Heather Seggel, Author at BookPage | Discover your next great book!

History has not been kind to China’s Empress Dowager Cixi. Credit for her numerous achievements is generally given to the men who served her. She’s been called a ruthless tyrant and murderer, and those in power after her claimed to be cleaning up yet another of her unforgivable messes. Were any of this true, the criticism might be forgivable. However, author Jung Chang (Wild Swans) has uncovered new research and debunked the myth-makers to bring us Empress Dowager Cixi in all her complexity.

To call this a rags-to-riches story would be a gross understatement. At age 16, Cixi was chosen as one of the Emperor’s concubines, albeit a low-ranking one. By remaining friends with the Empress, avoiding competition with the other women in the harem and, most significantly, producing the first male heir to the throne, she secured a foothold from which she climbed steadily into power. When the Emperor died in 1861, Cixi’s 5-year-old son succeeded him, and Cixi orchestrated a palace coup (at age 25!) that made her the true leader of the country. She led from behind the throne—behind a screen, in fact, to separate her from male officials.

Cixi steered the country toward modernity and greater prosperity. The railroad, electricity, telegraph and telephone lines, Western medicine, foreign trade and a modern military were all brought about under her reign. She slowly ended the brutal practice of female foot-binding and vastly expanded opportunities for women. And while her legacy is not without significant missteps and errors, she notably made public apologies upon seeing the error of her ways, and ruled in a relatively bloodless manner.

This biography is engaging especially for the contrasts Chang finds between old and new ways: Cixi pushed for China to accept a degree of Westernization as necessary to its prosperity, but took her tea with human breast milk on the advice of a doctor. She built the railroads, but ensured work was begun on an astrologically “auspicious” day and sent envoys out to assure the locals that the remains of their buried ancestors would not be disturbed by the noise.

Empress Dowager Cixi corrects a longstanding misconception about a woman whose impact on China can’t be overstated. It’s a fascinating look at power, politics and the gender divide.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

A chilling account of a terrorist attack

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

It was just five years ago when, on the evening of November 26, 2008, a group of terrorists made a series of attacks throughout Mumbai. The Siege focuses on the hostages held at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, which had a global reputation for high-end glamour. By the end of the ordeal 31 people and one security “sniffer” dog were dead, hundreds were wounded and much of the hotel had burned. Amazingly, it could have been much worse.

Authors Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy faced numerous challenges researching this book. People who survived the events were reluctant to relive them. When they did, their accounts often directly contradicted those of other witnesses. They were able to establish a timeline by researching phone and text message records, and from there mapped events from as many perspectives as possible. Parents of the terrorists, all of whom died in the attacks, were told by higher-ups in the Lashkar-e-Toiba organization that their sons were martyred elsewhere or died accidentally; even seeing a photo of his son in an Indian morgue failed to persuade one father, who insisted, “That’s a fiction created by India and America.”

The authors have a gripping and complex story to tell, so it’s a bit confounding when they spend more than 60 pages introducing characters before beginning to diagram the action. Instead of making it easier to tell everyone apart, it adds to the confusion. That may be intentional—the bombing, grenade strikes and assault rifle fire created a state of abject chaos—but this reader had to refer back to earlier passages numerous times for orientation.

Through the chaos some very vivid pictures emerge, especially of the young jihadis. Many of them dropped out of the organization during training, phoning relatives to retrieve them from in front of the compound’s gates. Others waited there, and when nobody came for them their fates were sealed. It’s chilling to see a Pakistani organization that loathes India and the U.S. equally using Google Earth to case locations and monitor the attacks. When the young men are sent on their way, their knapsacks contain both weapons and bottles of Mountain Dew.

The Siege is not an easy read, but it’s an important one; it honors the everyday heroics of those who were there, and makes frighteningly clear how little it takes to create a terrorist.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

A puzzle’s unexpected revelations

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

“I am not given to dreaminess, have something of a terrier’s determination. If there is something to notice, I will notice it first.” Despite being just 12 and a half, Mila is often relied upon for her attention to detail. She sees things her musician mother and translator father, Gil, don’t. So when her father’s best friend disappears without a trace, he brings her along on a trip from London to upstate New York. There’s a longer view to this mystery that Mila can’t make out at first—but when she does, it shatters everything that came before. Picture Me Gone gathers these glimpses and fragments into something raw and real.

