Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

NonfictionMusicMemoirBiography

Following the beat of their own drummers

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

The lives of musical greats continue to fascinate us, and this fall once again features biographies and memoirs of key players, from the producer credited with inventing rock ’n’ roll to a woman at the forefront of feminist rock.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash got together in Memphis’ Sun Studio for an impromptu jam session. Behind the console was Sam Phillips, the man who not only discovered Presley, Cash and Lewis, but who also dreamed of bringing together black and white voices in the studio in a deeply divided South. Peter Guralnick, the dean of rock historians, draws on extensive interviews from his 25-year friendship with Phillips in the epic, elegant and crisply told Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll. Guralnick charts Phillips’ path from his birth near Florence, Alabama, to the founding of Sun Records—and chronicles his enduring contributions to rock ’n’ roll. When he produced Rufus Thomas’ version of “Hound Dog,” for example, Phillips thought it didn’t live up to Big Mama Thornton’s original, but “Rufus carried off his performance with genuine conviction—the one unwavering test Sam applied to any material he let out of the studio.” In the end, as Guralnick points out, what drove Phillips was his dream of allowing the voices he had heard singing chants in the cotton fields to express themselves in their own way. “[M]usic was not confined to the drawing room . . . there was great art to be discovered in the experience of those who had been marginalized and written off because of their race, their class, or their lack of formal education.” 

LONG AS I CAN SEE THE LIGHT
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival serves as a cracking good storyteller in Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music. Born in El Cerrito, California, in 1945, Fogerty sought music as both escape and solace after his parents’ divorce. He traces the early incarnations of Creedence and the band’s rise to the top of the charts in 1969 with “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou.” He also offers backstory on his lyrics: “Bad Moon Rising,” for instance, grew out of hearing people talk in astrological lingo such as “I’m a Virgo with Libra rising.” Although Creedence was flying high in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the group soon descended into an inferno of contentious legal battles. Fogerty expresses his anger and disappointment with bandmates Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, and for the first time shares what he believes were the outlandish courtroom tactics of lawyers who knew nothing about music. After a period away from the public eye, he has immersed himself in songwriting once again—“all good songs engage you because they get you to feel something”—and emerged thankful for the journey, even the hard parts.

THE LOVE YOU SAVE
Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper chronicles the King of Pop’s rise to fame in the compulsively readable MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson. Drawing on 400 interviews with friends, family and others, Knopper traces Jackson’s musical genius from his early days with the Jackson 5 through his out-of-this-world solo success with “Beat It” and “Thriller.” When Jackson met Quincy Jones in the mid-1970s, he saw Jones as a father figure who could take the place of the abusive Joe Jackson, and by the end of the ’70s, Jackson was working with Jones, moving toward a solo career and developing his signature dance moves. With the release of videos for “Billie Jean” and “Thriller,” he successfully “integrated radio and MTV,” Knopper writes. Through much of the 1990s and early 2000s, Jackson lived under the shadow of child sexual abuse charges, and he sank into oblivion from prescription drug use before his death in 2009. Still, for nearly three decades, he was “supernaturally graceful, the rare show-business Renaissance man who could sing, dance, and write songs.” 

PAINTED FROM MEMORY
Unlike most traditional memoirs, Elvis Costello’s Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink eschews any narrative structure, moving freely out from his childhood in Liverpool and London, where he accompanied his father to dance halls, soaking up the chords and vibes. In school, he managed to talk a couple of friends out of an “unhealthy fascination with the music of Emerson, Lake & Palmer” and turn them on to the acoustic music then flowing out of Laurel Canyon. Costello mulls over his associations with musicians from Emmylou Harris to Kris Kristofferson, discussing the influence each has had on him. A prolific songwriter, he also shares insights into the composition of his songs. For “Allison,” which is based on the imagined life of a grocery checkout cashier, he writes, “I have no explanation for why I was able to stand outside reality and imagine such a scene as described in the song and to look so far into the future.” Costello’s aim is true in these peripatetic musings about his life and music.

