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

Journalist and author Katie Hafner kept no secrets where her difficult upbringing was concerned. Moved from place to place with her older sister by their self-involved, alcoholic mother, the two girls were ultimately removed from her custody but remained in touch with her over the years. When her mother fell on hard times in 2009, Hafner decided to forge a new bond by bringing her to San Francisco and a home shared with Hafner’s 16-year-old daughter. Their idealized experiment in multigenerational living quickly became contentious and unlivable. Mother Daughter Me tells their story, then sifts through the fallout for larger truths about the roles of parent and child.

Hafner has said throughout her life that “parents do the best they can, given what they have to work with,” and somehow hewing strongly to that belief has allowed her to be both forthright and compassionate in portraying her mother (whose name is changed in the book). Hafner’s mother was a genuine monster early on, but stabilized considerably in later life. Her struggles to connect with her daughter and granddaughter at age 77 could be seen as deserved comeuppance, but Hafner also directs our attention to her mother’s skilled work at starting a new life in a new city, and her admiration does not feel grudging in the least. Their fights are real, and often have unexpectedly deep roots, but the love is constant as well.

This is a heavy story—not just a memoir of parents and children but of infidelity, job loss and death—but Hafner can apply a light touch as needed. Anyone who has cared for an aging parent will identify as she and her mother stock their new kitchen with combined utensils. Hafner is insistent on hers taking up the bulk of the space, in part as testament to her superiority as a parent and provider, a sentiment she considers “too obnoxiously smug to say in words. So I say it with flatware.”

Mother Daughter Me is a story of bonds frayed well past the point of breaking, yet somehow held tight in the grip of a fierce and forgiving love.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

Secrets buried by lifetimes

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Half Lives is a smart adventure story, but it’s also perilously full of potential spoilers, so let’s step lightly, shall we? At 17, Icie’s biggest problem in life is that her boyfriend just broke up with her via text message. When she gets a 911 text from her folks, she knows it’s serious—one is highly placed in the federal government and the other is a nuclear physicist—but the crisis that greets her at home changes her life forever. She’s given a crude map, a money belt and instructions to get to an unmarked bunker outside Las Vegas and await further orders.

Icie’s journey and what happens at the bunker are just half of the story. Generations later, a society led by teens lives on the mountain where the bunker was, and it’s clear that Icie has left them a legacy of some sort. The way these stories intertwine and reveal information about what happened—and the consequences—keeps Half Lives suspenseful until the very end.

Author Sara Grant toggles back and forth between the present and the distant future, and while there are complex love stories in each world, the real meat of the novel is in how things change—or fail to change—over time. Much of this comes through in Grant’s use of language: Icie likes to create new compound words in hopes they’ll catch on, and it’s a pleasure and an ongoing surprise to see where they turn up and how definitions evolve. A few songs on an old iPod become a hymnal of sorts, and “Facebook” takes on a whole new meaning.

This isn’t dystopian fiction, but fans of the genre will appreciate the dark humor and complex future created here, which offers up several “a-ha” moments when past and future reveal themselves. Half Lives is tough and scary, but ultimately a story of bravery and hope.

Food & Drink

Food & Drink

A toast to memorable meals

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Julia Reed could make boiled newspaper sound delicious. It’s not just that she describes a meal well, though there are several in her new book that had me drooling (none of which involved ladling the Washington Post on toast). She gives each meal a juicy backstory and characters you wish you’d stayed up all night carousing with, making it the stuff of legend and not just a midnight snack. Her latest essay collection, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!, is a sensory delight and fantasia for aspiring chefs, but it’s also big-hearted and fun.

Reed, a contributing editor at Garden & Gun magazine, writes a column there called “The High & the Low.” That phrase captures some of the book’s charm. When Reed breaks off an engagement, she and her fiancé still take the honeymoon to Paris, then have a falling-out which sends her rushing to Vogue icon Andre Leon Talley for cocktails and solace. Just when a reader might start to chafe at the soirées and name-dropping, Reed shifts gears and riffs at length about holiday grog and family dysfunction, as seen through the lens of the Robert Earl Keen song “Merry Christmas from the Family,” an anthem of equalization if ever there was one. And then, of course, there are those recipes.