Printz Award winner Meg Rosoff presents us with a beautiful contradiction: Mila is emotionally walled off in many respects, but every feeling she experiences hits the reader directly in the heart. Her parents’ love is unyielding, but their failures are the catalyst for Mila’s growth. She recognizes that her limited life experiences give her a truncated range of possible scenarios to consider as she tries to solve the mystery. However, she’s unaware that love has expanded her blind spot to the people she trusts, not all of whom are honest.

While the themes in Picture Me Gone are heavy hitting, Mila also has a first brush with romance, reconnects with a friend and is perpetually nonplussed by Americans who compliment her London accent. What she learns on the trip is bruising, but her resilience develops as a result, and for readers it’s a privilege to be along for the ride.

Read Picture Me Gone. If Mila doesn’t touch your heart, check with a doctor because you might be dead. She’s complex, fragile, resilient and utterly unforgettable.

Pop Culture

Pop Culture

Recipe for success

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

The Food Network and the stars it spawned are such ubiquitous figures in our kitchens and living rooms, it's hard to recall that at its founding the network was a seat-of-the-pants experiment that virtually everyone expected to fail. In From Scratch: Inside the Food Network, Allen Salkin takes us through that history and, as you might expect, things get dishy.

Initially conceived as a low-budget channel well-stocked with reruns of old Julia Child shows and newsy live programming (one exec called it “CNN with stoves”), the network hit pay dirt when agents began promoting chefs as “rock stars.” Prior to that time, even Wolfgang Puck often found himself on a coach flight to an ill-stocked kitchen with no support staff to prepare a “gourmet” meal for bored heads of state. No more. The network moved away from wonky programming and straight into the flying cleaver of “chunk”—that's chef-hunk—Emeril Lagasse. Viewership and sales took off, not with a whimper but a “Bam!”

Salkin uncovers great stories here. Agent Shep Gordon chose his profession at the urging of Jimi Hendrix while poolside in L.A. On her first day in the studio, where the talent were not allowed to stop taping for any reason, Rachael Ray oiled an overly hot pan and unleashed a four-foot column of flame. Her eyebrows survived and she soldiered on. Emeril Lagasse failed to see the writing on the wall as his expensive show lost viewers, and was devastated when he was abruptly canceled.

And those are just the big names! The power struggles behind the scenes are another thing entirely. Shows filmed in an unventilated room with electric ranges and no ovens (hosts would pretend to slide the food under the sink and stomp the floor to mimic the sound of an oven door) would not seem to be worth fighting over, but every change in power brought new rules and restrictions. When the New York-based network was purchased by Scripps News Service, a minor civil war over standards and practices erupted for fear that Southerners wouldn't appreciate risque humor. Good thing they weren't watching when someone spliced a minute of hardcore pornography into an episode of “Too Hot Tamales.”

From Scratch is a saucy tell-all, by turns shocking, funny and informative. Fans of the network or those who just love seeing how the show-biz sausage is made, this one's for you.

Biography, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Biography

Portrait of a Muppet-master

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

It’s hard to see Jim Henson’s name in print without immediately thinking of the Muppets, those deceptively simple-looking puppets who seemed to bring forth a full range of human emotions. Two things we learn quickly in Jim Henson: The Biography are that the effort involved in bringing the Muppets to life was astronomical, and that Henson chafed at being forever associated with them. Who knew?

Author Brian Jay Jones spoke to Henson’s surviving family, along with most of his coworkers and business partners, and the result is a book that offers a multifaceted view of Henson’s home and work lives. His childhood in rural Mississippi revolved around trips to the local movie theater and driving any car he could get his hands on, both interests he would indulge for life. The soft-spoken youth made himself heard when television was invented, insisting the family buy one and realizing immediately it was what he wanted to do with his life. From his very first job at a TV station all the way through fame, fortune and an untimely death at 53, he never stopped studying the medium and expanding its possibilities.

There are so many enjoyable aspects to this book that it’s hard to know where to start. Henson himself is a study in contrasts: a devoted family man who was serially unfaithful to his wife; so soft-spoken he often went unheard, but steadfast in pursuit of his vision (he was described as having a “whim of steel”); unfocused on money when it came to work, yet an extravagant shopper with top-dollar taste. Then there are the Muppets themselves. Henson’s creations were innovative due to their soft, flexible design, which allowed subtle hand movements to offer emotive facial expressions. But finding the character inside the puppet was a challenge for the performers. Miss Piggy started off as essentially a chorus girl, used in background scenes and bit parts, until one day puppeteer Frank Oz deviated from the script: Instead of slapping Kermit the Frog, he had her karate-chop him with an emphatic “Haii-YA!” . . . and a star was born.

