Heather Seggel

Memoir

Dreaming big dreams

Review by Heather Seggel

Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon opens on a scene right out of a breakneck adventure novel. Mapping rocks alone 20 miles from the Arctic Circle, close to heat stroke but committed to finishing the survey, author Mary Albanese finds herself confronted with a black bear. An aggressive black bear. She draws her .44 Magnum and faces off against the creature, uncertain that a handgun will stop him if he charges. The scene resolves in an astonishing fashion, but what's truly surprising is that the whole book is made up of stories just as exciting, albeit in different ways.

Perhaps most amazing of all is how Albanese ended up in Alaska to begin with. Unable to land a teaching job despite a newsworthy shortage there, she applied to the University of Alaska in a bid to gain residency. Accepted into both the education and geology programs, she went with the intention to get her master's in teaching. A chance occurrence changed her mind and she joined the geology program at a time when there were few women in the field, and began work in places virtually untouched by humans.

Albanese tells her story in short, self-contained chapters. Topics range from meeting the man she would marry at a party to dealing with sexist professors, trying not to freeze to death in substandard housing and the thrill of mapping previously uncharted terrain. Alaska is known for drawing outsize personalities, and there are many on display here, with stories running the gamut from comedy to tragedy. The story spans the mid-1970's to early 80's, and the culture clash between the old west/last frontier crowd and a bunch of college kids still carrying flower power residue adds to the scenery. Not that there's any need for additional tension in a place where failure to wear enough clothing at one time can result in the loss of digits. “When the inside of your freezer is the warmest place in your house, something is terribly wrong,” Albanse writes of one particularly nasty cabin she stayed in.

While much of the story is exuberant and fun, tragedy visits when Albanese loses her daughter shortly after birth. Friends who were pregnant at the same time avoid her, and she channels her grief into fanatical overachievement before finally relaxing her guard once more.

As a work of recent history, personal odyssey, hair-raising adventure and tall tale that just happens to be true, Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon is a winner. Anyone just beginning to dream their own big dreams will find a friend, guide and collaborator in these pages, which may be all the inspiration you need to plot your course.

Read a Q&A with author Mary Albanese about her experiences in Alaska.

Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon opens on a scene right out of a breakneck adventure novel. Mapping rocks alone 20 miles from the Arctic Circle, close to heat stroke but committed to finishing the survey, author Mary Albanese finds herself confronted with a black bear. An…

Social Science

Pushing the racial question

Review by Heather Seggel

Some of My Best Friends Are Black looks at integration and the ways it has failed from a fresh perspective. While campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, Tanner Colby realized he didn’t know any black people. Asking around, he found that his friends didn’t either. There were very few circumstances when blacks and whites, as Colby would phrase it, hang out and play Scrabble together. He set out to learn why.

Four related stories come together here: a Birmingham school system’s gradual integration; a Kansas City neighborhood that fought housing discrimination; the separate and unequal strata occupied by blacks and whites in advertising; and the intergration of a Louisiana Catholic parish whose parishioners were separated only by a parking lot.

There’s no “a-ha” moment in the book, promising an easy solution and more Scrabble nights if we all follow directions. As Colby writes, “White resistance and black reticence are hopelessly entwined with one another, endlessly variable from situation to situation.” It’s not the recipe for racial harmony, but Some of My Best Friends Are Black moves the discussion forward and out into new territory.

Some of My Best Friends Are Black looks at integration and the ways it has failed from a fresh perspective. While campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, Tanner Colby realized he didn’t know any black people. Asking around, he found that his friends didn’t either.…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

An interrupted coming-of-age

Review by Heather Seggel

“The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky.” The very first sentence of Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone tells a surprising amount about the unfolding story and its narrator Becca. Newly graduated from high school and looking to escape small-town life, Becca finds her plans change once she hears of a stranger’s murder. Instead of packing for college, she gets bogged down in the flow of local gossip about Amelia’s death. Vacillating between worry and a kind of internal deadness, she grows concerned that her boyfriend James may be covering for a suspect in the case. Alternating chapters reveal uncanny parallels between Amelia and Becca’s lives, and we watch as one life approaches its end and another is altered forever.

This is author Kat Rosenfield’s first novel, and she’s to be commended for taking risks with Amelia Anne that aren’t common in young adult fiction. The violence in this book is brutal and intimate, but never voyeuristic—don’t be surprised if you physically recoil yet can’t stop reading. Some of Becca’s chapters seem almost to be observed from the air above the town, such as a lengthy meditation about how small-town legends persist and evolve. These musings are dreamy and slow as molasses on the page, yet build and add to the suspense of the mystery. By the end, two people have died as a result of passion and stupidity, and there are no easy explanations for either crime. Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone blends elegant writing and brutal behavior into a sharp and haunting novel.