“Southerners have been doing ‘farm to table’—mostly by necessity—since long before the phrase was taken up by every foodie in the land,” says Reed, and many of the meals and cocktails outlined here are inspired by seasonal bounty (or excess of same). There are treats cribbed from five-star chefs featured alongside classics of Southern hospitality like Spinach Madeleine, which will never be the same now that Kraft has discontinued their jalapeno-spiked Velveeta.

From a gourmet meal taken in an Afghanistan lodge reclaimed from the Bin Laden family, to an intimate look at the making of Spanish paprika (with a few trips to the bullfights thrown in), But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria! is as heady as the brew it’s named for, uptown yet simple in its elegance.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

Banished to public school

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Astrid Krieger has pretty much everything she needs to be happy: a rocket ship prototype on her parents’ estate to live in, good looks, money to burn and a grandfather who both loves her and can be counted on to bail her out of a jam (even the kinds of jams that require diplomatic immunity). So she’s more than a little upset when her latest shenanigan lands her in—horror of horrors—public school. Not that she had a choice in the matter; her expulsion from the Bristol Academy sealed the deal. Astrid may be a Firecracker, but she’s no match for the kids at Cadorette High.

Author David Iserson’s writing background is in film and television (“SNL,” “New Girl”), and his debut novel benefits from his ability to frame a comic scene for maximum laughs. When Astrid makes two very left-of-popular friends, her observations of one’s birthday party—which includes her sort-of-boyfriend’s attempt to get the nonexistent crowd dancing to an iPod full of French horn music—are priceless: “It was a depressing party. I’m sure there have been memorial services for school buses crashing into puppy stores with more celebration.”

Astrid has some lessons to learn about life, love, school dances, fake friends and the penalties for arson, but for every touching moment there are big laughs, foul language and new, strange characters to meet. If there’s a lot to keep track of, it’s all smart, fantastical fun. Firecracker will start your summer reading off with—it has to be said—a bang.

American History

American History

The rise and fall of American industry

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

At its peak, during and after the Second World War, American manufacturing was much like the country as a whole: full of can-do spirit and open to most anyone willing to jump in and work hard, with plentiful rewards for all. Most of this work took place in what we now call the Rust Belt—the area spanning the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest—and the entire U.S. saw the benefits of their labor. When the party ended decades later, it left behind abandoned cities, polluted land and water, poverty and bitterness. But there are seedlings of renewal being planted as you read this, in the hopes that the economy can be revived and, this time, built to last. Nothin’ But Blue Skies traces that history and looks at what possibilities the future holds.

Author Edward McClelland (Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President) spends time in Chicago; Cleveland; Flint, Michigan; and other sites where industry once ruled. He kayaks a length of the Cuyahoga River, which famously caught fire as a result of industrial pollution. A look at Michael Moore’s propagandist journalism shows how it brought attention to the auto plant shutdowns in Michigan while skirting the truth, which helped Moore far more than any auto workers. He’s not to blame for their troubles, though. McClelland writes that by the time General Motors began its decline, “GM engineers were trying to design an autoworker who earned $2 an hour, never got sick, and died on retirement day.”

There are plenty of places to point fingers in this history. Every innovation that streamlines production ultimately leads to lower workforce requirements. Unions in some cases went from fighting for fairness on the job to forcing companies to pay amounts that couldn’t be sustained over time. Environmental regulations cramped the style of some factory owners, leading to an exodus of jobs overseas.

We’re living in the aftermath of all this right now, and while it’s far from ideal, Nothin' But Blue Skies does find a few signs of hope. Detroit is notable for creating urban farms in the midst of a “food desert,” an area unserved by anything but convenience stores. And American auto manufacturing is slowly adapting to our new environmental reality and building more fuel-efficient vehicles. Nothin’ But Blue Skies at times offers a grim take on our history, but it falls to us to write the next chapter.

Politics

Politics

Restoring some common sense to Congress

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

After a lifetime of public service that included 40 years in Congress and the Maine Legislature, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe walked away from the job in 2012. No longer able to find compromise on even the smallest issues, and with civility in short supply, she elected to leave office and try to work for change from outside what is now a failed system. Fighting For Common Ground is a memoir, an analysis of our recent history, and above all an action plan to realign Congress with the will of the people.

What Snowe shares about her personal life is minimal—she lost both parents at age nine and was a young widow, then much later married John McKernan, who was by then the governor of Maine—but it speaks volumes about her resilience. Snowe is a proud Republican, but she consistently worked with Democrats to pass legislation. If she criticizes President Obama for his railroading through of the Affordable Care Act, she reserves the toughest critique by far for the extremist wing of her own party. After praising several Tea Party members for meeting with her individually, she points to their public incivility and complete unwillingness to compromise as the central cause of our country’s present-day gridlock.