MODERN GIRL
Guitarist Carrie Brownstein co-founded the group Sleater-Kinney, pushing the boundaries of punk and indie rock and emerging as a central figure of the riot grrrl movement. In Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, she probes her life with an honesty that is at once painful and spirited. Growing up in a suburb of Seattle, Brownstein attended her first concert—Madonna—in fifth grade, a “moment I’ll never forget, a total elation that momentarily erased any outline of darkness.” By the time she was in high school, she was alienated from her parents and immersed in Bikini Kill, whose music provided a haven from the turmoil of her teenage life. She and Corin Tucker eventually formed Sleater-Kinney and made a name for themselves in the Seattle scene and around the world. Brownstein bubbles over with fiercely blunt insights about the male-dominated music business: “[P]ersona for a man is equated with power; persona for a woman makes her less of a woman.” When Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006, Brownstein went on to co-write, produce and star in the television show “Portlandia.” She declares that, for her, performing and playing and living the life of a working artist constitutes her search for a home: “the unlit firecracker I carried around inside me in my youth . . . found a home in music.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The lives of musical greats continue to fascinate us, and this fall once again features biographies and memoirs of key players, from the producer credited with inventing rock ’n’ roll to a woman at the forefront of feminist rock.
NonfictionMemoirMedicine

Final life lessons

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Several recent books, most notably Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, urge us to ask ourselves how we can live a good life, recognizing that death is a seamless part of our existence. Two compelling new accounts highlight individuals struggling with this question.

LESSONS FROM HOSPICE
In On Living, hospice chaplain Kerry Egan begins her vocation with some resistance, unsure that in her own brokenness she can provide comfort to those who are broken by life and waiting for death. Reluctant to talk about religion with her patients, she soon discovers that simply listening to their stories—of their families, of their losses and regrets, of love—heals her and them: “I don’t know if listening to other people’s stories as they die can make you wise, but I do know that it can heal your soul. I know this because those stories healed mine.”

Egan shares the story of Gloria, a mother who’s been withholding a secret from her son and wants to reveal it as a gesture of love in her final days. A patient named Reggie expresses regret about a life that’s been “empty and alone,” leaving him without a single friend or family member to offer comfort. Then there’s Cynthia, who struggles to accept her overweight body even as she’s dying; like all people who are dying, Egan observes, Cynthia faces the reality that she will “no longer be able to experience this world in this body, ever again.” The lesson for those of us not dying, of course, is that living fully means embracing our imperfect selves with joy and love while we still can.

Egan’s evocative and eloquent book reminds us that we are defined by the stories we tell, and those stories often reveal how life can be “beautiful and crushing” at the same time.

DEATH WITH DIGNITY
Deborah Ziegler’s poignant and fierce Wild and Precious Life celebrates the life of her daughter, Brittany Maynard, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2014 at the age of 29. 

When Ziegler first learned of her daughter’s condition, she ran screaming into the dark night of hopelessness, praying that God would take her and not her daughter. She refused to accept her daughter’s impending death and wanted to pursue any treatment that would extend her life.

Brittany, however, taught her mother the one truth we most often avoid in such situations: A good death is part of a life well lived. After Brittany learned the gravity of her situation, she moved from California to Oregon, where a death with dignity law allowed her to make her own choices on how and when her life would end. Her decision prompted a nationwide discussion of assisted suicide and a patient’s right to make end-of-life decisions. 

Skillfully interspersing stories of Brittany’s growing up with a touching account of her final year, Ziegler reminds us, in Brittany’s own words, of the real lesson we need to learn: “Live your lives well. Accept the sorrow with the joy, the ineffable grief with the love.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Several recent books, most notably Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, urge us to ask ourselves how we can live a good life, recognizing that death is a seamless part of our existence. Two compelling new accounts highlight individuals struggling with this question.
NonfictionFood & Drink

So good you can almost taste it

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Reading succulent books on food and its history is almost as satisfying as eating a great meal. This season our tables are laden with five luscious books sure to appeal to the foodies on your holiday list.

SPICE IS NICE
In Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, Sarah Lohman traces the evolution of our culinary culture by exploring the histories of eight ingredients that have come to characterize modern American cuisine: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, monosodium glutamate and Sriracha. Drawing on deep research into cookbooks, as well as her own travels in search of flavor origins, Lohman introduces us to the explorers, merchants and cooks responsible for changing our tastes. For example, in the early 19th century, merchant John Crowninshield and his father, George, brought 1.5 million pounds of black pepper from Sumatra to the U.S. over a period of two years. Americans have been using hot sauce to spice up their dishes since 1807, Lohman discovers, and the popularity of Sriracha, first produced by Huy Fong Foods in 1980, continues to turn up the heat in our meals. Lohman’s delectable book illustrates the deep connections between culture and food, reminding us that the flavors that enhance our foods represent the people who cook it.

