Carla Jean Whitley

FictionLiterary Fiction

Oh William!

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Readers first fell in love with Lucy Barton in Elizabeth Strout’s 2016 novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, a gentle reflection on the titular character’s life and parental influence during an extended hospitalization. In Oh William!, it’s been years since Lucy left her first husband, William. But despite the many affairs he conducted during their marriage and her own affair that prompted her departure, they remain each other’s confidants.

As the novel opens, Lucy has been widowed for a year after the death of her second husband, David. She explores her grief throughout the book, but her devotion to William also demands her attention. As in each of Strout’s novels about Lucy, her narration is nearly a stream of consciousness. The novel’s lack of chapter breaks reinforces its interior nature and invites readers to immerse themselves in Lucy’s ruminations.

As Lucy contemplates her lasting bond with William, she considers their marriage and the ways their relationship has affected their daughters. She also takes the reader through the pair’s misadventures in their later years. It isn’t always clear whether Lucy likes or respects her ex-husband, but her tie to him is unbreakable, her curiosity about him unwavering: “I wondered who William was. I have wondered this before. Many times I have wondered this.”
Likewise, William turns to Lucy, rather than to his current wife, when his sleep is disrupted by night terrors involving his late mother. And it’s Lucy he seeks when he confronts a secret his mother kept from him.

Pulitzer Prize winner Strout is a master of quiet, reflective stories that are driven more by their characters than by events. Her fans will find plenty to love as Lucy and William set out to explore his family history. At each step, Lucy contemplates her relationships to the people around her. Though she often feels invisible, her ties to William, their daughters and the strangers they encounter remind her that she has a place in the world.

Strout is a master of reflective stories that are driven more by characters than by events. Her fans will find plenty more to love about Lucy and William.
Fiction

New takes on classic authors

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

They’ve been on countless reading lists over the years, and now the lives and works of three classic English writers have inspired intriguing new novels.

Syrie James’ interest in classic literature led to extensive research on beloved authors like Austen and Brontë. Though the stories resulting from her studies aren’t quite nonfiction, The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë is based on fact. James adapts Brontë’s voice, telling Brontë’s story as though it came straight from the great writer. Living with an alcoholic, drug-addicted brother and a deeply eccentric father, Brontë—and her sisters—still managed to write some of the most famous novels of their time. With The Secret Diaries, James offers a satisfying—if partly imagined—history of the real-life experiences that inspired Brontë’s classic novels.

In Girl in a Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold weaves a narrative based closely on the real-life marriage of Charles and Catherine Dickens. Estranged at the time of Dickens’ death, Catherine left a collection of letters she had received from Charles over the years, so that the world would know the truth about her role in his life. In Arnold’s account, the great writer Alfred Gibson is dead. After 20 years of marriage, Dorothea Gibson is excluded from her husband’s passing and his will. Through recollections of their history together and dealing with the aftermath of his death, Dorothea finally faces the hard truths of being married to her generation’s most beloved writer. Though we’ll never know for sure what went on in the Dickens’ marriage, this fictional account helps us to better understand the woman behind the talented man.

Courtney Stone, a self-proclaimed Jane Austen addict, was mysteriously transported to the early 19th century in Laurie Viera Rigler’s debut, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. In that book, Courtney traded places with English girl Jane Mansfield, and was abruptly forced to abandon her modern ways and adapt to the life of a lady in 1800s England. In Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Jane awakens in Courtney’s 21st-century American life, completing Viera Rigler’s clever switch-a-roo. As Jane aims to untangle Courtney’s problems and understand modern society, she finds that the girls and their time periods aren’t as different as they may seem. 

They’ve been on countless reading lists over the years, and now the lives and works of three classic English writers have inspired intriguing new novels.

Syrie James’ interest in classic literature led to extensive research on beloved authors like Austen and Brontë. Though the stories resulting…

Family & Relationships

Looking for love: books for every dater

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

With so many dating books out there, it seems there’s a guide for just about everyone. Here’s a look at five of this year’s offerings. By the time you make your way through this relationship gauntlet, you’ll be equipped to find a date this Valentine’s Day—and perhaps find love by the next!