Snowe’s writing is brisk and to the point—the urgency of her argument is palpable—but she’s by no means humorless. Describing a special viewing of the movie Lincoln where senators got to hobnob with the stars of the film, she’s painfully aware of the contrast between the famed “team of rivals” and our uniquely dysfunctional Congress: “There was accord when Majority Leader Harry Reid managed to get a dispensation allowing popcorn to be served in the auditorium, but it took the Senate until 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day to pass legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff.”

After detailing our failings, Snowe ends the book with a practical nine-point plan to get us moving again (have we really reached the point where it must be suggested that Congress adhere to five-day workweeks or not be paid if they refuse to do the work they’ve been elected for?), along with resources so citizens can get involved. It’s a great note to close on; here’s hoping it leads to tangible results.

Fighting For Common Ground offers a clear explanation of how we got into this hole, and also a way out. If everyone who reads the book takes action to that end, we might just make it after all.

Social Science

Social Science

What giving gets you

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

In life as in business, the evidence of success lies in what you get in exchange for your effort. Doesn’t it? Not so fast. Give and Take posits that there are three types of people in the workplace: Takers, who want to get as much value as possible; Matchers, who prioritize a fair and equal exchange; and Givers, who will help or contribute without expectations. Who do you think does best overall? Who does worst?

If you guessed “Givers” in answer to both questions, congratulations! Author and Wharton professor Adam Grant’s research reveals that those who give to excess do sometimes offer a leg up to colleagues who then walk all over them. But those who give in an “otherish” fashion, helping others but also the organization and themselves, do exceedingly well personally and financially, and are therefore in a position to give more overall.

To support his conclusions, Grant studies basketball draft decisions that looked terrible at the time but led to better things; the career arc of George Meyer, who made “The Simpsons” one of the funniest shows in television history while staying well behind the scenes; and the rise and fall of Kenneth Lay, who seemed like a Giver at first glance, but whose self-centered giving patterns were predictive of the Enron collapse.

Grant goes deep with his subject matter but keeps it entertaining for the reader; there’s a section at the end titled “Actions for Impact” which makes it clear this isn’t simply a look at an interesting idea but a manual for change. Give and Take is a must-read for HR professionals, who can surely use it to promote a more interdependent workplace, but the lessons here transfer out of the office and into the world. Read it and start your own Reciprocity Ring, chart your giving for a set period of time to see where it leads, or become a Love Machine at work and in life (don’t worry, it’s legal). We could all use more of those nowadays.

Memoir

Memoir

A look into the mind of a sociopath

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Confessions of a Sociopath opens on a disturbing scene. Author M.E. Thomas (a pseudonym) finds a baby opossum in her swimming pool. Fetching the skimmer, she uses it to hold the animal underwater; when it escapes, she leaves it to drown, returning later to toss the body over her neighbor’s fence. Does this sound like you or anyone you know? If it did, would you admit it?

Confessions of a Sociopath mingles elements of memoir with some scientific analysis and material from the author’s blog, SociopathWorld. Her own psychological evaluation defines her as “egocentric” and “sensation-seeking,” focused on “interpersonal dominance, verbal aggression, and excessive self-esteem.” Living in constant pursuit of her own advantage in any situation, with no regard for the emotions of others, Thomas has essentially lied, cheated and stolen her way to a good life, working less than half-time as a law professor and “ruining people” for sport, from fellow faculty members to romantic interests. A devout Mormon, she teaches Sunday school and claims to adhere to moral guidelines (she isn’t physically violent, for example), but finds wiggle room in even the most straightforward rules and exploits them to her benefit.

The book is fascinating for its glimpse behind the curtain, but it’s not without its flaws. The combination of a pseudonymous author who has blurred many identifying details with a sociopath’s lack of emotional connection leaves the experiences recounted here somewhat lifeless. Thomas also contradicts herself, boasting at length about her ability to ruin people, then giving a tame example and speculating that it was harmless to those involved. Most surprisingly, she initially calls her childhood “unremarkable,” then goes on to describe an upbringing shot through with abuse, neglect and melodrama verging on the operatic. It may not be the direct cause of her condition, but unremarkable? No way.