HOT TIMES
Also noticing that Americans love a little spice in life—and on their vegetables, pork roast or chicken wings—journalist Denver Nicks offers an enticing overview of this passion in Hot Sauce Nation: America’s Burning Obsession. He discovers that sales of hot sauce in the U.S. far outstrip sales of other condiments. These peppery potions have long been an integral ingredient in the cooking of the world’s poor because hot sauce is inexpensive, tasty and has a long shelf life. Fast food chains, such as Wendy’s and White Castle, have introduced dishes such as spicy chicken sandwiches, jalapeño burgers and Sriracha sliders to their menus to satisfy the cravings for capsaicin (the chemical in peppers that causes the sizzling sensation). Nicks’ burning questions about our love of Tabasco and its many cousins eventually move beyond the taste of the sauce and on to the mystery of why we love it. He concludes philosophically that we devour hot sauce “to enliven our meals and to dance with pain,” transcending, at least momentarily, the agony induced by the capsaicin rush.

CULINARY TRAVELS
Matt Goulding’s love of Spanish cuisine began when he shared a meal with the woman who would become his wife. In Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain’s Food Culture, Goulding does for Spain’s food what he did for Japan’s in Rice, Noodle, Fish, except that this time it’s more personal. In a foreword, Goulding dishes out the elements of Spanish cuisine that he’s fallen for: “beautiful local ingredients, impeccable techniques, and a ravenous appetite for all manners of flora and fauna. The Spanish suck the brains from shrimp heads, crunch sardine spines like potato chips, and throw elaborate wine-soaked parties to celebrate spring onions.” Goulding’s succulent prose celebrates nine regions of Spain, commending the food, drink or manner of preparation that makes each area memorable. In Barcelona, for example, it’s foraging for dinner in the markets across the city, from the sheep market to the pig market. Galicia reigns supreme for its gooseneck barnacles, while Basque country produces Spain’s finest wines. Goulding sprinkles useful advice throughout the book; thus, on “how to drink like a Spaniard,” he counsels to “order it local,” “drink it small and cold,” and “skip the Sangria.” Affectionate and amusing, Goulding’s book provides a tasty guide for travelers grazing through Spain’s food cultures.

TASTE OF THE TOWN
As the late food historian Joy Santlofer demonstrates in her elegant Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York, the Big Apple has long been a crossroads of food cultures. Santlofer vividly traces the evolution of New York City as the capital of the food industry from the mid-17th century to the present. She focuses on the big four of food production in New York—bread, sugar, drink, meat—and chronicles the ways that the production of each moved from the artisanal to the industrial and back to the artisanal. During the height of industrialization, New York was home to National Biscuit Company, Hebrew National and American Chicle. Readers familiar with the city will be surprised to learn that the pedestrian mall on 42nd Street functioned in the 19th century as a trail where cattle were driven to slaughterhouses along the East River. Santlofer brings to life the colorful history of “food city,” emphasizing that the future belongs to young artisans who continue to create new products.

A REAL PAGE-CHURNER
In Butter: A Rich History, food writer and former pastry chef Elaine Khosrova whips up a tasty chronicle of the indispensable dairy product. Khosrova demonstrates that “the life and times of butter have been deeply entwined” with events far from kitchen or creamery. She explores, for example, the use of butter in Tibetan Buddhism to sculpt sacred figures; the staple also took on sacred properties in the Middle Ages when the Roman Catholic Church banned consumption of butter on fast days. Khosrova points out that butter’s rich texture and flavor enhance other ingredients and make sweets irresistible. She provides a range of recipes, from croissants and shortbread to hollandaise and butterscotch pudding, that butter made possible, as well as recipes for making your own butter. Khosrova’s richly textured history melts in your mouth.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Reading succulent books on food and its history is almost as satisfying as eating a great meal. This season our tables are laden with five luscious books sure to appeal to the foodies on your holiday list.
NonfictionNature

Troubled waters

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

The vastness and untamed energy of oceans, seas and lakes both fascinate and frighten us. Two new books explore our complex relationships with iconic American bodies of water.

In his vivid The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, University of Florida historian Jack E. Davis narrates the history of the Gulf of Mexico from its origins in the Pleistocene epoch and its flourishing aboriginal cultures—still evident in burial and ceremonial mounds. Davis traces various eras of exploration and conquest by Spanish, British and French explorers, the development of towns on the Gulf as tourist destinations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and oil booms and ecological catastrophes of the late 20th century. Along the way, we meet figures who shaped the history of the Gulf: ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, who explored the ancient mounds; 16th-century Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; and Randy Wayne White, the fishing guide (and bestselling author) whose promotion of the tarpon lured hundreds of anglers to the Gulf Coast.

Though Gulf waters once teemed with “crabs, shrimp, and curious jumping fish called the mullet,” by the mid-20th century, the thirst for development had disastrous consequences. In the 1960s, many scientists recommended eradicating mangroves, which prevent erosion, in order to build condominiums closer to the water. When beaches began to erode, communities built seawalls, which actually worsened the problem. As Davis demonstrates in this absorbing narrative, the history of the Gulf teaches us that nature is most generous whenever we respect its sovereignty.