Henson’s career was about to take off in new directions via a planned sale of his company to Disney when he died of an aggressive staph infection. After reading about his life and creative passion, we can only imagine what that collaboration might have led to, and hope that some readers are inspired to dream just as big. Jim Henson: The Biography is a fantastic story of a brilliant life cut short, but it can also be read as a blueprint for following your bliss.

Water, water everywhere

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Author J. Maarten Troost spent several years living on a tiny island in the South Seas, an experience he brought to life in The Sex Lives of Cannibals. In the intervening years his family moved several times and he took a long slide into alcoholism, which he blamed in part on living too far from the water. One year sober but miserable, he decides to travel the South Seas again, following a path previously charted by Robert Louis Stevenson. Headhunters on My Doorstep is Troost's account of a time spent trying to get his sea legs, in more ways than one.

The trip starts poorly when the first boat Troost climbs aboard turns out to be a de facto booze cruise. He manages to resist temptation by working out to excess, a practice he keeps up on land, running to the point of near-collapse for miles at a time in toxic heat. And those headhunters in the title? He stays in a village where a recent murder-turned-luncheon had taken place, but notes that the attitude toward cannibalism in the region's history is shrugged off by many. One woman tells him, “You'd think all we did was kill people and eat them every day. We eat fruit and fish too, you know. Eating people was for special occasions, like your holiday. What do you call it? Thanksgiving.”

When Troost gets to Fiji he reads about the island nation of Kiribati, the entirety of which is preparing to evacuate as the rising seas gradually reclaim the landmass. His attempt to speak to someone in the government about the impending disaster is quickly shut down when he discloses the title of his previous book (which was set on a nearby island), one funny moment in the midst of a tragedy we're likely to see more of in years to come.

Throughout the book Troost checks in with Stevenson's account of his own South Seas voyage, and it makes for an interesting counterpoint to the modern-day concerns of islanders, but old fans and new will find themselves most concerned with Troost as he swims with sharks, gets tattooed and throws himself headlong into the adventure of clean living. Headhunters hits surprisingly close to the heart.

Social Science

Social Science

A hard look at “having it all”

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Debora L. Spar is a wife and mother. She was also one of the first female professors at Harvard Business School, and is currently the president of Barnard College. She is, in many ways, an exemplar of the notion that women can “have it all,” yet for years she eschewed feminism as the province of hairy-legged cranks. In Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, Spar dismantles her own resistance to the movement that arguably allowed her the life she has today, but also looks at the ways feminism created false expectations that have left many women too defeated to get out of bed, much less “lean in.”

Remember the early 1970s ads for Charlie perfume, which portrayed a gorgeous blond with a briefcase on one arm and toddler on the other walking a city street while a chorus sang about her being “kinda new, kinda now”? Spar argues that while feminism pushed for women to have it all—full equality and the ability to choose from several options—many women misread the handbook and instead felt forced to take it all on. To prioritize career over family was neglectful, while domesticity was capitulation to the patriarchy. And either way, we lose: Men still do a fraction of the housework even when they're at home more, and women still earn less money and possess far less wealth than men. Hear me roar, indeed.

Spar threads her personal story into this larger survey, from marriage to her wide-ranging career. As an educated, upper-class white heterosexual woman, she has little to say about the poor, people of color or lesbians. Those struggling to find bus fare in their couch cushions may find all this caterwauling about “having it all” a tad indulgent, but the book ends with suggestions that can help forge connections, from involving men in women's issues to removing the pressure to do everything in favor of making more conscious choices. Wonder Women doesn't have all the answers, but the questions it raises may lead to much-needed change.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

An odyssey in search of family

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Francesca Lia Block has made a trademark of twining myth and reality so snugly it’s difficult to figure out where one ends and the other begins. Love in the Time of Global Warming blends an emergency road trip into Homer’s The Odyssey, with home and family—who and wherever they are—firmly at the heart of the story.

The Earth Shaker and tidal wave that wiped out Los Angeles destroyed Penelope’s home and scattered her mom, dad and brother to the four winds. No longer safe among the dwindling emergency supplies in her family’s basement, she cuts off her long hair and hits the road, hoping for signs of life. The ruined landscape she travels, complete with genetically engineered giants who scarf humans like Buffalo wings, is bleak. However, fantastical and sometimes funny parallels to The Odyssey are a pleasure to follow. Pen encounters tranced-out “lotus eaters” crashing in an abandoned hotel, and sirens who—well, the chapter’s titled “The Real Sirens of Beverly Hills,” which pretty much says it all. She also meets Hex, who becomes not just her traveling companion but a love interest strong enough to ease an old heartache from the time before.