Decoding men
Women always claim men are so hard to understand—but could that be because we’re reading into them the complexity we see in ourselves? Jeff Mac thinks so. In Manslations, the stand-up comic offers something of a you’re-too-smart-for-your-own-good (that’s us, ladies!) handbook to understanding men. With Mac as your guide, it’s suddenly easy to interpret what the man in your life is saying. Do his words and actions contradict each other? There’s truth in the old axiom, Mac says: “listen” to the actions and you’ll find mixed signals aren’t so mixed after all. Unsure whether he likes you? Again, Mac breaks it down: if he’s getting physical and keeping you around even when he’s not, you’re golden. Mac is like your best well-meaning but often blunt guy friend—one who’s happily involved and therefore willing to share insight into relationships. Ladies, we’re wrong when we assume men are hard to understand, and that’s perhaps the most useful manslation of all.

Get over it
Patti Novak won’t spoon-feed you. Get Over Yourself!, written with Laura Zigman, is filled with advice on how to move from being dateless to committed, but Novak, the star of A&E’s 2007 series “Confessions of a Matchmaker,” is just the guide—you’re the active participant. The book’s worksheets and quizzes show women ready to dig in and do the hard work of getting ready for love how to process their own desires and needs, and think about why they are where they are. That’s not always easy, especially when Novak tells you that it is you, after all! It sounds harsh, but she guides you through common self-protective behaviors to help you recognize actions that are holding you back and then heal the hurt beneath them. As you work through the past to change your future, the pressure you place on each date will diminish—and success will come.

Back in the dating pool
What do you do when, after years of marriage or a committed relationship, you find yourself single again? It’s been years (perhaps decades) since you left the 20-something’s singles scene—how has it changed? How have you?

In Getting Naked Again, Judith Sills, Ph.D., who appears frequently on the “Today” show, serves as the newly single woman’s tour guide to the now-unfamiliar world of dating. This isn’t your daughter’s book, she says, and dating is no longer as clear-cut a process as it is for your daughter. Her goals are likely easy to define: she’s dating to find love, marriage and children. But you’ve already had all of those things. What’s your goal? Your relationships with single men, married friends, your children and even yourself may have changed when you found yourself alone. But with Sills on your side, you can learn how to make the most of being single again.

You can hurry love
If you were ready to find love, like, yesterday, pick up How to Make Someone Fall in Love with You in 90 Minutes or Less. Love is an emotional progression, not a time-sensitive development, Nicholas Boothman argues, and he’s going to tell you how to find it in 90 minutes or less. As a former fashion photographer, Boothman developed a knack for presenting people in their best light, and he’ll help you capitalize on love at first sight. After all, it’s how he fell in love with his wife of more than 30 years. Throughout the book he breaks down preparation and action into practical steps. You’ll quickly discover whether someone is your “matched opposite,” a person who shares your values but has a personality different enough to keep life interesting and fun.

Take Boothman’s ideas into account next time you meet someone with whom you have chemistry, and you may well fall in love within an hour and a half. Now staying in love? That’s another book—and a lifetime commitment!

Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and dates in Birmingham, Alabama.

With so many dating books out there, it seems there’s a guide for just about everyone. Here’s a look at five of this year’s offerings. By the time you make your way through this relationship gauntlet, you’ll be equipped to find a date this Valentine’s…

Memoir

Bumps in the long and winding road to love

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

Love stories never get old, and one couple’s romance is always different from the next. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, a number of authors are sharing their own tales of dating, mating and trying again. Learn from others’ trials and successes with four of this year’s best relationship memoirs.

Dating disasters
Julie Klausner still hasn’t found what she’s looking for, but as the lengthy subtitle of her dating memoir suggests, she’s spent time with a lot of the wrong guys. In I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Other Guys I’ve Dated, Klausner recounts years of dating the wrong guys. She never went through a boys-are-icky phase, instead openly chasing her crush of the moment since childhood. In fact, in the book’s opening pages she boldly declares, “I love men like it is my job.”

Klausner refuses to pussyfoot around her recollections of past lovers, indiscriminately flaunting her dirty laundry and theirs. (This is the kind of memoir an author hopes her parents won’t read.) But what could be an airing of grievances from the pen of another author is, in Klausner’s hands, an entertaining romp through a series of comic sketches. As a writer for VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” Klausner regularly transformed a week’s minutiae into pithy television, and she applies the same droll tone to her own missteps and willful mistakes.

