review by bookpagedev

by Maude McDaniel

Wild things: a naturalist’s love story In her new memoir Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild, Renee Askins, who founded The Wolf Fund in 1986, demonstrates the kind of deep natural wisdom and sense of awe at the wild that has distinguished writers like Edwin Muir, Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold. Founded with the primary goal of reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park, The Wolf Fund has largely succeeded, but Askins doesn’t minimize the animal lives lost or the resounding ironies that emerged in the process. Working to obliterate the us against them model she recognizes human concerns rather than enemy positions. Askins’ clear-eyed understanding of the pressures the organization experienced marks a welcome common-sense approach to conservation issues. She is not afraid to introduce difficult questions about wildlife management that The Wolf Fund experienced (for instance, to what degree should unendangered species be sacrificed to the endangered, and when does management morph into control ?). Askins relates wonderfully poignant wolf and dog stories. Human relationships take a back seat in the book until the end, as if, perhaps, her intense experiences with animals have opened her up to human beings as well. In the end, she writes, we are left to honor and allow the mystery, love the questions and the otherness and look to the wild unknown for the resolution to our environmental crisis.

Wild things: a naturalist's love story In her new memoir Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild, Renee Askins, who founded The Wolf Fund in 1986, demonstrates the kind of deep natural wisdom and sense of awe at the wild that…

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

In search of a missing mother

Review by bookpagedev

by Iris Blasi

Eight-year-old Tessa Lee wakes to find her drug-addicted mother nowhere in sight in Firefly Cloak, a compelling multigenerational novel by Sheri Reynolds, whose previous works include the Oprah’s Book Club pick The Rapture of Canaan. Abandoned at a campground in Alabama when her mother, Sheila, runs off with her most recent no-good boyfriend, Tessa Lee and her little brother Travis are left with nothing but a firefly-print housecoat and a phone number written in Magic Marker on Travis’ back.

As the plot zooms forward seven years, we find Tessa Lee running away from her grandmother Lil (the owner of that phone number, with whom Tessa Lee now lives) on a quest to find Sheila, who is rumored to work as a mermaid at a rundown carnival on the Massachusetts coast. Tessa Lee succeeds only to be abandoned again when her mother runs after being discovered.

The tale shifts perspective from Tessa Lee to Sheila to Lil, following them on separate quests: Lil’s to find Tessa Lee, Tessa Lee’s to find Sheila and Sheila’s to find whatever it is she needs to turn her life around. The story of addiction and tragedy (Tessa Lee’s brother Travis has died; the details of his death are threaded out slowly) is presented plainly with a na•ve and frank narrative voice, but the simple tale is cushioned with exquisite and unexpected metaphors. A hungry Sheila is empty as a straw. A bush has honeysuckle vine so sweet that it made the made the ants too drunk to bite her. Tessa Lee describes her mother’s laugh as as strong as cheese. It’s hard to resist being charmed by plucky Tessa Lee, and the shifting perspective highlights the fortitude shared by all three generations of women. Reynolds’ ruminations on redemption are so fleshed-out over the course of the book that the feeble ending feels slightly unsatisfying. But like the firefly coat Tessa Lee cherishes, this ordinary-looking novel has something truly magical inside. Iris Blasi is a writer in New York City.

One woman’s pursuit of justice

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Sims

One woman’s pursuit of justice Clea Koff inherited a passion for justice. She is the child of two documentary filmmakers, one Tanzanian, one American, both human rights activists. She learned from childhood a humanitarian perspective that transcends the violent eruptions over cultural clashes and imaginary lines on maps. She cares about human beings innocent, suffering human beings, the doomed victims of our perverse tendency to periodically allow madmen to run amok.

Koff’s chilling but mesmerizing first book, The Bone Woman, is her account of how, beginning in 1996, she became one of the few people qualified to amass evidence against claims of genocide and crimes against humanity. To prosecute such charges requires evidence that the victims were noncombatants. Prosecutors must identify the victims and prove how they died.

