Rambunctious and poignant, Blaine Lourd’s moseying coming-of-age memoir, Born on the Bayou, takes readers to the swampy, misty marshes of his youth in New Iberia, Louisiana.

While Lourd regales us with tales of his two brothers, his sister and his mother, it’s his father who stands tall at the center of the story. Harvey “Puffer” Lourd Jr. is a salesman and a gambler, a lovable and cantankerous man living by the code of the bayou and the South, who tells his son he’s never had a bad day in his life. The younger Lourd emerges into manhood by hunting and fishing with his father, pulling the feathers off of still warm ducks just shot or cleaning a whitetail deer. “[T]his was the way of the South of my youth, boys walking in the footsteps of men who themselves did not know the way,” he writes.

Lourd does know that, like his father, he’s a Coonass, a badge he wears proudly: “A Coonass can be wealthy or poor, wise or foolish. At heart, he’s generally unpretentious and comfortable with himself, listens to his gut, has horse sense, and tends to be indulgent.” 

A dazzling storyteller, Lourd so skillfully describes the hazards of growing up in the bayou with a larger-than-life father that we can’t help but read with wonder that he survived his upbringing and lived to tell these tales.

Rambunctious and poignant, Blaine Lourd’s moseying coming-of-age memoir, Born on the Bayou, takes readers to the swampy, misty marshes of his youth in New Iberia, Louisiana.

While Lourd regales us with tales of his two brothers, his sister and his mother, it’s his father who stands tall at the center of the story. Harvey “Puffer” Lourd Jr. is a salesman and a gambler, a lovable and cantankerous man living by the code of the bayou and the South, who tells his son he’s never had a bad day in his life. The younger Lourd emerges into manhood by hunting and fishing with his father, pulling the feathers off of still warm ducks just shot or cleaning a whitetail deer. “[T]his was the way of the South of my youth, boys walking in the footsteps of men who themselves did not know the way,” he writes.

Lourd does know that, like his father, he’s a Coonass, a badge he wears proudly: “A Coonass can be wealthy or poor, wise or foolish. At heart, he’s generally unpretentious and comfortable with himself, listens to his gut, has horse sense, and tends to be indulgent.” 

A dazzling storyteller, Lourd so skillfully describes the hazards of growing up in the bayou with a larger-than-life father that we can’t help but read with wonder that he survived his upbringing and lived to tell these tales.

le of magazines in the spare room or perhaps the mountain of unused sporting equipment in the garage? You won’t find a much better incentive than reading Mess, Barry Yourgrau’s lighthearted account of his two-year quest to clean out his New York apartment.

Yourgrau, a writer and occasional actor, can afford to be lighthearted. From his description, which includes dozens of plastic supermarket bags wafting about like tumbleweeds, things are beyond messy at his pad but don’t approach reality TV territory. He can still navigate the premises, at least, and find a spot to write an entertaining chronicle of his project.

You might ask: Does it really take 256 pages to clean out an apartment? Why not call 1-800-GOT-JUNK and be done with it? The answer, naturally, is complicated, and in Yourgrau’s view, it goes back to a peripatetic childhood, a difficult relationship with his father and (surprise!) an inability to let go. Throw a girlfriend short on patience into the mix, plus side trips to various therapists, support groups and clutter experts, and you have more than enough to keep things readable.

Fortunately for Yourgrau (and the reader), there’s a specific goal: All he has to do is get things presentable enough to host his girlfriend and her mother for dinner. Given all the baggage (real and psychic) involved, that’s easier said than done.

Will Yourgrau sort out a lifetime of messy relationships and get motivated to clean things up in time to host that dinner? Let’s just say the reader who roots for a tidy ending won’t be disappointed.

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

When his 15-year old son, Samori, was devastated by the news that Ferguson, Missouri police had been exonerated in the death of Michael Brown, Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor at The Atlantic and an eloquent, powerful voice on the subject of race relations, felt compelled to address his son’s despair. The resulting book was originally scheduled for publication in September, but was rushed into print by publisher Spiegel & Grau in response to a surge in interest that followed the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina.

An angry, proud, despairing, vigilant, fearful and fiercely loving father, Coates watches his son confront what he calls the barriers, distances and breaches that stand Between the World and Me (the phrase comes from a poem by Richard Wright). Offering wisdom as well as comfort, he guides Samori through these challenges as they concern the African diaspora, the range and significance of which Coates first glimpsed as a student at Howard University. Growing up in Baltimore, he had to learn the culture and ways of the gang-oriented street in order to survive. He was an indifferent student saved from a predictable fate by the discipline and expectations of his own father. He tells his son how he arrived in Washington, D.C., dazzled by the global span of black scholars, poets, music-makers and activists he finds there. He discovers a new kind of power in learning from them his true heritage and legacy, far removed from the white version of the American Dream.