And through failure after dismal failure, Klausner clings to one hope: The right man is out there, somewhere. If she’s got to date all the wrong ones to find him, she’ll do it, enthusiastically.

Matching wits
Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Girl doesn’t give boy the time of day for five years. And then boy’s wildest dreams are fulfilled when girl suddenly decides he is all she wants.

Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn’s relationship is far from a fairytale romance, but it’s a story filled with all the excitement and drama you’d hope for from a couple of writers and actors. They’ve had a lot of experience in telling other stories, after all: For years Gurwitch hosted “Dinner and a Movie” on TBS, and she has written for NPR and The Nation. Kahn wrote for “The Ben Stiller Show” and appeared in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and other films.

In You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, Gurwitch and Kahn bicker as they recount their sometimes-conflicting tales of meeting, courtship, marriage and the journey toward “till death do us part.” And even as their lives turn gravely serious when their son Ezra is born with multiple birth defects, the couple injects humor into their otherwise terrified mindset.

This is definitely not a sweet tale, but couples who love and argue with equal intensity will find solace—and more than a few laughs—in Gurwitch and Kahn’s frank depiction of their relationship.

Something’s cooking
Elizabeth Bard spotted the classic tall, dark and handsome stranger at a conference in London. She was an American beginning a master’s program in art history. He was a Frenchman wrapping up a Ph.D. in computer science. When the opportunity arose, she made a point of meeting him. The bevy of emails that followed led to lunch—and then love—in Paris.

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes doesn’t stop with happily ever after. In fact, Bard’s wedding to the exotic Gwendal takes place halfway through the book. But the challenges of a life in a foreign country are just beginning. On the surface Bard’s life seems like a fairy tale: living in Paris, married to a Frenchman and dining on any number of delicacies. But what’s simple in America is a challenge for an American in Paris. A task as easy as buying curtains can become an all-day event.

A memoir with recipes isn’t a new concept. Amanda Hesser covered that territory well in Cooking for Mr. Latte, and in recent years there’s been an avalanche of relationship-and-recipe books. But if there’s anything that doesn’t get old, it’s a good love story and a good meal—all the better if they are crafted by someone who can both write and cook!

In Lunch in Paris, Bard shares not only her love story but her journey to finding a sense of self in a foreign land with a foreign man. Whether you read it with the love of your life at your side or while dreaming of meeting your own exotic other half, this story and its accompanying recipes will warm your soul.

A new dance
Maria Finn met her husband while salsa dancing. The couple danced their way into a relationship, then marriage. But after she discovers that he’s been cheating on her, salsa dancing has little place in her life.

Finn instead turns to tango, also a seductive Latin dance, but one that allows space for sorrow and loss. She quickly becomes addicted to tango, attending private lessons and dance classes and clearing space on her calendar for frequent milongas (social dances). While dancing, Finn learns to give herself over to a man, to allow herself to be pulled off balance and follow his lead, even while carrying her own weight. The dance carries her from her home in New York City to the dance floors of Argentina, but more importantly, it helps Finn rewrite her understanding of men and her own life.

In Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home, Finn incorporates her deep understanding of tango into the story, revealing its history even as she explores her own relationship with the dance. Unlike many life-after-heartbreak memoirs, this one doesn’t end with the author tangoing into the sunset with a new beau. Instead, Finn repairs her outlook on life and men in general, while finding comfort, challenges and encouragement in the arms of strangers.

Carla Jean Whitley lives, writes and dates in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

RELATED CONTENT
Review of the audio version of Cooking with Mr. Latte

Love stories never get old, and one couple’s romance is always different from the next. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, a number of authors are sharing their own tales of dating, mating and trying again. Learn from others’ trials and successes with four of…

FictionFamily Drama

Neighborhood drama: Suburban lives at stake

Feature by Carla Jean Whitley

Neighborhoods can become cities within cities, providing their residents with the sort of community that human beings crave. But proximity combined with intimacy can mean vulnerability. In new novels by Anna Quindlen and Abbi Waxman, two women are shaken to their core by the real-life dramas that play out on their streets. Each book is set in one of the nation’s largest cities but centers on a single neighborhood block. The lives that intersect in those spaces become a microcosm of interpersonal complications.

