bookpagedev

by Sandy MacDonald

Banish any preconceived notions of apple-cheeked sweethearts cranking out Toll House cookies. Some of the grannies depicted in the new anthology In My Grandmother’s House: Award-Winning Authors Tell Stories About Their Grandmothers are warm and inspirational in the classic mold; others are distant; and some are downright hateful. This collection of a dozen tales, all by women, offers a broad education in the infinite variety that is grandmotherhood. Alternately delightful and disturbing, these glimpses are powerful in the aggregate. Tellingly, Bonnie Christensen, who instigated the anthology and contributes a story called "The Fairy Grandmother," had a peach of a granny, who placed fun far above neatness and, well into her 80s, delighted in performing "parlor-trick contortions," including a family favorite, the "human chicken." That Grammy Cole was caring and brave, beyond a barrel of laughs, comes clear later in the narrative, when she faces cancer with heedless panache, reasoning "it was better it had happened to her than to someone who couldn’t handle it."

At the other end of the emotional spectrum is Joan Abelove’s germophobic Grandma Leah, the subject of the story "The Best Parts." Known for yanking sheets off the bed promptly at 6:00 a.m. regardless of the occupants she insisted on washing the linens daily and for shunning sickbed duty, Grandma Leah even refused to visit her own daughter as she lay dying of a brain tumor. Fortunately for Abelove, she had a palliative counterpart in Grandma Sophie, a feisty socialist who taught her to play poker.

Some of the grannies depicted here are certifiable saints, while others inspire less felicitous tributes from the authors. Clearly, not all the writers who rose to the challenge of describing their grandmothers worshipped their subjects. But as this provocative anthology shows the one thing this beloved family figure hasn’t been is forgotten.

Sandy MacDonald writes from Massachusetts.

Banish any preconceived notions of apple-cheeked sweethearts cranking out Toll House cookies. Some of the grannies depicted in the new anthology In My Grandmother's House: Award-Winning Authors Tell Stories About Their Grandmothers are warm and inspirational in the classic mold; others are distant; and…

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

A trip to the ball park

Review by bookpagedev

by Alice Cary

Children’s author Shana Corey was inspired to research the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that was founded during World War II after she saw the movie A League of Their Own. To deliver this tale to young readers, she created a fictitious character named Katie Casey a name borrowed from the original lyrics to the classic song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" who is the star of Players in Pigtails, a super new picture book combining a good story with wonderful illustrations and a well-told, exciting little history lesson.

Players in Pigtails offers an unusual heroine: "Katie Casey wasn’t good at being a girl . . . at least not the kind of girl everyone thought she should be. Her clothing was crumpled. Her knitting was knotted. Her dancing was a disaster." Of course, the thing that Katie lives for is baseball, and she becomes the hero of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, created by Chicago Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley when many male professional players were off fighting in World War II. Corey tells the story simply, so little readers can understand the details. Older readers will be dismayed by the many prejudices that existed against women athletes during the World War II era. "What good is baseball to a girl?" newspaper headlines read at one point. But the story concludes with a grand-slam home run by Katie, and a cheering crowd "all too busy talking about how good GIRLS were for baseball."

Corey, who also wrote Milly and the Macy’s Parade, rounds out the book with an essay about the league and its history. Rebecca Gibbon’s watercolor and colored pencil illustrations are lively and fun, presenting historically accurate details while still managing to look modern. We see posters with war references, and the clothing styles of the day are on display. This creative duo has produced a story that will inspire and enlighten both young girls and boys. A winning team, indeed!

Children's author Shana Corey was inspired to research the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that was founded during World War II after she saw the movie A League of Their Own. To deliver this tale to young readers, she created a fictitious character named…

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Shopping at the Gap, it ain’t

Review by bookpagedev

by Deborah Wiles

Verla Kay (Gold Fever and Iron Horses) writes many of her books in what she calls "cryptic rhyme," which is her definition for stories composed in a sort of fill-in-the-gap verse, with lots of room for interpretation. There is little exposition and plenty of action, which, in the case of her new book, Homespun Sarah, is a good thing, since the story is all about getting a new dress.

Nah, it’s about much more than that. An author’s note details the hardships of life in early 1700s Pennsylvania, when children often slept in front of the fireplace, ate meals standing up, and worked alongside their parents to make almost everything they needed to survive, including their clothing: "A girl would wear her only dress every day for as long as it fit even if it was a year or more."