Initially dismissive of the nonviolent protestors of the civil rights movement, Coates is inspired by the more pragmatic Malcolm X. With an honesty that is intimate and endearing, he recounts for Samori the moment when he fully realizes his country’s unacknowledged, deeply troubling history: In 2001, Prince Jones, an innocent African-American friend, is killed by a Maryland policeman. The officer is exonerated.

Coates understands that he cannot protect his son. Children born into African-American families, he says, come already endangered: Parents beat their children first so that police will not beat or kill them later. It is not enough to want or expect police to change. He believes reform cannot happen unless we as a nation change, recognizing that they are us.

In a June 2014 article for The Atlantic (“The Case for Reparations”), Coates catalogued a history of institutionalized wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, ranging from government policies to fraudulent business practices. Now Coates likens such racism to a disembodiment, and he calls on Samori—named for an African king who died resisting foreign rule—to reclaim his identity, his body.

Ultimately, Coates’ powerful message, driven by a parent’s love, remains painfully hopeful. The struggle for change has meaning, and questions matter, perhaps even more than the answers.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s new memoir does more than chronicle his contrasting lives in the two very different worlds he simultaneously occupied. Undocumented gives the Dominican-born, American-raised Peralta a voice and, perhaps, more importantly, it gives readers a figure they can understand and empathize with.

Peralta became a face in the immigration debate nine years ago when The Wall Street Journal published a long-form profile a month before he graduated from Princeton University. The article recounted Peralta’s arrival in the U.S. at the age of 4, his childhood in New York City homeless shelters and a love of learning that took him all the way from a public school in Chinatown to the Ivy League. When the article was published in 2006, Peralta was seeking a waiver of his status as an illegal immigrant so he could accept a two-year scholarship at Oxford and return safely to the U.S.

In the book, Peralta’s storytelling is often raw and emotional—“all the shit going down in my life, and now I had to deal with the trials and tribulations of the aggrieved younger brother”—while also being direct and powerful. “[E]very day,” he writes, “I feel grateful to this country for the education it has given and continues to give me and my brother.”

Peralta describes seemingly basic acts like opening a personal bank account or accepting financial aid that were made difficult by the lack of a social security number. Readers of Undocumented will find themselves growing increasingly frustrated with a system that nearly failed Peralta had it not been for the help of those who didn’t see an illegal immigrant, but rather a bright boy with a promising future.

Whatever your stance on immigration reform, you’re likely to be moved by Peralta’s plight as he recalls the tumultuous obstacles he and his family have faced.

Children’s earliest memories are of their families. Siblings, especially the closer they are in age, are our first friends, the only people in the world who shared the same womb and share the same memories. But what if your only memories of your siblings are how they disappeared?

Mary Anna King’s new memoir, Bastards, is the story of her fractured family. Growing up in New Jersey, she never realized the depth of her parents’ poverty, even when they gave away five of her younger sisters to make ends meet. It wasn’t until one of those sisters returned well-dressed and well-mannered that King began to see her own family through someone else’s eyes. King, as well as her brother, were taken to Oklahoma to be raised by her maternal grandfather and his second wife—a couple with lots of possessions, but not a lot of warmth. Though she was provided for, King and her brother continude to struggle with the memories of the family they left behind, always wondering about the sisters they lost.

King tells her story in straightforward fashion without judgment or regret, though her tone mixes melancholy with moments of hilarity. When she begins to be reunited with her sisters as a college student, there are no sentimental scenes of hugs and kisses. The siblings get drunk, smoke pot, argue and go on road trips, all while trying to fill the holes left by the girls’ adoptions. King is frank about the damage done by her troubled parents, especially her estranged father, and the consequences of their choices. Ultimately, though, the siblings find connection and acceptance, however imperfect, and begin to make new memories as a whole family again.

In 1993, Mardi Jo Link was a 31-year-old wife and mother of two and a bar waitress with a college degree. Just before sunrise on an October Michigan morning, Link and three friends set off on what would become an annual get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge adventure to the isolated refuge of Drummond Island on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In 1993, Link was the newest member of the sorority, but she eventually became the chronicler of the highs and lows of the annual island weekend.

