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FictionLiterary Fiction

Someone Like Us

Review by Michael Magras

One of the many challenges of being an immigrant is how, as your perception adjusts to life in a new land, it can begin to feel like you’ve lost touch with your homeland. Dinaw Mengestu plays with this dynamic in Someone Like Us, his subtle, brilliant new novel about family secrets.

The book’s protagonist is Mamush, a novelist and journalist of Ethiopian heritage who was born and raised in the U.S. He has become well-known for writing articles about “struggling but ultimately tenacious immigrants in America” and other weighty topics such as border conflicts, refugee crises and a militia leader in eastern Congo. He now lives north of Paris with his photographer wife (the book includes some of her photographs) and their 2-year-old son.

Mamush returns to the U.S. for the first time in years when he receives word from his mother, now living in a northern Virginia community “popular with retired middle-class immigrants like her,” that Samuel, a man Mamush knew as a close family friend, has died. He learns that Samuel may, or may not, have been his father.

That’s only the start of the mysteries Mengestu explores. Always the journalist, Mamush travels to Chicago to investigate Samuel’s past, including time spent in jail and a scheme for “building a cab company for people trapped in the wrong place.” And Mengestu adds an additional, beguiling wrinkle: While Mamush conducts his inquiries, he has imagined conversations with the deceased Samuel, a fabulist touch that allows for philosophical discussions on the desire to belong and the power of storytelling.

That’s the great achievement of this book. Aside from being a wonderful read, it’s a tribute to the majesty of storytelling and its ability to help one make sense of the world. A decade has passed since Mengestu’s last novel, the equally exceptional All Our Names. Someone Like Us is the welcome return of a vitally important voice in modern American literature.

A decade after Dinaw Mengestu’s equally exceptional All Our Names, Someone Like Us is the welcome return of a vitally important voice in modern American literature.
NonfictionScienceMemoirAnimals

Sharks Don’t Sink

Review by Celia Mattison

It’s clear from the jump of Jasmin Graham’s marvelous Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist why the author feels such a kinship with the titular fish. Sharks, who have survived five mass extinctions, are survivors. As Graham narrates her journey to becoming a marine biologist, from a childhood spent fishing with her Black family in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; to founding Minorities in Shark Sciences, an organization that funds research opportunities for people of color; to becoming a “rogue” scientist, we see that Graham, too, is a survivor resistant to easy classification.

In conversational prose that makes marine biology both accessible and exciting to a layperson, Graham describes the slings and arrows of shark research as a Black woman who has an infectious curiosity in and reverence for the natural world and refuses to be pushed out of it by the white men who still dominate shark science. As some of these men devolve into a screaming match about affirmative action at a professional conference, Graham locks eyes with the only other person of color, thinking, “What on earth have we gotten ourselves into?” Five years later, Graham had enough. In 2022, after questioning if she should leave science entirely, Graham became a rogue scientist, without a permanent academic affiliation. Like her beloved sharks, she adapted.

Along with Graham’s abiding love of all things oceanic, the other most potent force in Sharks Don’t Sink is her persistent belief in community. Graham pays tribute to the many scientists who paved the way for her, from a professor who offered her master’s level work while she was still an undergraduate, to the field-defining work of Japanese American shark researcher Dr. Eugenie Clark. This careful tending by her community has allowed Graham to thrive as a “Black, proud, nervous, and nerdy” scientist who has become one of the most prominent voices in marine conservation.

The cartilaginous skeletons of sharks have made it nearly impossible to leave fossil records.  Likewise, the history and triumphs of too many Black women scientists have been lost. Graham’s story of charting her own course is both an important record and a delight. “You don’t need to change the world,” Graham writes, as she thinks back on the group of Black friends she made as a child at her mostly white magnet school. “You just need to change your small piece of the world.”

 

In Sharks Don’t Sink, marine biologist Jasmin Graham pushes for diversity in her field while also celebrating her deep, abiding love for the titular fish.
RomanceContemporary Romance

Slow Dance

Review by Elizabeth Mazer

A chunk of the chapters of Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance begin with the word “before.” Before, when they were high schoolers in Omaha, Nebraska, Cary and Shiloh were “odd couple” best friends. Quiet and focused, Cary was the straitlaced Navy ROTC kid. Shiloh was the theater nerd, the counterculture girl who could never sit still—but never quite knew where she wanted to go, either. And yet, they were inseparable. The kind of joined-at-the-hip friends who seemed destined to end up together, if they weren’t together already. But in the present day (read: 2006), they haven’t spoken in 14 years when Cary comes back to Omaha for a mutual friend’s wedding. Cary’s path led exactly where he expected: He’s now a Navy officer. Shiloh’s path led her somewhere she didn’t expect: She’s a divorcée with two kids, living in her mom’s rundown house. She and Cary have even less in common than they did before. The one thing that hasn’t changed is how much they love each other. The only difference is now, they might finally be ready to do something about it.