A story so harsh could be terribly depressing to read, but Block has always been able to find hope in the bleakest realities, and Global Warming is no different. Pen doesn’t get her old life back, but by story’s end she’s reclaimed some of her history and is no longer running scared but living with an eye toward the future. This is a fine adventure story that leaves the question of what comes next in the reader's hands. You can read it in an afternoon, but you’ll be thinking about it for days afterward.

American History, History, Nonfiction

Nonfiction History American History

The surprising insiders of the Harlem Renaissance

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

The Harlem Renaissance produced art, literature and music that tried to reflect the diversity of black experience. A persistent influence, though one mostly ignored by history, was that of white women. Acting as patrons of the arts, creating work under racially ambiguous pseudonyms or promoting interracial marriage, white women were very much a part of the scene. With Miss Anne in Harlem, author Carla Kaplan has given them their due.

“Miss Anne” was a dismissive generalization meant to encompass all white women, who were often caricatured as matrons seeking an illicit thrill by mingling with black men. But many of the women Kaplan profiles had much larger goals in mind, from personal fame to planetary change.

Charlotte Osgood Mason used her wealth and influence to promote the work of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but placed demands on both that ultimately proved destructive to the partnerships. Mason sent Hurston out to gather folklore but enjoined her against using the research in her own work; she also required expense accounting for every sanitary napkin Hurston used. Some of Hurston’s letters to Mason are self-deprecating to the point of parody, but Mason never took the hint.

Fannie Hurst wrote a bestseller, Imitation of Life, that told parallel stories of women “passing,” for white in one case and male in the other. The book was reviled in the black press, to Hurst’s consternation; the character who passes for white does so without regret, which understandably left black readers cold, but it may have been Hurst’s way of exploring her own life as a Jew, and the fact that she was only considered white when in the company of black people.

Kaplan’s research is extensive, and the sheer volume of information here can be overwhelming. It’s worth exploring, though, not just for the fascinating stories of the women themselves, but also for the far more vivid picture we now have of 1920s Harlem. “Miss Anne” was heroic and confounding and anything but dull. Kudos to Kaplan for rescuing her from obscurity.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

Risking it all for love in Iran

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

A confession: I picked up If You Could Be Mine knowing only that it was about two teenage girls in love in Tehran. While homosexuality is a crime in Iran, transsexuals are tolerated if not enthusiastically embraced, so one of the girls contemplates sex change surgery for the chance to love without risk of death. I assumed the book would be grim and possibly preachy—how else could you tell a story with so much at stake? Thankfully, I could not have been more wrong. If You Could Be Mine is at once dazzling and funny and heartbreaking and wise.

Sahar and Nasrin have been best friends—and girlfriends—since early childhood. When Nasrin’s parents arrange a marriage for her, Sahar considers changing her gender in order to try to stop the wedding. The people she meets at a transgender support group question her motivation, but reluctantly offer their help. When one who comes to meet her at an underground gay bar is openly hostile to the crowd—it’s not just elitism but Muslim law that separates gay and transgender people—Sahar’s gay cousin Ali intervenes. When the woman explains she came to deliver hormones to Sahar, “Ali looks at me like I have just told him I have killed Britney Spears, Madonna, and Lady Gaga.”

A girl considers extreme lengths for love in Farizan's debut.

Things only get more difficult from there. Sahar’s relationship with Nasrin suffers as the wedding approaches, and at home she tries to wake her widowed father from a five-year period of mourning and detachment. Eventually she begins to carve out a new life for herself, and a new relationship with Nasrin.

This is Sara Farizan’s first novel, and what a debut it is. The Iran revealed through the eyes of her teenaged characters is a place of oppression and great risk, but the Ayatollahs are viewed as little more than cranky grandfathers. The West is regarded with a mix of awe at the freedom allowed there and disgust that it is so unappreciated.