It was not her intention to become a world-class witness to the atrocities of her time. She trained as a forensic anthropologist, planning to study prehistoric skeletons whose lives and deaths were comfortably remote from her own era and her own mortality, but she could not ignore the atrocities in Eastern Europe and Africa. Koff’s account is neither histrionic nor preachy; it’s clear-eyed, hard-headed and straightforward. She anchors the horrific details in her own daily routine and her emotional responses to her work. She reports on perpetrators convicted (or not) from evidence she provides. This book works so well, is so vivid and so moving, because Koff surrounds the dead bodies with living stories. Because Koff works within an international framework of people whose job it is to pursue whatever approximation of justice they can cobble together from the rubble of ruined lives, she and her story become inspiring. Her intention here is to testify and she insists on looking atrocity in the eye. She admits to us the sadness and horror she herself experienced. In doing so, Clea Koff exhibits the very emotion lacking in the mass murderers whose crimes she unravels: empathy for other human beings. Michael Sims’ most recent book, Adam’s Navel, was a New York Times Notable Book.

One woman's pursuit of justice Clea Koff inherited a passion for justice. She is the child of two documentary filmmakers, one Tanzanian, one American, both human rights activists. She learned from childhood a humanitarian perspective that transcends the violent eruptions over cultural clashes and imaginary…

History

History

Communism was a red herring

Review by bookpagedev

by James Summerville

Do we need another book about Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican senator (1947-1957) whose name marks a fearsome era in American history? Tom Wicker, a former editor at the New York Times, thinks so. McCarthy is best understood in the context of the Cold War, which began about the time he arrived in Washington. The Soviet Union, partner in the allied victory, had claimed sovereignty over eastern Europe. Mao Tse-Tung overran Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalists and China had gone communist. It seemed that the red star was on the rise.

Gifted with energy, intelligence and pugnacity, McCarthy now saw a wondrous opportunity: anti-communism. His baseless charge of 205 communists in the State Department, made in February 1950, catapulted him to fame. For the next four years, he investigated communists wherever he imagined them the executive branch, the Democratic Party and, finally, the military. His goal was simply personal aggrandizement. In Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy, Wicker writes, He never uncovered much less sent to jail a single communist, in or out of government. Still, colleagues, presidents and press lords quailed before his popularity in the polls.

Wicker relates the familiar story of how McCarthy’s attack on the Army brought him down. It began with the efforts by his chief aide, Roy Cohn, to gain favor for Cohn’s homosexual lover, Pvt. G. David Schine. And it ended with the magnificent words of chief counsel to the Army, Joseph Welch, whose law partner McCarthy had smeared: Have you at long last, sir, no decency? The hearings were televised. As long as print covered the senator, he remained a popular idol; when people saw his sneer and heard his vicious words, he plummeted in esteem. Wicker’s book adds few facts to what’s known about McCarthy, but it provides a valuable analysis of how his popularity presented dilemmas for both parties in the early 1950s. And he acknowledges McCarthy’s genuine gifts, which, tragically, were used only to seek renown. James Summerville lives and writes in Dickson, Tennessee.

Fiction, World Fiction

Fiction World Fiction

A virus gone wrong

Review by bookpagedev

by Max Winter

Transmission, a rags-to-riches-to-disaster story about a computer virus, the man behind it, and the people whose lives it touches, is a change of setting for author Hari Kunzru, whose extremely successful debut, The Impressionist, took place in early 20th-century England and India. This story begins in present-day India, but moves to California when young Arjun Mehta, recent graduate of a technical university, lands a much-desired (if not desirable) job with an American software conglomerate. As Arjun’s story develops in America, it interlaces with those of several others, including Guy Swift, a wealthy, self-satisfied executive at a London consulting firm whose sleek, ugly full-service high-rise apartment building is as shallow as he is; and Leela Zahir, a Bollywood star who is the secret and not-so-secret crush of many Indian males (Arjun included).

Kunzru uses each of his characters as a point of attack on the corporate world, without being clumsy or partisan. His targets are essentially unlikable, but Kunzru is unafraid to show their strengths alongside their flaws. Arjun is an awkward and unlikely center; trapped between dreams of wealth and a secret desire to take down “the system,” with one of the computer viruses he creates after work in his cramped, company-owned apartment. The virus he unleashes after losing his job, which projects Leela’s picture onto computer screens before destroying data, complicates our sympathies, as if his angry destructiveness lessens his right to happiness. Similarly, the near-collapse of Guy’s career, due in part to the virus’ destruction of one of his computerized presentations, draws sympathy despite his arrogance. Kunzru’s narrative moves as smoothly and as rapidly as a fuse on fire. His style here is a bit more explosive and a little less ruminative than it was in The Impressionist, and yet with Transmission he has built a page-turner with poise.