Enter Sarah and the days of quilts and candlelight, water buckets and wood boxes, cornmeal cakes and washtubs. Sarah tends the baby, dips candles, gathers berries . . . and grows up her ankles show beneath the hem of her dress, and the bodice will no longer lace as it should. What’s a girl to do? Father shears a sheep, the wool turns into linsey woolsey on the loom, then, "Homespun fabric/Measure, clip/Needles swing/Scissors snip." Mama measures and sews with Sarah, little sister grins as she becomes the proud owner of Sarah’s old dress, and "Spinning, twirling/Dancing toes/Homespun Sarah/All new clothes!" It’s a simple story that lends itself to conversation and education. What was it like to live with so little and work so much? What does it mean to live simply? Some of these questions are answered in Ted Rand’s watercolors, where we see little sister carrying wood, father furrowing the field, and mother cooking over the stove. Rand’s use of small details adds an emotional element the baby is always tethered, literally, to something (or someone) for safety, and the cow’s tail continually slaps brother on the head while he is milking. Homespun Sarah is a luminous little story about times gone by and the elemental necessities of living that today we take for granted.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Life and times of a beloved author

Review by bookpagedev

by Deborah Wiles

Oh, I am so lucky I am reading a book by William Steig! I am in the hands of the master! I open the book and prepare to get lost in another world, another time, another place . . . and this story doesn’t disappoint. When Everybody Wore a Hat is a picture-book memoir, and it’s steady, snappy, snazzy and swell.

Whether he is writing about a donkey and a magic pebble or a monster who finds his one true love, Steig always succeeds in tapping into universal feelings of wanting to belong and to create community. In When Everybody Wore a Hat, he writes simply about his immigrant family in 1916, when he was 8 years old, growing up in the Bronx: "This is the story of when I was a boy, almost 100 years ago, when fire engines were pulled by horses, boys did not play with girls, kids went to libraries for books, there was no TV, you could see a movie for a nickel, and everybody wore a hat." He writes about everyday things: "We used to go shopping with Mom all the time. We went along to carry stuff." He writes about world events: "we all knew there was a big war going on in Europe." He writes with the trademark Steig humor: "Everyone wanted his picture on a horse . . . Cameras were very big then, and you had to stay very still. This was hard for the horse."

Drawn in that wonderfully wacky, child-friendly, slightly screwball style that give Steig’s New Yorker drawings such distinction, the illustrations add another layer of depth and richness. When he writes, "Mom said Esther Haberman had a big mouth," well, we see it, quite literally.

The book is beautifully structured as well, beginning with a photo of Steig as a boy and ending with a photo of him today. What a treat to be invited into this beloved author’s boyhood, to sink into that experience, to belong for a little while to Steig’s family, which is, of course, an extension of our larger family, our community, our world. When Everybody Wore a Hat is another tale to add to our collective memory.

Deborah Wiles writes from Frederick, Maryland.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

A canine quest

Review by bookpagedev

by Alice Cary

The young narrator of The Perfect Puppy for Me! begins by saying: "I love dogs. I have posters of dogs all over my room, books and videos about dogs, a hat with floppy dog ears and a clock that barks every hour. The only thing I don’t have is a dog." The good news is that the unnamed narrator is going to get a pooch for his birthday; he simply needs to decide which type is best for him. Thus begins a colorful investigation of various breeds, a survey he takes by describing several neighborhood specimens, such as Duke, the German shepherd, Poker, the basset hound, Danish, the Great Dane, and Goulash, the mongrel.

Packed with plenty of information, this fun book is perfect for youngsters longing for some canine companionship. The narrator explains a few of the pros and cons of various breeds as the book progresses. What’s more, each page has additional illustrations and informational tidbits (dogs don’t sweat, they sleep about 16 hours a day, and chocolate, for them, is like poison.) Jessie Hartland’s illustrations provide just the right light-hearted accompaniment to the text. Her artwork has appeared in Target stores, Bloomingdale’s window displays and on murals at a Japanese amusement park, and here she has created a hip, energetic mood, with small tail-wagging critters and captions surrounding the main text (one sidebar provides an explanation of what moods various doggy tail positions indicate).