Sahar and Nasrin’s circumstances differ from those of most Americans in drastic ways, but their love, heartbreak and redemption will resonate with anyone. If You Could Be Mine is a beautiful, compassionate, must-read novel.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

A search for heritage gets out of control

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Vee Crawford-Wong has a mouthful of a name that says a lot about him. His Chinese father gave him a first name with no Chinese translation because, as he tells his frustrated son, “We wanted to unburden you from a commitment to artificial meaning that comes with a family name.” Gee, thanks, Dad. He gets “Crawford” from his Texan mother, but she won’t say a thing about her life before Vee was born. The three of them have a fine home life, but their attempts to avoid talking about extended family explode when Vee’s history teacher asks the class to trace their genealogical backgrounds. Hence, The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong.

A biracial teen's search yields hilarious results.

Author L. Tam Holland’s first novel is long and a bit gangly, not unlike Vee himself, but the side stories into high school ring true, often to a painful degree. Why is it that when life is flying by so quickly, an hour spent in class with a sworn enemy can feel like hard time, or a moment’s attention from an unreachable crush can pull two weeks along in its wake? Holland gets the highs and lows right, along with the regrettable degree to which kids suddenly feel smarter than their parents and emboldened to act on it, often with disastrous results.

Don’t despair, though—Holland mines comic gold from those darker moments. A racist insult fabricated to win Vee sympathy instead sends his parents into hysterical laughter (you’ll laugh, too, the next time you need ibuprofen). And while Vee’s pain is real, his actions in response to it consistently lead to farcical results, and sometimes lead him halfway around the world. The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong is a frank look at growing up biracial and feeling neither/nor, then discovering that wholeness was there all along, just waiting to be found.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

Sing-along songs

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Rob Sheffield’s first book, Love Is a Mix Tape, described his first marriage through the songs he and his wife shared, loved and fought over, and ended with her unexpected death from a pulmonary embolism. Turn Around Bright Eyes begins where that book ended, with Rob relocating from Virginia to New York and navigating out of grief and into adulthood via many late nights in karaoke bars.

Each chapter is titled with a song that’s a signpost on Rob’s journey. He attends “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy” camp, and the band he’s assigned to plays the Bad Company song of the same name. (Sheffield confesses he can’t sing or play an instrument, and bruises his thighs mercilessly with a tambourine.) “Livin’ Thing” briefly mentions the ELO song, but is more about Sheffield adapting to living alone after marriage, then making his first forays out into the world of karaoke, his days measured out in microwave soy burgers, like a modern-day Prufrock.

Sheffield’s grief runs deep, but he learns to move on, one song at a time, and falls in love again, with an astrophysicist and fellow music geek. He tweaks a lyric from “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to sum up his story: “Once upon a time I was falling apart, now I’m always falling in love.” Pop music fans will love finding lyrics studded throughout the book like tiny Valentines. Anyone with a heart should find room in it for Turn Around Bright Eyes.

Nonfiction, True Crime

Nonfiction True Crime

Pilgrim’s Wilderness

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Rural Alaska seemed like the perfect place for a family of Christian homesteaders to escape the ways of the world. But when Papa Pilgrim moved his wife and 15 kids to McCarthy, they brought conflict and confrontation the likes of which the area had never seen. Initially embraced as exemplars of the libertarian ideal, the family turned out to be a dangerous sham, ruled by an evil patriarch. Pilgrim’s Wilderness unravels this drama with journalistic precision and the wallop of a true-crime potboiler.

Longtime Alaska journalist Tom Kizzia had a cabin near the first Pilgrim family settlement; when he covered their initial skirmish with the National Park Service, Papa called him “Neighbor Tom.” But Kizzia’s research into Pilgrim’s past revealed him to be a master of reinvention with much to conceal. The community split into pro-Pilgrim and anti-Pilgrim camps, with many wondering about the powerful control Pilgrim exercised over his wife and children. When the older kids made a run for safety and the truth came out, it was far worse than anyone could have imagined.

Kizzia is able to capture all this with the dispassionate voice of a reporter, which allows the chilling details to resonate powerfully. For all the horrors visited upon Pilgrim’s children, the story has a suitably twisted happy ending as the family gathers once more in a Wasilla cemetery, wishing their deceased patriarch swift passage to hell. Pilgrim’s Wilderness is fascinating and hard to put down—an excellent choice for those who like their beach reading on the darker side.

Heather Seggel

A revelatory portrait of an empress

A chilling account of a terrorist attack

A puzzle’s unexpected revelations

Recipe for success

Portrait of a Muppet-master

Water, water everywhere

A hard look at “having it all”

An odyssey in search of family

The surprising insiders of the Harlem Renaissance

Risking it all for love in Iran

A search for heritage gets out of control

Sing-along songs

Pilgrim’s Wilderness

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