“The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky.” The very first sentence of Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone…

NonfictionMemoir

The quest to save a life

Review by Heather Seggel

While on assignment in China, journalist Amanda Bennett met and fell in love with a complicated man. They married, moved back to the U.S., created a family, and had their reality turned on its ear when her husband, Terence Foley, was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He lived for several years before the cancer metastasized and claimed his life. Throughout his illness, Bennett’s health insurance covered virtually all related expenses. It wasn’t until after his death that she realized the costs came to over half a million dollars, and she began to question where the money went. What exactly is The Cost of Hope?

Bennett’s book is both a memoir of a marriage and a sharp piece of investigative journalism. Physicians disagreed not only about the type of cancer Foley had, but also about his treatment. At one point Bennett asks, “So what’s the box score on the tumor?” and runs down a list including six pathologists, four oncologists and “at least” four hospitals. “The outcome? Nearly four years after his death, I still don’t know what kind of cancer Terence had. Everyone is convinced he is right.”

Bennett finds that different hospitals charge different amounts for the same procedure. She points out that if the cost were spelled out along with the purpose of the procedure, patients might not be so quick to sign off on invasive tests. Bennett doesn’t harbor regrets about trying to prolong her husband’s life; with The Cost of Hope she has not only memorialized him artfully, but turned his experience into a probing look at modern medicine and the choices it forces upon us.

While on assignment in China, journalist Amanda Bennett met and fell in love with a complicated man. They married, moved back to the U.S., created a family, and had their reality turned on its ear when her husband, Terence Foley, was diagnosed with kidney cancer.…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

The next generation of bad guys

Review by Heather Seggel

The League of Heroes would be out of a job if there were no supervillains for them to vanquish, and the Vindico have played that role for a long time now—too long. With an eye toward retirement, they kidnap five teenagers to train as their replacements. Giving kids the capacity to mind-meld and shift matter: What could possibly go wrong?

Author Wesley King strikes a balance between superhero action and humor in The Vindico. It’s a little like Lish McBride’s horror-humor mashup Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, only the laughs here come from the consequences of giving teenagers superpowers. When flaky ladies’ man Hayden spies a chamber to trap and destroy the Vindico, it’s only natural that he’d neglect to check the “destroy” function until after the archvillains are trapped. Needless to say, chaos ensues.

The five teens fight, form alliances, switch sides, pair up, split up and fight some more, all of which can get confusing. But the yin-yang symbiosis of the good and bad guys is neatly rendered, and each character gets enough backstory to make them distinct. The fight scenes are winners, too, frenetic and fantastical. The Vindico is good (and evil!), action-packed and a very good time.

The League of Heroes would be out of a job if there were no supervillains for them to vanquish, and the Vindico have played that role for a long time now—too long. With an eye toward retirement, they kidnap five teenagers to train as their…

NonfictionMemoir

Like laughing at a funeral

Review by Heather Seggel

Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess to her fans) grew up in a small town in rural Texas with a younger sister and many family pets. In college she met the man she would marry. They moved to the suburbs, had a child and eventually bought a house in a town similar to the one she grew up in. Everyone lived happily ever after.

If you squint kind of hard and read between the lines, that’s almost an accurate summary of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. All that’s missing is Lawson’s dad, a taxidermist so enthusiastic about his work he couldn’t be relied on to make sure the animals were dead before tossing them on his children—or wearing them as hand puppets. Then there’s the family’s radon-poisoned well water, which her mother nevertheless bathed the girls in. “My mom was a big proponent of the ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ theory, almost to the point where she seemed to be daring the world to kill us,” Lawson writes.

This is the kind of book where, once you’ve got the lay of the land, a sentence like “[My neighbor] seemed more concerned this time, possibly because I was belting out Bonnie Tyler and crying while swinging a machete over a partially disturbed grave” makes total sense. It might also make you laugh and cry simultaneously, since the grave held Lawson’s beloved pug and she was swinging at vultures who were trying to dig him up. If that doesn’t make you laugh, there’s a story about her multiple miscarriages and the subsequent birth of her daughter that’s an absolute howler. No, seriously. Plus: Chupacabras!

While the subject matter may be in questionable, or unquestionably bad, taste, this book induced convulsive laughter so hard it qualified as a Pilates workout. And the point of the whole enterprise is to not run from but celebrate those things that make each of us want to hide, since we’ve all got them—though maybe not as many or as freaky as Jenny Lawson’s. That’s why she’s The Bloggess and the rest of us just work here. Pretend this never happened? Not possible, and that’s all the more reason to be glad.

Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess to her fans) grew up in a small town in rural Texas with a younger sister and many family pets. In college she met the man she would marry. They moved to the suburbs, had a child and eventually bought…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

A not-too-distant war zone

Review by Heather Seggel

Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut YA novel (and Printz Award winner) Ship Breaker imagined a future America dependent on scavengers for survival after global warming and peak oil have irrevocably altered the landscape. The Drowned Cities is not a sequel per se, but a “companion” volume packed with new thrills and provocations.

After 10 years, China has given up trying to negotiate peace among the warring factions in the United States, pulled up stakes and gone home. The remaining Americans are engrossed in infighting and the recruitment of children to serve as soldiers: a sure ticket to a brutal and short life, but for many kids the only choice available.

Refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to escape this fate, until they find a bioengineered, half-human fighting creature named Tool who was wounded and left to die. Mahlia sees an opportunity to save Tool and “make him into her loyal fighting dog.” But Tool has fought for so long he’s begun to see the futility of battle, and may shift his loyalty at any time. When a crisis strikes, Mahlia must decide between Tool, who may be her ticket to safety, and Mouse, who once risked his own life to save hers.

The Drowned Cities is an adventure story, a thriller and a sharply drawn fable about the state of the world today. It succeeds handily on all three fronts. Bioengineered man-dog border guards may not be with us today, but child soldiers, sadly, are, and they become harder to ignore when they’re here at home.

Bacigalupi does a masterful job of letting the action propel the plot and the scenery tell the larger story. The White House is never identified by name but described so we can recognize it, despite the fact that half of it has been shelled to smithereens. K Street in Washington, D.C., is now the K Canal, winding through the ruins of a once-great city. The perception of foreign aid by those receiving it is captured here as well: “Mahlia could imagine all those Chinese people in their far-off country donating to the war victims of the Drowned Cities. . . . All of them rich enough to meddle where they didn’t belong.”

The Drowned Cities is dark, and the violence is unrelenting, but Bacigalupi allows for a hopeful conclusion—possibly the riskiest move in this entirely cutting-edge novel.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s debut YA novel (and Printz Award winner) Ship Breaker imagined a future America dependent on scavengers for survival after global warming and peak oil have irrevocably altered the landscape. The Drowned Cities is not a sequel per se, but a “companion” volume…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Making a fateful choice

Review by Heather Seggel

Beatrice Prior is about to leave her prior life behind. She loves her family and their tightly controlled life, but individuality and freedom are calling. In Beatrice’s dystopian Chicago, every 16-year-old must choose their “faction” and devote themselves to that group for the rest of their lives. The factions, which correspond to specific characteristics, work to encourage specific virtues: Candor (chosen by the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful) and Erudite (the intelligent). When the time comes for Tris (as Beatrice renames herself) to pick her faction, she opts for adventure over predictability. That decision calls everything into question, from who her family really is to what lurks behind the facade of this new, allegedly perfect society—and why being labeled “divergent” must be kept hidden at all costs.

With Divergent, debut author Veronica Roth has created a startling future world on the verge of war. The adventures Tris goes on with the members of the Dauntless faction are breathtaking in their danger, and the dizzying heights and terrors leap right off the page. Her relationships are fraught with worry; since everyone is jockeying for inclusion and not everyone will make it, who can she really trust? You'll be up all night with Divergent, a brainy thrill-ride of a novel. And good news—it’s the first book of a planned trilogy.

Beatrice Prior is about to leave her prior life behind. She loves her family and their tightly controlled life, but individuality and freedom are calling. In Beatrice’s dystopian Chicago, every 16-year-old must choose their “faction” and devote themselves to that group for the rest of…

NonfictionArts & Culture

The power of a story

Review by Heather Seggel

Cartoonist Jen Sorensen once drew a strip titled “How to get Americans to care about genocide,” which included “Darfur: The Movie, starring Russell Crowe as an aid worker.” She may be onto something: Jonathan Gottschall argues, among other things, that fiction triggers empathy more effectively than nonfiction, giving Crowe a leg up on Anderson Cooper. Surprisingly, that’s not always a bad thing.

Gottschall roots his theory in early childhood, where kids are constantly making up stories that weave through their playtimes. Virtually all of them hinge on problems, offering a ready-made “plot” for princesses or firemen to jump into. These stories give them a place to practice social and problem-solving skills in a low-risk environment. Adults do this in daydreams, and some researchers believe our sleeping dreams serve much the same function (we just tend to forget those parts because they look so much like daily life, unlike when we’re late to class . . . and arrive in our underwear).