In Quindlen’s Alternate Side, Nora Nolan is frustrated by her husband’s obsession with his newly acquired parking spot. It’s a hot commodity on their New York City dead-end street, and it means a break from the alternate-side parking that is the bane of so many New Yorkers’ existence. But it also means Charlie is now tight with some of the street’s most grating characters, especially busybody George. The way he patrols the parking lot and the neighbors’ business, you would think George owned the place, rather than a mere unit. Then there’s Jack, the man who doesn’t offer any kindness when talking to the neighborhood handyman. They seem like mere annoyances until an incident forces everyone to re-examine what they know about truth and their neighbors.

Waxman’s Other People’s Houses is set on the opposite coast, but her characters have much in common with those in Quindlen’s novel. Four families in Los Angeles’ Larchmont neighborhood are tied together by carpool, if not friendship. Frances Bloom volunteers to run the neighbors’ children to school along with her own three. She’s a stay-at-home mom, after all, so why shouldn’t she take the responsibility off the other parents’ shoulders? The neighborhood learns the answer the hard way when Frances walks in on a neighbor in the throes of an affair.

In both novels, surprising incidents begin the unraveling process of friendships and other relationships. It doesn’t matter whether an individual was involved in the incident; each person begins to examine his or her own place on the block and relationship to the people in their own households.

Quindlen is well established as a documenter of life’s personal moments, with several bestselling novels and a Pulitzer Prize for commentary to her credit. Waxman’s effort, on the other hand, is her sophomore release and a strong follow-up to her debut, The Garden of Small Beginnings. Both Quindlen and Waxman show they are adept at fleshing out the fine details that comprise a life, and leave readers reflecting on the intimacy and risk of finding your community within a larger land.

Neighborhoods can become cities within cities, providing their residents with the sort of community that human beings crave. But proximity combined with intimacy can mean vulnerability. In new novels by Anna Quindlen and Abbi Waxman, two women are shaken to their core by the real-life dramas that play out on their streets. Each book is set in one of the nation’s largest cities but centers on a single neighborhood block. The lives that intersect in those spaces become a microcosm of interpersonal complications.

NonfictionFood & Drink

Truffle Hound

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

A single whiff of a truffle can be nearly intoxicating. Depending on the variety, the inhaler might detect notes of garlic, fried cheese and gym socks (white truffles) or pineapple and banana (a young Oregon black). And one person sniffing may find those aromas enticing, while another might not understand the fuss.

Those fragrances, and the allure of the fungi that produce them, left James Beard Award-winning food writer Rowan Jacobsen (A Geography of Oysters) drunk on truffles and determined to learn all he could. Jacobsen spent two years traversing the globe in pursuit of not only truffles but also the stories of people who hunt and sell them. 

The result is Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World’s Most Seductive Scent, With Dreamers, Schemers, and Some Extraordinary Dogs, an engaging work that blends history with travel and food writing. Jacobsen follows his nose and curiosity across Europe and back to North America, while considering studies that extend even farther. He meets hunters and farmers whose livelihoods depend on the elusive tubers, and along the way he challenges truffle myths. For example, they grow far outside of the Mediterranean region that’s most often credited for them.

Jacobsen delves into the sometimes twisting history of this food, as well as into the science that makes truffle farming possible. Even as he examines the fungi’s complex history and analyzes questions about who gets access to truffles, Jacobsen’s writing remains accessible, unlike the costly object of his desire.

Truffle Hound is a compelling story, but Jacobsen doesn’t leave readers empty-handed when the tale ends. The book also includes a glossary of truffle types, resources for acquiring your own truffles and recipes for after the decadent fungi arrives. It’s an appropriate finish to a delicious book.

Intoxicated by truffles and determined to learn all he could, Rowan Jacobsen spent two years traversing the globe in pursuit of this elusive, decadent fungi.
NonfictionEssays

Graceland, at Last

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Margaret Renkl’s name was already familiar to readers in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was the founding editor of the online literary publication Chapter 16, and to readers of the New York Times, where she is a contributing opinion writer. But when her memoir, Late Migrations, was published in 2019, Renkl’s celebration of the natural world and family drew praise from reviewers, readers and popular book club facilitators nationwide.