In the end, the perfect puppy is found. Our narrator picks a mixed breed that he dubs a "Labradoodle," a combination of Claudine, the poodle, and Jackpot, the yellow Labrador, he met earlier in the book. He names his new charge Doodle. The Perfect Puppy for Me! is an enjoyable romp through the animal world for young and old readers alike. Finding the perfect pet is never easy, but this doggone good story, with its wealth of information, can help with the quest.

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

Inspiration for aspiring scientists

Review by bookpagedev

by James Webb

There’s a reason school science fairs and invention contests are so popular, and it’s not because mom and dad want to see their little darlings win an award. Kids like to create stuff. When it comes right down to it, playing is a form of inventing: children turn sticks and trash can lids into swords and shields; a car up on blocks becomes an interstellar spaceship; a mound of dirt can be turned into a tiny city. Let’s face it the first anti-gravity device will probably be dreamed up by a 10-year-old.

If your incipient inventor needs some inspiration, What a Great Idea! provides a delightful excursion into the history of those eureka moments that altered the course of civilization. Author Stephen M. Tomecek and illustrator Dan Stuckenschneider have created a fascinating book that covers everything from the plow to the personal computer. The task of singling out really significant inventions sounds daunting, but Tomecek has done it, and like the integrated circuit, he has created an integrated book, simultaneously linking invention with history and the march of civilization.

Some of his choices might surprise you. The wheel, for instance, is not included. Instead, Tomecek cleverly focuses on the axle, and he makes a very good case for it. Other offbeat choices are the invention of fertilizer, art and anesthesia. Throughout, Tomecek not only describes how each idea came to fruition, and how each invention works, he devotes considerable space to the impact each had on our culture, and on the ideas that followed as direct or indirect results of the invention.

It’s too bad there’s not an adult version of this book, but then it wouldn’t have the clear and colorful illustrations by Dan Stuckenschneider. Stephen M. Tomecek’s What a Great Idea! should be required reading for the little scientist in your household. And for you as well.

James Neal Webb would like to invent a way to cram more hours into the day.

There's a reason school science fairs and invention contests are so popular, and it's not because mom and dad want to see their little darlings win an award. Kids like to create stuff. When it comes right down to it, playing is a form…

Coping with challenging times

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Swilley

All business books are how-to manuals in some sense, but our three picks this month are perfect for the times. If you’re a CEO worried about customer service or an investor wanting to save what’s left of your portfolio, here’s some advice for the long haul.

How to rescue your retirement The investors hardest hit by the Nasdaq nosedive were retirees who overdosed on stocks, says Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Clements. People in their 40s and 50s saw their savings get decimated and are now wondering if they will be able to retire at all.

In You’ve Lost It, Now What?: How To Beat the Bear Market and Still Retire on Time (Portfolio, $23.95, 224 pages, ISBN 1591840163), Clements gives straightforward, realistic advice on how to get your investments (and retirement plans) back on track. Don’t count on another bull market to bail you out, he warns. You’ll have to save yourself.

The good news is that most folks can invest successfully on their own, and Clements’ roadmap is easy to follow. He explains how to balance a portfolio for maximum diversification and stresses keeping trading costs and fund-management fees to a minimum. He shares his stock picks (he’s a “huge, huge, huge fan of index funds”), tells what type of bonds to buy, and shows how to invest in real estate without purchasing properties. His biggest piece of advice: save a lot and start now.

This is a book for the average investor, and the advice is clear and sensible. Focus on little things like holding down taxes and rebalancing regularly. Diversify and don’t bet the farm on one investment. And did I mention save like crazy? How to save the corporate soul Does a corporation have a soul? Yes, says author David Batstone, and he can prove it. “I will show that a corporation has the potential to act with soul when it puts its resources at the service of the people it employs and the public it serves.” He shares eight principles that define this concept in Saving the Corporate Soul ∧ (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own (Jossey-Bass, $26.95, 262 pages, ISBN 0787964808). Stories about businesses gone bad are a dime a dozen these days, but this lively and thought-provoking book takes a different approach. Batstone teaches his tenets (treat workers like valuable team members, think of the company as part of the community, treat the environment like a silent stakeholder) by profiling companies that are doing it right. One of them is Timberland, a New Hampshire-based footwear maker which gives each employee 40 hours of paid time each year to volunteer. Ninety percent of employees take part, returning to work recharged and happier; their positive energy has a ripple effect, Batstone says. The small Hanna Anderrson clothing company invited customers to send used Hannawear back and receive 20% off their next purchase. Thus the Hannadowns program was born, and thousands of needy children got clothes. Both are great examples of corporations that have combined soul with shrewd business sense.