Adult fiction may feature more sophisticated plots, but the stories we’re drawn to are still almost entirely problem-focused. Even the scripted worlds of so-called reality television are designed to promote screaming matches, tearful reconciliations and hot-tub hookups. Would you really tune in to a show where nobody drank, swore or ate anyone else’s peanut butter? Obstacles are key to story as we understand it.

Gottschall looks at anthropological and neurobiological evidence that stories are part of human survival and evolution. The great religious texts offer people stories that unite them in communities and promote a common moral good. Uncle Tom’s Cabin shifted popular sentiment about slavery and roused passions at home and abroad as the nation went to war. Of course, the same degree of attachment can lead to tragic consequences as well; many of history’s atrocities originated from religious beliefs taken to extremes. Story is a double-edged sword, but one we play with daily.

The Storytelling Animal is informative, but also a lot of fun, as when Gottschall vividly describes the “Neverlands” his daughters create in their playtime. Anyone who has wondered why stories affect us the way they do will find a new appreciation of our collective desire to be spellbound in this fascinating book.

Cartoonist Jen Sorensen once drew a strip titled “How to get Americans to care about genocide,” which included “Darfur: The Movie, starring Russell Crowe as an aid worker.” She may be onto something: Jonathan Gottschall argues, among other things, that fiction triggers empathy more…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

A soldier returns to an unfamiliar home

Review by Heather Seggel

Great student, skilled actor, loyal boyfriend, good son and brother: Ben Bright’s talents can take him wherever he wants to go in life. When he decides on the Army Reserves instead of college, his friends and family are crushed and afraid. Insisting he’s not going to war, Ben is nevertheless deployed to Iraq, and ends up being hit by a makeshift bomb. When his family gets a call telling them he has a brain injury, everyone in Ben’s life feels the changes in their own. They rally to help him, but, unable to communicate or remember who anyone is, Ben is trapped inside his injured frame.

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am is based on author Harry Mazer’s experience as an underage enlisted soldier. In relatively few pages, the book (co-authored by Peter Lerangis) discusses many of the issues surrounding injured veterans, yet never feels busy or cluttered. Ben’s best friend and girlfriend become crucial to his recovery process, though they are devastated by his inability to remember them. His parents’ marriage suffers under the accommodations they must make to get Ben well and home again, only to find he feels safer in the hospital. His younger brother’s autism uniquely equips him to draw Ben out of his shell; while everyone else in his life is suffering emotionally over what has happened (and acting out, adding to Ben’s discomfort and confusion), Chris is distant by nature and content to simply talk about memories of his big brother. If he does so long enough, without interruption, Ben’s memories might be led back to his home and family, a crucial step on the road to healing.

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am tells a bold war story without being overtly political or taking sides; as such it’s a great choice for discussion groups. It’s also an exciting, intelligent, fast-paced read that should appeal to both avid and reluctant readers, providing gripping action and food for thought.

Great student, skilled actor, loyal boyfriend, good son and brother: Ben Bright’s talents can take him wherever he wants to go in life. When he decides on the Army Reserves instead of college, his friends and family are crushed and afraid. Insisting he’s not going…

NonfictionBusiness & Finance

Money isn’t everything, but it is something

Review by Heather Seggel

When Pablo Picasso said, “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money,” many people probably wrote the statement off as a bit of verbal cubism and forgot it. Author Laura Vanderkam (168 Hours) found wisdom there, and in All the Money in the World she explores how much is enough, and how to derive more joy from what we have by using it wisely. Underlying her look at family size, wedding expenses, backyard chicken ranching and other costly endeavors is the knowledge that while none of us will ever have all the money in the world, many of us have more than we need and don’t realize it.

On some level, All the Money in the World is less about money than about using it as a way to clarify one’s priorities. Vanderkam points out that the $5,000 most couples spend on engagement and wedding rings is great if you’re all about the bling, but spend $300 on something less flashy and you can fund a lot of nights out, day trips, bouquets, et cetera, to enrich your relationship over time. One isn’t a better choice than the other; the point is that it is a choice, not a lock-step march to the altar with specific accessories.

Vanderkam also plays with the notion of family size, exploring data that suggest once you have one child (and a home and a minivan), the cost per child to add to your family drops considerably, and continues to do so with each additional child. Again, that’s not an inducement to rush out and produce a litter, but the freedom to consider a larger family (which will nevertheless demand sacrifices) if it’s what you want.