Max Winter writes from New York City.

Fiction

Fiction

Ghosts of the past haunt Berlin

Review by bookpagedev

by Robert Weibezahl

Berlin was a cultural hot spot and the place to be for American and British expatriates in the 1930s. But, after the devastation of the war years and a half century as a pawn in the Cold War power struggle, Berlin is now viewed by much of the world as merely another midsized landlocked German city. This reductive characterization of the once grand capital is voiced by Dixon Greenwood, the American film director at the center of Ward Just’s new novel, The Weather in Berlin. But, after spending three transforming months there under the auspices of a think tank, he will no longer believe it, and Just, who often writes about Americans abroad, clearly doesn’t either.

Berlin, in fact, is as much a character in this many-layered book as any of its human players. It is a city that bears the scars of the failures of Imperialism, Nazism and Communism, but it also has an instinct for revitalization that rivals Los Angeles.

An acclaimed filmmaker who hasn’t made a movie in years, Dixon’s connections to Germany go back 30 years, to his very first film, Summer, 1921. That movie, which made his reputation, told the story of three young German men and their girls in the changing world after World War I. It still enjoys a cult following, not least of all because its enigmatic leading lady, a Garboesque young woman named Jana, disappeared at the end of filming and has long been presumed dead. While in Berlin, Dixon is persuaded to direct an episode of a wildly successful, nostalgic German television drama set at the turn of the 20th century. At the same time, Jana reappears in his life, and he is once more swept up by her elusive charms. He asks her to appear in his film and she agrees, but their collaboration further clouds the distinctions between fact and fiction, present and past.

The Weather in Berlin is a ghost story, but not in the gothic sense. The ghosts hovering around Dixon Greenwood are the memories of dead friends, of failed relationships, of unfulfilled potential, of younger, more creative times. As he confronts these ghosts, Dixon must come to terms with both the glories and wounds of his past. Once he has done this, he is ready, like the newly resurrected Berlin, to reassert his genius.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

The enduring quest for the Holy Grail

Review by bookpagedev

In the elaborate thriller Labyrinth, two women mysteriously linked across eight centuries take up the quest to find the legendary Holy Grail and guard its secrets against those who would use its power for evil ends. Author Kate Mosse spins an exciting tale of intrigue and peril, with female characters who don’t wait for men to lead. With valor and cunning, they plunge headlong into the eternal search for truth.

First up is Alice Tanner, who makes a surprise find while helping with an archeological dig in the mountains of southwest France near the historic city of Carcassonne. Drawn by an odd sense of familiarity, she discovers a cave with startling contents: two battered skeletons and a ring bearing an arcane design of a labyrinth that matches a larger carving on the cave wall. Next the action moves to Carcassonne in the year 1209, where Ala•s fears for her people as crusaders from northern France approach, ready to wipe out the supposed heresy of the Cathar Christians prevalent in the region. When her father faces service in their defense, he asks her to help protect an ancient grail secret he has sworn to guard. Mosse deftly weaves the two women’s stories together like a medieval tapestry, developing suspense as she moves from one era to the other with exquisitely devised parallels, the well-researched background providing depth and color. She deserves special kudos for her imaginative take on the grail itself. Mosse touches on themes made popular by Dan Brown’s Da Vince Code the grail, the history and legends of France. While Brown bows to history, Mosse immerses her story in it. She has a home in Carcassonne, and her novel shows her intimate familiarity with the ghosts and landscapes of the area. A bestseller in Britain, Labyrinth is Mosse’s third novel, and her first to be published in the U.S. It’s an exciting read, especially for those who love strong female protagonists, history and epic adventure. Janet Fisher writes from southwest Oregon.

bookpagedev

Echoes of the South’s troubled past

Take a trip with the Tates

Coping with the harsh truths of autism

The people who paved the way for a momentous invasion

Giving kids some space

Inspiration for simply elegant projects

Wild things: a naturalist’s love story

In search of a missing mother

One woman’s pursuit of justice

Communism was a red herring

A virus gone wrong

Ghosts of the past haunt Berlin

The enduring quest for the Holy Grail

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