How to wow your customers One of the top five challenges facing CEOs today is improving customer service, a recent study reported. What makes service stand out? “It’s about creating pleasant surprises for customers grown weary of bland, mundane, and truculently impersonal service and keeping them coming back for more,” say the authors of Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers. Customer service experts (and amateur magicians) Ron Zemke and Chip Bell use magic to explain how to read an audience, create rapport and manage magic recoveries. In magic, the music and lights build excitement, and in business you set the stage by playing to a customer’s senses with sight, sound, smell and touch. Place magic is the first of the three Ps that include process magic and performance magic (think the fish throwing at Seattle’s Pike Place waterfront market).

With chapters on QVC, Romano’s Macaroni Grill and Walt Disney, there are plenty of ideas here to emulate. But the real inspiration comes from the mini-snapshots of dozens of companies that bring magic to customers in small, unexpected ways.

All business books are how-to manuals in some sense, but our three picks this month are perfect for the times. If you're a CEO worried about customer service or an investor wanting to save what's left of your portfolio, here's some advice for the long…

Coping with challenging times

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Swilley

The good news is that most folks can invest successfully on their own, and Clements’ roadmap is easy to follow. He explains how to balance a portfolio for maximum diversification and stresses keeping trading costs and fund-management fees to a minimum. He shares his stock picks (he’s a "huge, huge, huge fan of index funds"), tells what type of bonds to buy, and shows how to invest in real estate without purchasing properties. His biggest piece of advice: save a lot and start now.

This is a book for the average investor, and the advice is clear and sensible. Focus on little things like holding down taxes and rebalancing regularly. Diversify and don’t bet the farm on one investment. And did I mention save like crazy? How to save the corporate soul Does a corporation have a soul? Yes, says author David Batstone, and he can prove it. "I will show that a corporation has the potential to act with soul when it puts its resources at the service of the people it employs and the public it serves." He shares eight principles that define this concept in Saving the Corporate Soul & (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own. Stories about businesses gone bad are a dime a dozen these days, but this lively and thought-provoking book takes a different approach. Batstone teaches his tenets (treat workers like valuable team members, think of the company as part of the community, treat the environment like a silent stakeholder) by profiling companies that are doing it right. One of them is Timberland, a New Hampshire-based footwear maker which gives each employee 40 hours of paid time each year to volunteer. Ninety percent of employees take part, returning to work recharged and happier; their positive energy has a ripple effect, Batstone says. The small Hanna Anderrson clothing company invited customers to send used Hannawear back and receive 20% off their next purchase. Thus the Hannadowns program was born, and thousands of needy children got clothes. Both are great examples of corporations that have combined soul with shrewd business sense.

How to wow your customers One of the top five challenges facing CEOs today is improving customer service, a recent study reported. What makes service stand out? "It’s about creating pleasant surprises for customers grown weary of bland, mundane, and truculently impersonal service and keeping them coming back for more," say the authors of Service Magic: The Art of Amazing Your Customers (Dearborn, $18.95, 224 pages, ISBN 0793164672). Customer service experts (and amateur magicians) Ron Zemke and Chip Bell use magic to explain how to read an audience, create rapport and manage magic recoveries. In magic, the music and lights build excitement, and in business you set the stage by playing to a customer’s senses with sight, sound, smell and touch. Place magic is the first of the three Ps that include process magic and performance magic (think the fish throwing at Seattle’s Pike Place waterfront market).

History

History

A classic conflict

Review by bookpagedev

by Roger Bishop

The great rivalry between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta developed into a war of unprecedented brutality that lasted from 431-404 B.C.. The conflict not only caused widespread death and destruction of property but also reversed the growth of democracy in Athens and other states under its influence, bringing about the collapse of what human beings have regarded as the foundations of civilization. For centuries, scholars, military leaders and diplomats have studied the complex series of machinations employed to keep the struggle going and have used them to illuminate events in their own time. Classical scholar Donald Kagan, a noted authority on the subject, shares his vast knowledge and insight in The Peloponnesian War, a magnificent new book based on the four-volume history of the war he published in 1978.