It’s a sociopath’s prerogative to be evasive, so we may never reach a full understanding of how the condition takes root or if it can be, if not cured, at least constructively channeled. Confessions of a Sociopath offers no easy explanations, but it’s an unsettling look at something that is far more common than most of us realize.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

The end is near, so what do we do?

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Earth—you know, that big round thing we live on?—is in for a rough time. We’re overdue for a catastrophe the likes of which have caused mass extinctions in the past. We don’t know if a megavolcano will darken the planet’s surface or if gamma rays might fry us like so many man-in-the-moon marigolds. We may even author our own demise by continuing to burn fossil fuels at a rate that overheats the atmosphere. Bad things will happen, and people will die. But humanity as a whole? We got this. The key is to Scatter, Adapt, and Remember.

Science writer Annalee Newitz initially set out to write a fairly gloomy analysis of our planetary destiny, but the facts she found wouldn’t support it. Traveling the world to study past mass extinctions, as well as cutting-edge urban design, Newitz found evidence at every stage of survival through adaptation and evolution. Building a foundation in prehistory, she speculates that our future may involve a combination of more underground cities, as well as space colonization. It’s heady reading, both thought-provoking and entertaining.

Among the fantastical notions Newitz uncovers are visions for bioengineered cities, where all available surface area is used to grow food, indoor lights may be powered by algae and bacteria may help filter pollutants. This could potentially lead to a greater sense of urban stewardship, as neighbors “tend their buildings together, trading recipes for making fuel the way people today trade recipes for holiday cakes.”

While much of the information here is subject to debate—even the causes of previous mass extinctions tend to be argued over by scholars—we do know it will happen again. How we choose to act on that information may slow the process, or give us a fighting chance at a legacy to be proud of. Scatter, Adapt, and Remember raises frightening issues but offers multiple reasons to remain hopeful. Read it and find your place in the matrix of solutions.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

Blinded by an ugly duckling’s beauty

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

The actual solstice may be several weeks away, but Gorgeous ushers in the summer reading season with a bang. Becky Randle is living in a Missouri trailer park with her mom and working as a checkout girl when fate throws her a curveball. When her mom dies, she’s called to New York to meet international design icon Tom Kelly, who offers to make her three dresses that will turn her from average-on-a-good-day into the most beautiful woman in the world. Who wouldn’t bite?

The newly minted Rebecca Randle, who lands the cover of Vogue and a hit movie in record time, is only visible when someone else is looking at her; when they leave, she morphs back into Becky. Things are further complicated when she meets gawky but adorable Prince Gregory, heir to the British throne, and falls in love. For the relationship to work, he’ll have to find Becky behind the gloss and sparkle of Rebecca. To say “wacky hijinks ensue” would be putting it mildly.

Author Paul Rudnick brings his biting wit to this fierce, foul-mouthed and very funny fairy tale. The worlds of fashion, celebrity obsession and the royal family are skewed and skewered for big laughs—the names of Tom Kelly’s signature fragrances alone are worth the price of admission (“Intoxicated” causes a memorable girl-fight).

References to My Fair Lady are not coincidental, but the wonderfully snarky social commentary will also connect with fans of Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens. The laughter complements a big-hearted story with a clear moral: “Inner beauty wants out.” So don’t just read Gorgeous: Be gorgeous, because you are.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

A mugging gone wrong leads to second chances

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

At 14, Faye has learned her place in life the hard way. She is bullied by rich girls in her neighborhood, so when she finally makes friends who stick up for her, she goes along with their plans—even when that includes beating up and robbing the same girls who once picked on them. When they rob an elderly woman in her own apartment, things go horribly wrong, and Faye may be responsible for a lot more than some simple payback. It may come back to bite Faye, or it might be the wake-up call she needs to turn her life around.

When author Carolita Blythe modulates the high emotions and stark good-versus-evil tone, Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl is great. Saddled with an unstable and abusive mom, a loving but absent father and friends who reinforce her isolation, Faye thinks life is simple: It simply sucks for people like her. But she has a conscience, and the friendship she forms with the woman she robbed leads to new possibilities and a shot at happiness.

It would have been great to get more insight into Faye's background (her family is from Dominica, not the Dominican Republic). Her mother prepared one meal that was drool-worthy to read about, and their Catholic faith figures heavily into Faye's evolution (she calls one of her teachers “Devil Nun”). These glimpses are some of the book's strongest material. Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl works in broad strokes, but the emphasis on self-respect is worth repeating, especially to high-risk kids like Faye. Life gets better, but only when you work to make it so.