In The Drummond Girls, Link proceeds roughly year-by-year as the conclave grows from four to eight, and as each of the friends passes through the peaks and valleys of life, from marriage and divorce to birth and death, including the sudden death of one of their own, Mary Lynn.

Link regales readers with tales of nights and days spent exploring the North woods, running into some of the island’s more colorful inhabitants—both animal and human—and bonding deeply with a group of women who, as Link says, would “do ninety days at a minimum-security prison camp or plan a hostile takeover of a Caribbean beach resort” for each other.

So pick up this book: You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll find yourself pondering the meaning of life’s small disappointments and its greatest joys, especially the “fierce friendships” at the heart of this remarkable story. 

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

Tracy Slater thought she’d stay in Boston forever. A writing teacher with a Ph.D. in literature, Slater worked with diverse students, practiced yoga, published essays and enjoyed her close-knit community of friends. Yet one fateful summer, she agreed to teach English in Japan. “Don’t fall in love,” said her mother. Naturally, she did. 

Enter Toru, a soft-spoken and quietly joyful Japanese man. Toru and Slater develop a deep emotional bond that baffles Slater’s friends and family. Against all odds, the pair indulges in a transcontinental romance that lingers long after Slater’s teaching stint in Asia ends. The Good Shufu chronicles their romance in all its charming—and occasionally painful—detail.

Slater is candid about the intellectual, emotional and cultural tensions in her new life. Why, she wonders, would a devoted feminist be happy to play shufu, or housewife, in a traditional Japanese context? How has life led to her cooking dinner three nights a week for her boyfriend and his dad? Why would someone who loves Boston so much take up a life in a land where she will always be a cultural outsider?

These questions are very much Slater’s own, yet anyone whose life didn’t quite turn out as they imagined can relate. The pleasure of this book is Slater’s ability to wrestle with very real contradictions in her life even as she masterfully unfolds a story of falling in love and finding home in unexpected places. 

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

Taking your boat out on open water any time soon? Already there? You’ll want to weather life’s inevitable storms by keeping your anchor and flares aboard at all times. If an emergency strikes, you will need something to hold you steady, and lights can summon help. In this tender follow-up to her 2007 bestseller, Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup weathers her own storms—the sudden death of a spouse and the inevitable departure of a child growing up—and calls upon her work as chaplain for the Maine Game Warden Service to help in her most personal ministry, her family.  

What is hope? she asks, and finds it in one bereaved mother’s ability to carry on after her son drowns, frozen in a pond until spring. What is love, if not the embrace a law officer gives to the dead man’s grieving, deadbeat dad? Does prayer work? she asks in despair, and finds the harder answer lies not in its outcome but in its usefulness, in the love it evokes. 

Suddenly widowed with four young children, Braestrup has had occasion to question everything. Her late husband, a state trooper, was leaning toward the ministry when killed, and she follows his path. As chaplain to the game wardens, she helps both rescuers and victims, providing “spiritual triage” for those in need. 

Now her firstborn has decided, at 17, to enlist in the Marine Corps while war erupts in Iraq and Afghanistan. With earthy humor and humbling honesty, Braestrup strikes a balance between the necessary letting go and the enduring parental instinct to protect. 

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

When Barton Swaim read a column by his state’s governor, he promptly sat down and wrote him, “I know how to write, and you need a writer.” He got the job, but his writing skills went to waste as the governor insisted on a “voice” that bore only a slight resemblance to proper English.

Fortunately, Swaim puts those skills to good use in The Speechwriter, a highly readable account of his three years in the governor’s employ. Part All the King’s Men and part Horrible Bosses, it’s fascinating and almost impossible to put down.

For reasons of his own, Swaim does not name the man behind the curtain. He’s “the governor,” or “the boss.” But as sure as Myrtle Beach has miniature golf courses, it’s Mark Sanford, the maverick governor of South Carolina from 2003 to 2011 who made “hiking the Appalachian Trail” a euphemism for pursuing an extramarital affair in Argentina. 

Swaim’s lofty approach to the job is undercut early on, when he is told “Welcome to hell” by a co-worker. Not surprisingly, the governor is a difficult man to work for, and readers who have had to answer to unreasonable, demanding and slightly unhinged bosses can relate. It’s hard to defend such a man, and Swaim wisely doesn’t try.

Things come to a head with a crisis over the governor’s refusal to accept the federal stimulus package, followed by the Appalachian Trail fiasco. By the end, Swaim has had enough—but fortunately, he ends with a rumination on politics: “Why do we trust men who have sought and attained high office by innumerable acts of vanity and self-will?”