Graceland, At Last gathers a selection of Renkl’s columns from the past four years, inviting loyal readers and newcomers alike to take in Renkl’s perspective on the world. The collection is organized thematically, touching on topics present in Late Migrations and others such as politics, religion, social justice, arts and culture.

These essays can be read with their original contexts in mind, thanks to the inclusion of their publication dates. For example, in “Hawk. Lizard. Mole. Human.,” Renkl writes of “days that grow ever darker as fears gather and autumn comes on.” The column, published in August 2020, may remind today’s readers of the spike in COVID-19 cases that occured in the fall of 2020. But the columns hold up equally well without the recollection of where you were when they were first written.

Renkl often finds gifts in the mundane, such as in a power outage caused by storms, recounted in “The Night the Lights Went Out.” But her concern about the precariousness of our environment never wanes, showing up even in the midst of this celebration of the simplicity of a few days without power.

Whether extolling the wonders of a rattlesnake or lamenting Southern Christians’ support of oppressive policies, Renkl engages with her home region’s beauty and complexity. As she writes in the introduction, “To love the South is to see with clear eyes both its terrible darkness and its dazzling light, and to spend a lifetime trying to make sense of both.”

Whether extolling the wonders of a rattlesnake or lamenting oppressive policies, Margaret Renkl engages with her Southern homeland’s beauty and complexity.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Forest of Vanishing Stars

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Yona, born Inge, doesn’t remember much about her parents or the world outside the forest. The day before her second birthday, Yona was stolen from her German parents by an elderly Jewish woman named Jerusza. Jerusza was driven by intuition; she knew she must take the girl from her family and into the forest.

Yona’s childhood is unconventional, as she learns not only survival skills but also multiple languages. Jerusza’s care is practical, never maternal. The girl doesn’t know love, but she knows how to survive.

Not long after Jerusza’s death, Yona encounters other people in the forest. They’re Jewish, and they’ve fled their villages to escape persecution by the Germans. Yona knows how to help, but by sharing her skills, she’s inviting human connection like she’s never known—and risking her heart in the process.

Although Kristin Harmel’s The Forest of Vanishing Stars is fiction, the bestselling author’s research contributes richness and authenticity to this captivating tale. During the Holocaust, Jewish people escaped from ghettos and created forest settlements, banding together to survive both genocide and the wild.

In addition to showcasing her exceptional historical research, Harmel’s novel explores the frailty of human connection. Yona finds joy and sorrow in bonding with others, and in the process, she learns more about the world she was born into. Yona knows she is German, and as she tries to protect the people she’s met, she begins to question whether she truly belongs in the encampment.

“In the times of greatest darkness, the light always shines through, because there are people who stand up to do brave, decent things,” says one of the men Yona meets in the forest. “In moments like this, it doesn’t matter what you were born to be. It matters what you choose to become.”

Kristin Harmel’s research into Jewish forest settlements contributes richness to this captivating World War II tale.
NonfictionMemoirAnimals

What Is a Dog?

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Debut author Chloe Shaw traces her own emotional development through the roles dogs have played in her life. There was Easy, whom Shaw’s parents had before they had children. Then there was Agatha 1, the Christmas puppy who, days later, went to the veterinarian and never came home. Her replacement was Agatha 2, whose name hinted at the family’s tendency to plow forward through difficult times. As an only child, Shaw turned to her dogs for entertainment and companionship. She wanted to “be the dog,” to lose herself so deeply in connection with an animal that human problems and obligations fell away.

Shaw was exploring these tendencies in therapy by the time she met Booker, the dog who came along with Matt, the psychoanalyst whom Shaw would marry. Together the couple adopted Safari, who seemed the canine embodiment of Shaw’s anxieties. Booker taught Safari how to be a good dog, and both dogs bonded with the couple’s children.

After Booker’s death, Shaw insisted on adopting Otter. Shaw was the family member who clung to the idea of another dog, so she tried to assume all responsibility for Otter’s care. But raising Otter shows Shaw that she can’t be completely self-sufficient. Otter reminds her that she is human, not canine—and that her humanity is good. “When we open ourselves to the possibility of love,” she writes, “we open ourselves to the possibility of breaking; when we open ourselves to the possibility of breaking, we open ourselves to the possibility of being made whole again.” 