Much of what we know about the war comes from the masterly contemporary account of Thucydides, an Athenian naval commander who was particularly concerned with objectivity and accuracy. But his account stops seven years before the war’s end. Kagan’s history gives us the broad sweep of the entire war along with astute analysis and commentary. Of particular interest is his discussion of the loss of Amphipolis, which the Athenians blamed on Thucydides; the commander was tried, found guilty, and sent to live in exile for 20 years.

Kagan introduces us to many of the leaders on both sides. He disagrees with Thucydides’ statement that, in the time of Pericles, Athens was a democracy in name only, arguing that Pericles “was that rare political leader in a democratic state who told the people the truth.” Another prominent leader was Nicias, whose weaknesses led to major catastrophe for his state and himself. Thucydides praises Nicias, saying “he had led his life in accordance with virtue.” There is much to keep track of in this book but the effort is well worth it. The reader comes away with a much clearer understanding of the rise and fall of a great empire while gaining wisdom that may help us better understand events in our own time. Roger Bishop is a longtime contributor to BookPage.

Animals

Animals

A dog’s work is never done

Review by bookpagedev

by Lynn Hamilton

A dog’s work is never done Not many dogs pull sleds these days, and only a few fight crime. But that doesn’t mean dogs aren’t working. Not according to Jon Katz, whose latest book, The New Work of Dogs, explores the less documented duties canines have assumed within family life.

Katz’s previous book, A Dog Year, was a popular personal account of the 12 months he spent with two crazy border collies and a pair of laid-back labs, animals that had a transformative effect on his life. Now, with his new book he takes a look at other people’s pets, compiling the stories of men and women who have hit a wall in their lives and found comfort in the family canine. According to Katz, the new work of the American dog is to be companion, counselor, nurse, even surrogate child. One of his subjects, Sandra Robinson, is divorced, miserable and thwarted in her dreams of having children. She fills the void with a new puppy, Ellie. Rob Cochran feels walled in by the demands of his family and his high-paying job. Through his dog, Cherokee, Cochran vicariously experiences the simple, uninhibited life that eludes him personally.

These are lofty roles for our furry friends, but, as Katz shows, they’re up to the task. His list of working dogs is as varied as his register of the people who need them. One chapter tells of the Divorced Dogs Club, a group of divorced women who get together and embellish their list of ways that dogs are better than men. Perhaps the most moving story he tells is of Donna Dwight, a cheerful, dynamic woman dying of cancer whose Welsh Corgi, Harry, accompanies her almost to the gates of death, providing love and companionship all the way. His true work is to save her from feeling alone in the most dreadful hours of her life. And he never flinches, as would so many humans, in the face of cancer’s ugliness. "He might not have wanted to push sheep around, but he was ready to work with Donna," writes Katz. As his touching new book proves, a good dog’s work is never done. Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

A dog's work is never done Not many dogs pull sleds these days, and only a few fight crime. But that doesn't mean dogs aren't working. Not according to Jon Katz, whose latest book, The New Work of Dogs, explores the less documented duties canines…

Memoir

Memoir

Joyful memories of an outdoor life

Review by bookpagedev

by Alan Prince

Robb White shortchanges himself with the title of his new memoir, How to Build a Tin Canoe: Confessions of an Old Salt. The book is so much more than its name entails. First of all, White made the tin canoe in question when he was a kid, but for four decades since then he has been building wooden boats. Second, the book is as much about life as it is about boats, and it will amuse and inform campers, anglers, sailors and just about anybody else who’s willing to disengage themselves from the web or the television and taste the open air.

White recalls that he was about 8 years old when he captained his first boat; among his “crew” were 4-year-olds who he says knew more about the fish in the Gulf of Mexico and the Georgia wetlands than most graduate students in a nearby university marine lab. White’s “rule of joy” permeates this warm and sometimes irreverent memoir of an outdoor life that flowered from those early years: “The important thing ain’t comfort, it’s joy. Joy in boats is inverse to their size. When they get big and full of engines, batteries, toilets, stoves, and other comforts, there just ain’t as much room for joy.” This is also a story of self-reliance: “I do not trust machinery of any kind,” the author writes. “I never go out in a boat that cannot be propelled some other way. I’ll be damned if I’ll undignify myself by sitting helplessly out there in the hot sun dialing 911 on a cellular phone. I would rather row 30 miles, and indeed I have.” White’s father was a prolific author and television and movie scriptwriter. His sister, Bailey White, an occasional NPR commentator, is the best-selling author of Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel. It’s now clear that Robb White, who knows and shares “a thing or two about a thing or two,” has also been blessed with the gene of gifted storytelling. Alan Prince lectures at the University of Miami.