ECOLOGICAL THREATS
The Great Lakes span 94,000 square miles and provide 20 percent of the world’s supply of fresh water. Yet, as award-winning journalist Dan Egan points out in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, these inland seas face challenges unimaginable when explorer Jean Nicolet first paddled across Lake Huron in the 17th century. At that time, the Great Lakes were isolated from the Atlantic, unreachable by boat not only because of their unnavigable shorelines but also because of the challenges of crossing waterfalls. With the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, begun in 1955, ships gained what Egan calls a “front door” to the lakes, turning cities like Chicago into inland ports.

By the mid-20th century, industrial and municipal pollution created dead zones in the lakes. While the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 prompted some recovery, the law didn’t prevent ships from dumping contaminated ballast. Egan chronicles the ways that such pollution has decimated native fish populations, created toxic algae outbreaks and introduced the DNA of non-native species into the lakes. In this compelling account, Egan issues a clarion call for re-imagining the future of the Great Lakes.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The vastness and untamed energy of oceans, seas and lakes both fascinate and frighten us. Two new books explore our complex relationships with iconic American bodies of water.

NonfictionBiography

The roots of Christianity

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

The recent death of Reverend Billy Graham and the many diverse responses to it illustrated how inextricably Christianity has woven itself into the fabric of American history. How did this ancient religion grow from a loose group of individuals following an itinerant preacher into a massive movement with millions of followers? Three provocative new books examine the evolution of the Christian religion from its roots through the Middle Ages.

In The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, Bart D. Ehrman (How Jesus Became God, Misquoting Jesus), a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, draws deeply on ancient documents and other research to tell the tale of how Christianity grew from a handful of followers to more than 30 million followers over four centuries. After Jesus’ death, this rag-tag group of illiterate peasants embraced a message of love and service, equality and community that challenged the dominant ideology of imperial Rome. Contrary to Roman teachings, under which there existed a clear hierarchy between classes of people, in Christianity no such hierarchies existed and everyone—master and slave, husband and wife, healthy and sick—was equal before God. As Ehrman points out, a core group of this early community preached this new message zealously, pointing out both to Jews and non-Jews the benefits of acknowledging the divinity of one God and properly worshipping this God. The development of early Christianity was never easy since various imperial groups persecuted Christians; yet in spite of such persecution, Christianity grew through word of mouth among family and friends. Eventually, Christianity was tolerated and then legalized by the Roman Empire. As Ehrman concludes in this stimulating book, Christianity took over the empire and radically altered the lives of those living in it by opening the doors of public policies to the poor, the sick and the outcasts as deserving members of society.

THE APOSTLE
One leader of the early church, Paul of Tarsus, did even more to spread this new gospel of one God. In his monumental, meticulously detailed and elegant study, Paul: A Biography, N.T. Wright, Chair of New Testament and early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews, presents a fascinating portrait of a man who went from persecuting Christians to being their biggest advocate. Since Paul tells most of his story in his letters, Wright carefully and closely reads these letters to illustrate that Paul combined the winsome with the rigorous to share his message. Wright points out that Paul’s deeply Jewish education provides the foundation for his vision of Christianity: to love one’s neighbor and to love the one God with all one’s heart, soul and might. Above all, Paul emphasizes the “family life of believers,” what he begins to call the church—a new kind of community in which “each worked for all and all for each.”

A NEW MESSAGE
By the Middle Ages, Paul’s message of a new community was lost in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the church, which focused inward to take care of itself. In the striking and compulsively readable Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart’s Path to the God Within by Joel F. Harrington, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University, the life of Eckhart (1260-1328), a Dominican friar who taught a message of the holiness of the individual that was inward and outward, is explored. Eckhart delivered a new teaching: by letting go of worldly things—even the image of God Himself—we prepare ourselves for an experience of the divine. Harrington examines Eckhart’s own process toward this teaching in the book’s four sections: “Letting Go of the World,” “Letting Go of God,” “Letting Go of the Self” and “Holding On to Religion.” For Eckhart, the experience of the divine means not withdrawal from the world, but a renewed energy to love and serve others. The divine spark within each of us, Eckhart teaches, links us to others and to creation. Harrington’s striking portrait of Eckhart illustrates the ways Eckhart’s teachings remain fresh even for today’s Christians.