What Is a Dog? is a tender memoir that showcases the vulnerable self we often risk revealing only to our pets. The dogs in Shaw’s life show her how to love another being, yes—but that love also leads her deeper into the human experience, flaws, risks and all. Shaw’s sensitive recollection of a lifetime of anxiety and curiosity will invite readers to examine their own insecurities and to find acceptance in the process.

Chloe Shaw’s tender recollections of anxiety and curiosity will invite readers to accept their most vulnerable selves, which we often only reveal to our pets.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

Seed to Dust

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

To whom does a garden belong? In his work as a gardener, Marc Hamer (How to Catch a Mole) has heard tales of property owners who take offense when landscapers feel some sense of ownership over their work. Hamer’s employer, whom he has dubbed Miss Cashmere, isn’t so territorial.

But Hamer doesn’t crave ownership. He believes a garden belongs to all who see it. “This is not my garden, but it’s not hers, either,” he writes. “Just paying for something doesn’t make it yours. Nothing is ever yours. People who work with the earth and the people who think they own bits of it see the world in totally different ways.”

In Seed to Dust: Life, Nature, and a Country Garden, Hamer showcases his intimate knowledge of the natural world. The book is organized by season, resembling a diary of a year in the garden. It’s a lyrical reflection on days spent with hands in dirt and decisions based on close observation of the weather.

As he tends to Miss Cashmere’s land, Hamer also meditates on each plant’s history and place in the world. But his approach is never showy; in fact, Hamer often contemplates his own status with humility. His introspective ways led his father to devalue and dismiss him as a boy. Hamer later spent two years living without a home, and that experience colored his life, including how he approached parenting his own children, now grown.

As the year unfolds, Hamer reflects on the cycles to which all living things are bound. Little happens in the narrative, save for the dramatic living and dying of all things, but Hamer’s careful eye for detail and deep knowledge of the garden’s dozens upon dozens of plants are used to great effect, creating a lush landscape into which a reader can disappear. In Seed to Dust, Hamer invites readers to join him in quiet meditation on the earth.

Hamer uses his deep knowledge of gardens to great effect, creating a lush landscape into which a reader can disappear.
FictionLiterary Fiction

What Comes After

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

“Evil isn’t a person. . . . It’s not a political group either. Or a religion like some people think. Evil is a force. Like gravity. It acts on all of us. We’re all vulnerable to it.”

In Port Furlong, Washington, Isaac Balch speaks these words without knowing he will soon experience one of the greatest evils a parent could ever face. Eight days after Isaac’s teenage son, Daniel, fails to come home from football practice, Daniel’s childhood friend and next-door neighbor, Jonah, dies by suicide. In a note, Jonah confesses to Daniel’s murder.

Weeks later, a 16-year-old girl turns up in Isaac’s yard. The bereaved father can’t bring himself to abandon Evangeline McKensey to the cool fall night; she looks as lost as he feels, her unwashed state and not-so-hidden pregnancy suggesting she needs a home. When Isaac has to leave town for a family matter, he risks the discomfort of asking Lorrie Geiger—the mother of his son’s killer—to check in on Evangeline.

In What Comes After, debut novelist JoAnne Tompkins takes readers to dark places in her characters’ psyches: Isaac’s unwillingness to grapple with the complexities of the people closest to him; Jonah’s hatred of his friend; and Evangeline’s growing understanding of what she will do to survive, and what a mother can and cannot walk away from. They’re all learning who to trust, navigating the evil forces that permeate the world.

Tompkins’ experience in the legal system (she was a mediator and judicial officer) exposed her to great tragedy, and this background informs her empathetic exploration of her characters’ lives. She writes about mental health and faith, particularly Isaac’s Quaker beliefs, without sentimentalizing or damning her characters’ experiences. In the novel, faith is simply part of life, a reality that is rarely so sensitively portrayed in fiction.

Like faith, evil is also part of the human experience. As the people of Port Furlong grapple with the evil act committed by one of their own, Tompkins poses questions of morality and motivation, nature and nurture, and how people move forward.

When Isaac explains the concept of evil, he points to the tumors that killed his mother. “My mother had cancer, she suffered cancer, but no one ever thought she was cancer itself. . . . Despite all the evidence.”