Biography, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Biography

A bizarre, true story of marital idealism

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

On June 22, 1769, Thomas Day turned 21. Long-suffering in his quest to find a perfect woman, he now found himself a free man in possession of substantial income, and elected to find an unspoiled specimen and train her to his liking. Since Day’s habits included bathing in ice water, eschewing fashion and frippery and manifesting “virtue” through suffering, his struggles to find a mate the old-fashioned way are unsurprising. What does come as a shock is his decision to grease the palms in charge of a foundling hospital in order to abduct two orphans, whom he then trained in an unspoken competition to see which he would select for a bride.

How to Create the Perfect Wife follows this quest, which is by turns comic and tragic. Day sought to follow the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but his desires were all in conflict with one another: He wanted a woman who was strong and healthy, yet demure and virginal; one who was his intellectual equal, yet willing to live in seclusion with him and defer to his authority in all things. Even by the Enlightenment’s standards, his actions were wildly controversial, and of the two girls he trained, it’s clear that Lucretia, who lost a contest she didn’t know she was involved in, came out the winner overall.

Author and historian Wendy Moore writes with a novelist’s flair and fluidity. She is tough but fair to Day; though his ideas about women were clearly dangerous, he was a fine writer, a loyal if blustery friend and an early supporter of the abolition of slavery. He did ultimately marry a woman to whom he appeared well-suited. Nevertheless, he and his foundlings never escaped being objects of “tea table tittle-tattle” for the remainder of their days, and the scandal was harmful to all concerned. Day’s story echoes the original Pygmalion myth, which was not a love story but a cautionary tale about the limits of omnipotence.

Biography, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Biography

The man behind the coonskin cap

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

When I say “Davy Crockett,” what do you see? A man in a coonskin cap? The vaguely Taco Bell-ish profile of the Alamo? Or—be honest—did you sing “Davy, DAY-vy Crockett, king of the wild frontier”? You’re forgiven; the song is very catchy, and the guy was a legend, about whom surprisingly little is actually known. In Born on a Mountaintop, author Bob Thompson tries to find the real man behind the myths, but soon discovers that almost every “fact” about Crockett is either the subject of contentious debate or flat-out wrong.

Thompson’s research was inspired by his daughter, who heard “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” in the car and began parsing the lyrics for details. Many biographies combined fact (he was a three-term congressman who advocated for the poor) with folklore (readers may be shocked to discover he could not, in fact, grin a bear into submission)—a tradition Crockett himself encouraged, seamlessly blending celebrity into his political career. So Thompson takes to the road to seek what truths may be found. In Tennessee he sees many places Crockett might have lived, only a few of which are provable as the real deal. At the Alamo, he finds that the debate is not resolved over whether Crockett was executed as a prisoner of war or went down, guns blazing, with bodies at his feet.

A darkly fascinating aspect of Crockett’s legacy is the “Crockett almanacs,” books similar to a farmer’s almanac that combined practical information with tall tales. They were written by East Coast pulp writers, who portrayed Crockett as a racist, chauvinist monster, which got big laughs circa 1839. Later these books were mistaken for real folklore from the oral tradition, which further clouds our view of a man who actually preferred to be called “David.”

This is not to say the book is grim—far from it. The roadside attractions on Thompson’s journey often make a tossed salad of Crockett, Daniel Boone and Paul Bunyan. And watching Thompson and his wife struggle to separate fact from fiction in the “Ballad,” then explain the difference between them to a four-year-old, is a hoot; they end up having to read aloud, “at her insistence,” an entire biography of Andrew Jackson to establish historical context. There’s a fun look at the Disney miniseries that launched a million coonskin caps onto the heads of kids worldwide and made Fess Parker a household name. But Born on a Mountaintop also gives us a look at fame and image in pre-Facebook America and finds that, while the cogs moved more slowly, the machine itself was much the same as the one we know today.

Heather Seggel

Three generations under one roof

Secrets buried by lifetimes

A toast to memorable meals

Banished to public school

The rise and fall of American industry

Restoring some common sense to Congress

What giving gets you

A look into the mind of a sociopath

The end is near, so what do we do?

Blinded by an ugly duckling’s beauty

A mugging gone wrong leads to second chances

A bizarre, true story of marital idealism

The man behind the coonskin cap

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