The recent death of Reverend Billy Graham and the many diverse responses to it illustrated how inextricably Christianity has woven itself into the fabric of American history. How did this ancient religion grow from a loose group of individuals following an itinerant preacher into a massive movement with millions of followers? Three provocative new books examine the evolution of the Christian religion from its roots through the Middle Ages.

NonfictionSocial ScienceReligion & SpiritualityPoliticsMemoir

Searching for meaning

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

When our relationships falter under the pressure of political or religious demands, when ambiguity more than certainty guides our lives, we may be tempted to succumb to our malaise. However, there is another option: We can stumble through the shadows, searching for some thread of meaning that will guide us out of the darkness. The authors of these books have chosen the latter path, peeling away the detritus of life to discover meaning—personal and political—and plumbing the spiritual depths that accompany their searches.

★ Thin Places

With humor and razor-sharp insight, Jordan Kisner’s Thin Places: Essays From in Between captures the visceral, palpable feeling of loss. The ways we inhabit space occupy many of these evocative essays, such as in a piece on an art installation at New York City’s spacious Park Avenue Armory, in which Kisner encourages readers to find someplace “big and empty” when they are “stuck somewhere small . . . somewhere unhappy or afraid or paralyzed or heartbroken.” In her celebrated essay “Thin Places,” she discovers the age-old concept of the space between the spiritual and physical world. This “thin place” is porous, a space where distinctions between “you and not-you, real and unreal, worldly and otherworldly, fall away.” It’s in these thin places that we can find ourselves, absorb glimpses of new meaning from another world and live in the moment. Kisner weaves together reflections on Kierkegaard, her early Christian conversion (and later “unconversion”) and waiting for the subway to gracefully guide us through our own emptiness in search of fullness.

The Great Blue Hills of God

Kreis Beall’s The Great Blue Hills of God explores in lyrical prose what happens when her life falls apart. Beall, who helped create Blackberry Farm, one of the South’s most heavenly resorts, appears to have it all: a loving marriage, great wealth, a beautiful family and a satisfying career. But the demands of building up several properties slowly erode her marriage, and she finds that her and her husband’s financial bank is full but their “emotional bank” is being emptied. As her marriage fades away, Beall falls, and suddenly her health is compromised, and she temporarily loses her hearing. She experiences further devastation when her son, Sam, dies in a skiing accident. Despite the loss of her family, health and wealth, she discovers glimpses of grace in her reading of the Bible, discussions with her pastor and friends and meditations on the nature of home. Throughout the book, Beall sprinkles in fruitful bits of wisdom, embracing the conclusion that, “to me, home is God, family, friends, and legacy. . . . A home is a heart. It is love, people, relationships, and the life you live in it.”

Scandalous Witness

Lee C. Camp’s Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians offers a brilliant summary and exposition of the ways that Christianity is a politic, not a religion. Camp (Mere Discipleship) asks a series of questions that frames Christianity as not just a private spiritual practice but a guide for our life together: “How do we live together? Where is human history headed? What does it mean to be human? And what does it look like to live in a rightly ordered human community that engenders flourishing, justice, and the peace of God?” In the end, the Christian community embraces its mission when it “sets captives free, demolishes strongholds, and . . . [sows] the seeds of the peaceable reign of God.” Camp’s manifesto is a must-read in a world in which Christianity has become either a bedfellow of political parties or an isolated, private practice.

I Am Not Your Enemy

Michael T. McRay’s I Am Not Your Enemy takes Camp’s idea to the personal level. We create meaning in the stories we tell each other, and if we tell a good enough story, we can convince others that certain individuals are our enemies. But just as stories have the power to cultivate hate, they also have the power to reconcile and redeem. Throughout his travels across Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland and South Africa, and through his work as a conflict and resolution counselor, McRay hears violence-filled narratives with shattered endings. Yet, as he illustrates, not every story needs to end this way. McRay shares stories of a mother who refuses to seek vengeance for her son’s death, a community theater director who helps people who are marginalized find their voices and discover beauty in their lives and a woman who forgives the man who murdered her father. With the verve of a great storyteller, McRay regales us with spellbinding narratives that illustrate the power of words to change our lives and bring meaning to the world.

When our relationships falter under the pressure of political or religious demands, when ambiguity more than certainty guides our lives, we may be tempted to succumb to our malaise. However, there is another option: We can stumble through the shadows, searching for some thread of…

NonfictionBlack History

Glimmers of hope during dark times

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Inspiration has been hard to come by in a year marked by a devastating pandemic, economic hardship and shocking political turmoil. If your faith has been challenged, these books will encourage hope, offer guidance and provide glimpses of light amid the shadows.