In JoAnne Tompkins’ debut novel, faith is simply part of life, a reality that is rarely so sensitively portrayed in fiction.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryAmerican History

The Agitators

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Former Secretary of State William Henry Seward’s name occupies a plaque outside the Cayuga County Courthouse in Auburn, New York, and the Seward family home is now a museum where visitors can learn about the statesman’s past. But it was another Seward who quietly pushed Henry toward signing the Emancipation Proclamation. His wife, Frances Seward, was the one who befriended, supported and learned from Harriet Tubman, the famous Underground Railroad conductor whose name is also mounted on that county courthouse.

Frances discouraged her husband from compromising on matters related to slavery. But as Henry ascended from the state Senate to the governorship of New York to the U.S. Senate with a position in Abraham Lincoln’s presidential Cabinet, his aspirations conflicted with his wife’s activism. Frances often felt she couldn’t be as vocal as Tubman or Martha C. Wright, who attended the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls and worked alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to seek women’s suffrage. But even when Frances limited her activism out of respect for Henry, she pushed him to value the greater good over his political aspirations.

In The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights, Dorothy Wickenden recounts the friendship between Seward, Wright and Tubman and the ways their influence shaped American history. Wickenden is the executive editor of The New Yorker and the bestselling author of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. She brings a reporter’s eye for detail to this complex history, which spans from 1821 to 1875 as Seward and Wright fight for abolition and Tubman serves on the front lines of both the Underground Railroad and the Civil War.

Wickenden’s detailed account of these women and their friendship weaves together Tubman’s escape from enslavement, the complexities of Lincoln’s early slavery policy, the beginnings of the women’s rights movement in the U.S. and their imperfect intersections. Using primary sources such as the women’s own letters, Wickenden invites readers to take a closer look at the path of American progress and the women who guided it.

Dorothy Wickenden invites readers to take a closer look at the path of American progress and the women who guided it.
NonfictionMemoirEssays

Spilt Milk

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Courtney Zoffness’ young son was obsessed with police officers. The family lived two doors down from a New York Police Department precinct, and 4-year-old Leo became fixated on the small dramas that unfolded outside the station. Sometimes officers helped his family—jumping a car battery, for example. And sometimes, Leo watched police escort a recently arrested person into the station.

Zoffness wanted to explain big ideas to her son—systemic racism, a disproportionately high number of arrests of people of color, the ambiguity of the term “excessive force.” But how do you explain these concepts to a child? She reminded Leo that being a police officer is about helping people, as her father did as a volunteer with the auxiliary force. But Leo was more enchanted by the idea of handcuffing bad guys.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Courtney Zoffness shares her experience of transforming memory and truth, joy and pain, into her thoughtful memoir, Spilt Milk.

Throughout her debut essay collection, Spilt Milk, Zoffness applies thoughtful analysis to everyday situations like this one. In 10 essays, she explores inherited ideas (such as her father’s respect for police work) and inherited genetics (does her oldest son wrestle with anxiety because of Zoffness’ own childhood experience?).

In “Boy in Blue,” the essay about Leo’s police fascination, Zoffness recounts her family joining a protest in May 2020. They held signs proclaiming that Black Lives Matter and chanted their fury about police brutality. Leo, then 6, remained entranced by law enforcement, proclaiming, “You’re unarrested” in a misunderstanding of what officers actually say. “Dramatic play, experts say, helps children understand the power of language,” Zoffness writes. “We’ve yet to correct him. In Leo’s linguistic reality, freedom rules. Nobody suffers. Everyone is equal. Everyone is blameless.”

Elsewhere, Zoffness recalls how a writing student’s advances brought to mind a parade of assaults and unwelcome commentary from men. She also explores the rituals of her Jewish faith and the juxtaposition of science and astronomy.

Throughout Spilt Milk, Zoffness’ essays plait her life experiences with larger observations about society. In her layered storytelling, she brings empathy to every situation and often finds empathy for herself along the way. Spilt Milk is a generous, warm debut from an already prizewinning writer.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover more great memoirs this Memoir March.

Throughout Spilt Milk, Courtney Zoffness uses layered storytelling to plait her life experiences with larger observations about society.

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