Biography

Biography

The life of a Confederate Cary Grant

Review by bookpagedev

In his prime, Roy Blount Jr. declares, Robert E. Lee “may have been the most beautiful person in America, a sort of precursor-cross between England’s Cary Grant and Virginia’s Randolph Scott.” Why, then, do most Americans today think of Lee if they do at all as a solemn, unsmiling figure in gray? Such an image comes to us, of course, largely from myriad photographs taken during the Civil War. Leave it to Blount, the renowned humorist, to show us not only the iconic Lee dubbed “The Marble Model” by his fellow cadets because he never received a demerit at West Point but also the flirtatious ladies’ man who never outgrew his fondness for dancing, gossip and parties.

Those readers who seek information on Lee as a career Army officer and military tactician will not be disappointed here; one finds extended discussion of Lee’s service in the Mexican War, as superintendent of West Point, and later as Confederate general. What distinguishes Blount’s treatment, however, is the author’s analysis of Lee and the race issue. The Virginian owned a handful of slaves and wrote that he considered “the blacks” to be “immeasurably better off” in the United States than in Africa. “God’s will,” he maintained, dictated that they be enslaved for their “instruction.” As Blount points out, Lee’s views on African Americans differed little from those of his contemporaries, North or South. For example, his battlefield nemesis, Ulysses S. Grant, wrote in his post-presidential memoirs that in order to bolster the Republican Party “it became necessary to enfranchise the negro, in all his ignorance.” This outstanding volume is the latest entry in the Penguin Life series, which allows distinguished authors to select a person about whom they are curious and then write a short, synthetic account that will inform the general reader and the specialist alike. Blount’s graceful narrative reflects the author’s wide reading of and mature reflection on the standard biographies of Lee. The result is a miniature masterpiece. Dr. Thomas Appleton is professor of history and associate director of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University.

In his prime, Roy Blount Jr. declares, Robert E. Lee "may have been the most beautiful person in America, a sort of precursor-cross between England's Cary Grant and Virginia's Randolph Scott." Why, then, do most Americans today think of Lee if they do at all…

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The truth behind a troubling secret

Review by bookpagedev

by Jenn McKee

Some promises deserve to be broken. At least that’s the conclusion reached by Rachel Winnappee, the young Native American woman at the center of Terry Gamble’s luminous debut novel, The Water Dancers.

At the close of World War II, 17-year-old Rachel works as a domestic at the Lake Michigan summer home of the Marches, a rich, white banking family that has suffered its own losses: a daughter to influenza, a son to the war, and the leg and spirit of the Marches’ last remaining son, Woody. Soon, Mrs. March asks Rachel to be Woody’s nurse, and the two find themselves drawn to each other, resulting in Rachel’s unplanned, secret pregnancy.

Rachel eventually decides to raise her son, Ben, on her own among the Odawa Indians, and she makes a deal with Mrs. March that initially appears mutually beneficial. However, as more tragedies ensue, and Ben himself is mentally and physically damaged by the Vietnam War, Rachel feels compelled to re-open old wounds and confront the people, and the truth, she promised to avoid.

Gamble manages to represent many of the racial, economic and political complexities of Native American community life without preaching, and her prose is fast-paced but capable of evoking strong images. Her graceful style achieves its ends on multiple levels, making The Water Dancers a vivid reading experience that, to its great credit, never becomes predictable. Jenn McKee is a writer in Berkley, Michigan.

Some promises deserve to be broken. At least that's the conclusion reached by Rachel Winnappee, the young Native American woman at the center of Terry Gamble's luminous debut novel, The Water Dancers.

At the close of World War II, 17-year-old Rachel works as…

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To grandmother’s house we go

A trip to the ball park

Shopping at the Gap, it ain’t

Life and times of a beloved author

A canine quest

Inspiration for aspiring scientists

Coping with challenging times

Coping with challenging times

A classic conflict

A dog’s work is never done

Joyful memories of an outdoor life

The life of a Confederate Cary Grant

The truth behind a troubling secret

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