Dusk, Night, Dawn

With her characteristic deadpan humor, Anne Lamott shepherds us through the darkness in Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage. In short, affectionately candid chapters, Lamott meditates on the beauty of nature, the power of forgiveness, the wonder of love and kindness and the benefit of recognizing specks of hope all around us. When she’s in an airport, exasperated by flight delays, for example, she notices a young girl’s absorption in some hair ribbons. Suddenly it dawns on her how we can recover our faith in life “in the midst of so much bad news and dread, when our children’s futures are so uncertain: We start in the here and now. . . . We start where our butts and feet and minds are. We start in these times of incomprehensible scientific predictions, madness and disbelief, aging and constantly nightmarish airport delays, and we look up and around for brighter ribbons.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Anne Lamott shares some ideas for how to get by when the world seems especially dark.

Freeing Jesus

While Lamott explores how we restrict ourselves with limited ideas about grace, sin and forgiveness, Diana Butler Bass focuses on the ways we put Jesus in a cage, confining the universality of his life and message behind bars of dogmatism. In her moving Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence, Bass attempts to answer the age-old question, “Who is Jesus really?” Theologians have long responded to this question by focusing on either the human Jesus of history or the divine Christ of faith, but Bass writes that neither history nor theology, “neither intellectual arguments nor ecclesiastical authority elucidates the Jesus I have known.” She shares wonderful stories of finding Jesus during every stage of her life, noting that experiencing Jesus as a friend during one’s teenage years will be very different from experiencing Jesus as a friend in middle age. In this refreshing book, Bass tells readers of a Jesus “who shows up consistently and when we least expect him. Freeing Jesus means finding him along the way.”

Learning to Pray

Each of these books highlights practices that can heal fractured relationships or bring us closer to God, such as prayer. However, our understanding of prayer is often as constricted as our understanding of Jesus. In his monumental and elegantly insightful book Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, James Martin, SJ, teaches a simple but enduring lesson: “Prayer is a personal relationship with God.” He gently guides the reader through reasons to pray and offers a richly detailed history of various types of prayer, from petitionary prayer and centering prayer to nature prayer and lectio divina, or praying with sacred texts. Martin reminds us of the many reasons we pray, including to praise God and to unburden ourselves. Because we often think of prayer as asking for favors from God, or as limited to a certain time and place, we don’t realize that we can pray without knowing it by “pausing to think about something that inspires you,” being “aware that you are grateful” or even simply wishing you could pray. Martin’s book is so abundantly full that it may be the only guide to prayer you’ll ever need.

The Black Church

In the book that accompanies his PBS series of the same title, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, Henry Louis Gates Jr. sublimely evokes the power of worship to create both religious and political solidarity. Drawing on meticulous archival research, as well as on insightful interviews with a diverse group of religious leaders, Gates plumbs the history of the Black church in America, from its roots in slavery, through its development in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to its struggles during the 1960s and into the 21st century. Gates elegantly illustrates that “the signal aspects of African American culture were planted, watered, given light, and nurtured in the Black Church.” He also teases apart the two stories present within African American religious traditions: “one of a people defining themselves in the presence of a higher power and the other of their journey for freedom and equality in a land where power itself . . . was (and still is) denied them.” Gates’ enthralling book offers a powerful reminder that our actions affect the communities in which we live.

Inspiration has been hard to come by in a year marked by a devastating pandemic, economic hardship and shocking political turmoil. If your faith has been challenged, these books will encourage hope, offer guidance and provide glimpses of light amid the shadows.
NonfictionMemoirAnimals

The Speckled Beauty

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Sit down, pull up a chair (or pick a spot under your favorite tree) and smile as Rick Bragg spins his mesmerizing tales of life down South with characteristically wry humor and wisdom. A paean to his terrible good dog, Speck, The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People offers a knowing and humane meditation on the devotion of a man to his dog and a dog to his man.

Bragg first found Speck among a pack of strays eating trash in the middle of the road; when he approached the pack, the other dogs scattered, but Speck lingered, and so Bragg took him in. Speck’s mismatched eyes—a light brown left eye and an almost solid blue-black right eye—“did not ruin his face; they just made him look like the pirate he is.” Bragg wasn’t looking for a dog when he found Speck, and even if he had been, this isn’t the one he might have expected. “I had in mind a fat dog,” he writes, “a gentle plodder that only slobbered an acceptable amount and would not chase a car even if the trunk was packed with pork chops.”

