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.

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.