All of these ideas are held to the light at multiple angles, and while money is often a source of stress and concern, it becomes something fun to toy with here. That’s helpful, because one of the twists one encounters as income increases is a reduction in pleasure when material goods are easier to come by: the so-called hedonic treadmill effect. Getting back to the ability to enjoy them with a sense of abundance and appreciation is at the heart of what Picasso was talking about, and there are numerous tips and a final section dedicated to helping readers explore how to do just that. If you want to earn more, or simply enjoy what you already have, All the Money in the World is a great launch pad.

When Pablo Picasso said, “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money,” many people probably wrote the statement off as a bit of verbal cubism and forgot it. Author Laura Vanderkam (168 Hours) found wisdom there, and in All the…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

High school polar opposites attract

Review by Heather Seggel

When Jesse and Emily pass in the halls of their high school, they don’t make eye contact, and why would they? Emily is student body vice president, an intern at an important company with a loyal boyfriend and, it must be said, incredibly perfect hair. Jesse keeps her locks cut short with a pocketknife, favors outsize rubber boots over ballet flats and is the sole member of a radical flyer-posting political organization called NOLAW. The Difference Between You and Me would seem to be an understatement, yet every Tuesday afternoon finds these two together in the bathroom at the public library for what Emily calls their “special time,” where those barriers dissolve in the face of an amazing physical connection.

In this smart, funny novel, two girls who couldn't be more different share a physical connection they can't deny.

Jesse wants to go public with their relationship while Emily feels the need to compartmentalize it with her other extracurricular activities, and that works for a while. But when the school is divided by a big-box store’s plans to build in town, currying political favor by sponsoring school activities, a divide is created that forces the two to re-evaluate where they stand. Ideology competes with affection, and who wins is anything but clear.

Author Madeleine George (Looks) tells this story with humor and wisdom. Jesse is so embarrassed to tell her left-wing activist parents she’s involved with a “normal” girl that they suspect she’s on drugs; she denies it, then realizes the relationship is itself a form of addiction. Emily is genuine and earnest about school, her hometown and her boyfriend, but feels seen by Jesse on a deeper level, and that vulnerability is intoxicating. There’s also a clear and fair-minded look at the positive and negative impacts of urban sprawl on communities.

The Difference Between You and Me will prompt heated discussions, and maybe the next wave of photocopied manifestos that challenge the norm. Let’s hope.

When Jesse and Emily pass in the halls of their high school, they don’t make eye contact, and why would they? Emily is student body vice president, an intern at an important company with a loyal boyfriend and, it must be said, incredibly perfect hair.…

NonfictionHistory

A portrait of Klimt and his Jewish muse

Review by Heather Seggel

Vienna circa 1900 was a virtual paradise for artists, intellectuals and those who enjoyed their company. It was during this cultural golden age that the painter Gustav Klimt, having pulled himself up from poverty and into fame as a “workaholic artist and serial philanderer,” created his best-known works. Among them was a portrait, three years in the making, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, born in Vienna but of Jewish descent. She was The Lady in Gold.

Anne-Marie O’Connor’s book traces the history of the famous painting as well as those whose lives it intersected. The title alone tells part of the story: When the Nazis stole the painting during the war, leaving Bloch-Bauer’s name attached to it would have meant acknowledging that the painting’s subject was Jewish; far simpler then to reduce her to “the lady in gold.” Thus “Adele’s identity disappeared with a simple stroke of the pen.” Sixty years after its theft, the painting became the subject of lengthy litigation between Bloch-Bauer’s surviving family members and the Austrian government, a case that improbably ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The painting was ultimately returned to the heirs and sold at auction for a record sum. It’s currently on display in a New York gallery, but O’Connor’s focus is more on the journey than its end point.

The biographical sketches of Klimt, Bloch-Bauer and their families and community are richly drawn. While any book following the plight of Jews in Vienna at the time of the Holocaust will of course be full of sorrows, there are bright spots and humor as well. Having the paintings returned brings nobody back to life, but they do testify to a time when the Jewish elite were not just accepted but celebrated in Vienna. Klimt, derided by critics for “objectifying” women, found them to be his greatest champions for acknowledging and portraying female sexuality. It’s widely known that he carried on affairs with his models, and the historical assumption is that Adele Bloch-Bauer was no exception, but there is no proof to be found. One of Klimt’s grandsons was asked about it and, acknowledging there’s no way to tell, nevertheless added, “I’m certain he tried.”

Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale.

Vienna circa 1900 was a virtual paradise for artists, intellectuals and those who enjoyed their company. It was during this cultural golden age that the painter Gustav Klimt, having pulled himself up from poverty and into fame as a “workaholic artist and serial philanderer,” created…

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