Yet, this dog—who chases cars, drinks from the toilet and rounds up jackasses—has a story, and Bragg tells it with all the “exaggeration and adjustment” of a rattling good storyteller. Bragg weaves his own stories of health challenges and his brother’s cancer diagnosis throughout Speck’s journey, as the two take care of each other in the wilds of rural Alabama. Bragg concludes that Speck “just wants some people of his own, and some snacks, because a dog gets used to things like that. . . . And, when the weather turns bad, he wants someone to come let him in, when the thunder shakes the mountain, when the lightning flash reveals that he was just a dog all this time.”

The Speckled Beauty takes its place beside Willie Morris’ My Dog Skip, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ animal narratives and William Faulkner’s dog stories—as well as all those short tales of devoted dogs in Field & Stream—confirming once more Bragg’s enduring artfulness and cracking good ability to spin memorable, affectionate tales.

The Speckled Beauty confirms Rick Bragg’s enduring artfulness and cracking good ability to spin memorable, affectionate tales.
NonfictionBiography

Two-Way Mirror

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

When people think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry, they might think of the greeting cards in which they’ve read her most oft-quoted lyric: “How do I love thee? / Let me count the ways.” Fiona Sampson’s dazzling and absorbing Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is likely to change that.

Sampson challenges the usual portrait of Barrett Browning as a “swooning poetess” whose identity is closely bound up with her father and husband. Modeled on Aurora Leigh, Barrett Browning’s narrative poem divided into nine books, Two-Way Mirror chronicles Barrett Browning’s growth as a poet, her long-term illness, her marriage to Robert Browning and their subsequent lives in Italy.

Drawing on Barrett Browning’s copious correspondence, Sampson illustrates that the poet was a “pivotal figure” who was acknowledged during her lifetime “as Britain’s greatest ever woman poet” and who attracted international acclaim. Barrett Browning’s use of the female voice in lyric and narrative poetry represented a radical departure from other narrative poems, such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath,” in which women characters were, as Sampson writes, “ventriloquized by men.” In the end, according to Sampson, “Elizabeth’s poetry too composes a kind of self-portrait, or rather mirror. As she became herself through writing, her writing reflected that developing self. And so her body of work creates a kind of looking glass in which, dimly, we make out the person who wrote it: her choices and opinions, what moved her, habits and characteristic turns of phrase.”

Two-Way Mirror will enthrall readers and encourage them to read Barrett Browning’s poetry, whether again or for the first time.

People often think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as a “swooning poetess,” but Fiona Sampson’s dazzling and absorbing biography is likely to change that.
NonfictionMusicMemoir

Saga Boy

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Hurtling down the blind curves and treacherous twists and turns of family dysfunction and social displacement, Antonio Michael Downing searches for himself among the cultural clutter of sports, religion and music. Combining staccato prose and singsong storytelling, Downing’s Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming navigates loneliness, uncertainty, fear, hopelessness and hunger.

Downing grew up in Trinidad with his grandmother, Miss Excelly, dreaming of mango season. She taught him two important things: how to sing and “the magic of the Queen’s English.” While his childhood was not idyllic, Downing felt safe with his grandmother and her love. When Miss Excelly died, however, he and his brother were shipped off to Canada to live with an aunt, and thus began a peripatetic lifestyle marked by a lack of security or family love.

Downing was shuttled between aunts in Canada. He never quite fit in at any particular place, though he valiantly threw himself into basketball and music in high school. He eventually recovered his love for language and writing at the University of Waterloo and put together a show with an artist friend who painted scenes from a short story Downing wrote. That experience gave birth to DJ Mic Dainjay, Downing's alter ego that he used as a performer during a time when he was also working at Blackberry as a sales representative. Today he performs music as John Orpheus.

Downing’s heart-wrenching memoir chronicles his saga of trying on and casting off many masks, learning the dimensions of the face through which he sees the world and the world sees him. As he writes, “This is a story about unbelonging, about placeness, about leaving everything behind. This is about metamorphosis: death and rebirth. . . . This is a story about family and forgiveness. About becoming what you always were.”

Combining staccato prose and singsong storytelling, Saga Boy hurtles down the treacherous twists and turns of family dysfunction and social displacement.
NonfictionMemoirArt

Chasing Me to My Grave

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Art can redeem suffering, but it can also reveal brutalities that degrade the human spirit. Art can capture the hopelessness of individuals hemmed in by fences not of their own making, even as it portrays the hopefulness of scaling those barriers and strolling in the expansive paths beyond. In Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South, Winfred Rembert recounts to co-author Erin I. Kelly his own gripping, often harrowing stories of growing up in Cuthbert, Georgia, and of turning to painting to represent the atrocities and celebrations of his life.

