In 2017 Dan Kois, his wife and their two children did what many families secretly dream of doing: They packed up their belongings and spent a year living abroad. Their life in Arlington, Virginia, had come to feel like an endless rat race—Kois is an editor at Slate and his wife, Alia, a First Amendment attorney—leaving them feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. They asked themselves, “Could the two of us set aside our relentless quest to make sure our children had every material and educational advantage, and instead focus for twelve months on caring for all our hearts and souls?”

Kois shares the fascinating and frequently hilarious results in his admirably honest account of that year, How to Be a Family. In addition to Kois’ humorous, self-deprecating style, the book is particularly lively because Kois and his wife picked such diverse spots to live: the blustery coastal town of Wellington, New Zealand (their favorite spot); the bustling city of Delft in the Netherlands; tropical Samara, Costa Rica; and deep in the heartland of Hays, Kansas, where a friend of the family lived. (Yes, Kansas!)

Kois and company adored their friendly, welcoming neighborhood in New Zealand. The Dutch were not so affable (Kois calls them “mysterious and frustrating”), although the family loved the country’s reliance on bike transportation. Costa Rica was at times monotonous in its endless string of beautiful days, and occasionally the togetherness became too much, prompting Kois to write, “Thank God for cards” (as in card games). In Kansas, they found a wonderful sense of community, discovering that it was “a place where people could bloom.”

In the end, the family found their lives changed but not transformed, realizing that “a place never solves anything.” Nonetheless, their journey was an unforgettable adventure, allowing them the priceless gift of having time to pay more attention to each other.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our interview with Dan Kois, author of How to Be a Family.

There are two ways to write about a dam bursting. You can begin at the exact moment the cresting waters rupture the wall and surge toward freedom—or you can start long before that, with the first drops of rain that eventually overrun the embankments. In Unfollow, Megan Phelps-Roper chooses the second approach to explain why she left the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.

One of the most surprising aspects of this remarkable book is how loving the Westboro Baptist Church was—at least to its members in good standing. Phelps-Roper’s childhood was idyllic in many ways. She was surrounded by caring, intelligent and passionate adults who adored her. By the age of 8, however, she was joining them in protesting against the LGBTQ community and being rewarded for spewing vile slogans. This strange juxtaposition defined her youth: Phelps-Roper went to school, shopped at the mall, ate popcorn at the movies—and then rushed out to picket the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq or to publicly pray for more children to be shot after Newtown. By the time she was in her 20s, Phelps-Roper was in charge of the church’s social media presence, using her formidable intellect to defend the reprehensible. And yet, throughout her book is an awareness that each incident contributed to the erosion of her faith in Westboro’s theology.

It’s ironic that the very qualities her family instilled in her—intellectual rigor, intimate knowledge of the Bible, courage in the face of fierce opposition—led to her inevitable departure. When she could no longer support either the church’s theology of hatred or its belief in its own infallibility, she renounced them. 

Phelps-Roper is a masterful writer. She writes movingly about the searing pain of separation from those she continues to love, and beautifully about how freeing herself from a theology of hate has given her life greater meaning and purpose. In a time of growing intolerance, Unfollow is essential reading.

In How We Fight for Our Lives, award-winning poet Saeed Jones (Prelude to Bruise) weaves a series of stinging, memorable vignettes into a powerful coming-of-age memoir. This intimate book, which details his experiences growing up black and gay in the American South, is a required and distinctly singular read.

Through flowing metaphors and dialogue, rich language and deeply personal family stories, we learn about Jones’ struggle for his identity—why he built a suit of invisible armor to protect himself when no one else would. Jones writes, “If America was going to hate me for being black and gay, then I might as well make a weapon out of myself.” Almost every passage feels like a fresh, raw wound, ready to leave a scar.

Each vignette represents a different stage in Jones’ blossoming life, and together they create a kaleidoscope of the difficulties that can stem from hiding oneself from the world. We travel with him as the child of a single mother in Lewisville, Texas, to his strained teenage relationship with his religious grandmother in Memphis, Tennessee, to destructive sexual experiences with friends, lovers and strangers, to his life in college and beyond, where he has yet to accept himself as a full person, rather than as a performer who needs to be interesting enough to entertain a crowd. Jones recognizes his desire to wear a mask early on, but it’s difficult to remove the mask once he has the chance.

Jones knows that accepting himself in a racist and homophobic world is an act of radical self-love, and this devastating memoir illustrates why such an act is worth the long struggle.