That’s a good question, and perhaps one to ask “the governor” (now a U.S. congressman) at his next news conference.

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

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, July 2015

Ah, alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems (to misquote “The Simpsons”). In Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, Sarah Hepola reveals the ugly side of addiction with humor and honesty. She writes gracefully of blackouts, junk food binges and unnerving sexual encounters. Along the way, she touches on loneliness and cats and hangovers and alternative weeklies. Although she claims that alcohol made her fearless, her true bravery emerges in this memoir’s witty candor.

A petite woman who can hold her liquor, Hepola’s drinking life is punctuated by gaps. How did she get home from the bar? Who is this man in bed with her? What did she say to make her friends so angry with her? A blackout is simply the hippocampus shutting down the long-term memory function in a drinker’s brain—which is why your drunk friend repeats the same story six times at the end of a long night. They may still be standing upright, but they won’t remember any of it tomorrow. Hepola proposes a “CSI Blackout” show for piecing together the night before; a junk food wrapper or a missing purse is a clue to the drunkard’s progress through the lost portions of the night. 

While Hepola claims not to enjoy the part in sobriety memoirs where the narrator stops drinking, her own sobriety is as funny and fearless as her drinking days. She’s particularly good on the weirdness of dating while stone-cold sober, and the subtle process of recalibrating her friendships. Hepola is an admirable addition to the distinguished line of “drinkers with writing problems,” and Blackout is a rollicking and raw account of binge-drinking, blacking out and getting sober. 

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

Joseph Luzzi’s new memoir, In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love, transforms unthinkable tragedy into literary gold. In November 2007, while Luzzi was teaching at Bard College, his beloved pregnant wife Katherine was in a car accident: She died later that morning at the hospital, shortly after their daughter Isabel was born. In the space of a single morning, Joseph Luzzi became both a father and widower.

Luzzi’s previous memoir, My Two Italies, sketched the duality between the southern region of Calabria, where the Luzzi family hails from, and Florence, home of the Renaissance. He calls upon his two Italies once again to help him endure the electric anguish he experiences in the wake of Katherine’s death. His return home to Rhode Island and his fierce Calabrian mother Yolanda allows for baby Isabel to be brought up in the bosom of a southern Italian matriarchy, while his reading of Florentine exile Dante helps him journey through the dark woods of grief.

More than counselors or pastors, Dante’s Divine Comedy teaches Luzzi about the stages of mourning. The Inferno is charged and electric, while Katherine’s absence is so raw; stumbling through the Purgatorio is challenging, as Luzzi adjusts with difficulty to becoming a father to Isabel. Eventually, the Paradisio emerges: an adjustment to Katherine’s death, Isabel’s needs and the entrance of new love.

More than simply a memoir of mourning, In a Dark Wood is also a deeply felt reading of the Divine Comedy, with excursions through Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid. Luzzi’s life-experience charges these epic poems with urgency and meaning, taking them from the classroom and into the world. His learned yet accessible discussions of these texts—as they helped him through his grief—will encourage readers to look to these classics with fresh eyes.

In a Dark Wood testifies to the life-giving importance of literature and what it has to teach us.

Blonde, svelte, former Miss America, musical prodigy, successful news anchor on national network with a hot husband: I was, quite honestly, prepared to hate (or at least strongly resent) Gretchen Carlson. But darn it if she didn’t charm me from the first page of Getting Real, her memoir of growing up wholesome in Minnesota. 

Carlson, who hosts her own show on Fox News called “The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson,” grew up in a loving, devout Lutheran family. She emerges as a violin virtuoso by the time she’s 7, paving the way for a lifetime of larger-than-life achievements. She attended Stanford University before taking time away to train for, compete in—and win—the Miss America pageant at 21. 

But Carlson’s saving grace is that she isn’t perfect, and she hits bumps in her road. Overweight throughout junior high and high school, she recalls being mortified when a sales lady called out that she needed a bigger size “for the chubby girl in the dressing room.” As she launches her reporting career, she loses broadcasting jobs and is the victim of sexual intimidation by men in power.

Carlson is frank and open about her struggles (“I was so confused about who I was and what I would face as I moved forward in what appeared to be a really scary world,” she writes about a top television exec trying to force himself on her in the back of a car). But mostly, she conveys a steely determination and clear-headed sense of self-worth that is inspiring and refreshing. She is unapologetic about her drive for success, pursuing ever bigger career goals while raising two small children. She even displays an intriguing feminist streak. 

Carlson may have pageant looks and a megawatt career, but in this memoir, she does indeed get real.

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