Rembert opens his memoir by recalling the journey to find his birth mother, who gave him away as a baby. He stole away from Cuthbert and walked up the railroad tracks 40 miles to Leslie, Georgia, where he found his mother but discovered she was none too happy to see him. Back in Cuthbert, Rembert celebrates the bustling juke joints and stores on Hamilton Avenue, depicting flourishing scenes of Black men and women going about their daily lives.

Life turned bleak when Rembert was arrested while fleeing a civil rights demonstration in 1965. He was brutalized and nearly lynched by law enforcement officers and a gang of white men. Eventually Rembert was sent to a chain gang, which he describes as being “like slavery. You have to meet all those demands and keep a sense of yourself as well.” In a stroke of good fortune, Rembert met a young woman named Patsy, whom he eventually married when he was released from prison.

While imprisoned, Rembert developed his artistic skills, and he continued to carve and paint on leather until his death in 2021. His art, which is reproduced throughout the book, depicts the people of Cuthbert, his family and his time on the chain gang. “With my paintings I tried to make a bad situation look good,” Rembert writes. “You can’t make the chain gang look good in any way besides by painting it in art.”

Chasing Me to My Grave is a testament to the ways one man used his art to educate, delight and depict the trauma that arises out of memory.

Winfred Rembert recounts gripping, often harrowing stories of growing up in Georgia, surviving a lynching and discovering art while imprisoned in a chain gang.
NonfictionMemoir

Vessel

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Our homes are vessels in which emotions ebb, flow and shape our lives. In some cases, we look back fondly on the vessels that shelter us on the turbulent seas of life; in others, we gladly leave behind the tattered family dwellings of our past as we emerge into less ravaged territories. In Vessel, Cai Chongda reflects on coming of age in and taking leave of his complicated home in a rural fishing village in the Fujian province of China.

The words of Chongda’s great-grandmother echo deeply throughout the memoir. When her body begins to fail her at age 92, she tells Chongda, “Make your body serve you, not the other way around! . . . Your body’s a vessel. If you wait on it to do something, there’s no hope for you. If you put your body to work, you can start to live.” After his father suffers a stroke and eventually dies, Chongda must embrace these words as he becomes head of the household. It’s a role he’s hardly ready to assume, especially when it includes tasks like keeping his mother from swallowing the rat poison she keeps wrapped in a scarf in her bedroom, or comforting his sister when she breaks up with her boyfriend because their family is too poor to pay her dowry.

Never comfortable with his family responsibilities, Chongda leaves his hometown, first for university and then for a life as a journalist. He looks back on his home with a studied ambivalence as he tries to develop his own life and career. In the end, though, he accepts the lesson that so many pilgrims before him have embraced: “A home is not simply a structure that gives one shelter but a place you are linked to by blood and soil.”

Vessel sails briskly over rough seas, bobbing and weaving in stormy waters. It’s never smooth sailing, but Chongda’s candor and courage make up for the tumultuous ride.

With candor and courage, Cai Chongda reflects on coming of age in and taking leave of his home in a rural fishing village in the Fujian province of China.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

The Blue Wonder

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Although oceans cover over two-thirds of our planet’s surface, we’ve spent more time and money probing the deep blue of the stratosphere than we have diving into the waters that lap at our shores, to our detriment. With a passionate love for and fervent desire to educate us about the depth of the ocean’s resources, as well as about our lack of understanding and mismanagement of them, Frauke Bagusche’s captivating The Blue Wonder: Why the Sea Glows, Fish Sing, and Other Astonishing Insights From the Ocean plunges us into the mysteries of the ocean. Along the way, Bagusche shares stories of the fascinating creatures that dwell there, as well as the increasing dangers the oceans face from human misuse.

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As Bagusche points out, many of us only see the ocean from the sands of a beach and therefore never discover the teeming life and unbelievable animals that swim beneath that surface. Guiding readers below the waves, Bagusche introduces them to the microplankton that move, often in phosphorescent schools, throughout the waters, providing food for animals from shrimp to blue whales. She takes us on a journey to the coral reefs, the nurseries of the sea, where we meet clown mantis shrimp and learn about the appendages they develop to help them adapt to the reefs. We also learn why some seas taste saltier than others and about the difficult but wondrous journey of sea turtles, the singing of whales and the giant squids and isopods that are the denizens of the bathysphere, the ocean’s deepest and darkest waters.

The Blue Wonder takes its place alongside Carl Safina’s Song for the Blue Ocean in revealing the marvelous marine world and the urgent need to preserve a dazzling ecosystem we too often neglect.

With a passionate love for the ocean, Frauke Bagusche plunges readers into the dazzling mysteries of the sea.

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