How Rainbow Rowell learned to stop worrying and love prom.

Rowell is the author of several beloved bestsellers for adults (Attachments) and teens (Eleanor & Park), and if I had to pick one word to describe her prose, it would be “sharp”: Every line is witty, insightful and uncompromising, with nothing airbrushed or glossed over. Shiloh and Cary’s lives, while often funny, are genuinely messy: not in a shallow, sitcom kind of way, but in a real, brutally honest way that makes the laugh catch in your throat. Because while both main characters are clever and funny, charming and appealing, the situations they’re in are also painfully relatable. They grapple with difficult family dynamics and deeply personal insecurities. Slow Dance isn’t just a story about two people who love each other. It’s about two people who like each other, who get each other and who come through for each other even when everything seems screwed up. It’s a romance that’s chaotic, fraught, emotionally charged—and beautifully real.

Witty, insightful and uncompromising, Rainbow Rowell’s Slow Dance is an emotionally charged and beautifully real romance.
NonfictionHistory

Raiders, Rulers, and Traders

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Don’t be put off by the erudite title of David Chaffetz’s vividly narrated book. Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires reads like an enthralling travel memoir. It begins with the author perched uncomfortably on the back of a sure-footed pony on the steppes of Mongolia, where his arrival at a remote yurt is celebrated with ayraq, fermented mare’s milk. “We could no more drink all of the milky liquor on offer than we could take in all of the Milky Way above our heads,” he writes, charmingly. Likewise, Chaffetz’s account of how horses and landscapes shaped the distant past glimmers with myriad fascinating insights, seamlessly woven into a cohesive whole.

He begins at the very start of Homo sapiens-Equus interactions, when horses were hunted for meat and gradually domesticated for nutrient-rich mare’s milk. That, in turn, led to the need to ride horses to manage larger herds. Chaffetz demonstrates how the grassy steppes of Eurasia, rather than the forests of Western Europe, best suited horses, which led to their role as engines of war and empire-building in Persia, India and China.

Never dry, the narrative is enlivened by intriguing details. Chaffetz reports that the word “post” can be traced to Persian mounted messengers who navigated hundreds of miles of terrain. Along the messenger’s route, horses were tied to stakes, or posts, so a rider could quickly dismount a tired horse and remount a fresh horse and continue their journey, carrying a ruler’s decree across vast distances. In this way, horses were key to conquering territory in war and then governing it. Chaffetz sets the stage for his discussion of Genghis Khan with the observation of a medieval visitor: “When I travelled in the steppes, I never saw anyone walking. . . . Even the poor have to have one or two [horses].” The Mongols’ vast herds presented an opportunity. As Chaffetz explains, “The rains, the grasses, and the geldings of Mongolia did not create Genghis Khan, but his conquests are impossible to understand without them.”

Chaffetz, whose previous two books show him traveling through Afghanistan on horseback and celebrating Asian divas of old, exudes a contagious enthusiasm and curiosity. In Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, readers will happily follow his journey as he chronicles how closely our history is intertwined with the magnificent horse.

 

David Chaffetz’s charming, masterful Raiders, Rulers, and Traders glimmers with fascinating insights into how horses have helped build our world.
NonfictionTrue Crime

Reap the Whirlwind

Review by Natalia Berry

Peter Houlahan’s Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice, and the Story of Sagon Penn recounts a historic 1985 crime that would irrevocably change Southern California. At its swirling center is Sagon Penn, a 23-year-old Black Buddhist, martial artist and community mentor who had never been in any legal trouble until two white patrol cops, Donovan Jacobs and Tom Riggs, followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men, some of them teenagers, up a dirt road.

The setting is a growing San Diego in flux. A progressive new police chief hoped to calm the city’s simmering racial tensions and address the disproportionate number of cops killed in the line of duty. Both crises came to a head when Jacobs incorrectly fingered the young men in the truck to be gang members—including the driver, Penn. An argument escalated into a brutal physical altercation, during which the cops reportedly used racial slurs. Within three minutes, Penn grabbed Riggs’ service weapon and fatally shot him. Then Penn shot both Jacobs and a civilian who was riding along with him, and fled the scene in a squad car.

Reap the Whirlwind’s novelistic narrative style delivers emotional weight as Houlahan, a master storyteller, plots out the cataclysmic event and its aftermath. Houlahan covers all angles, from skewed news reporting on the shooting to the inner workings of the judicial system to the messy interpersonal drama that followed Penn, whose psyche suffered devastating consequences. Though Penn is undoubtedly the focus of the book, Houlahan offers textured characterizations of significant players, like Penn’s lawyer, Milton Silverman Jr.; defense investigator Bob McDaniel; and Sara Pina-Ruiz, the only credible witness. When the story develops into a full-fledged courtroom drama, Houlahan remains an impartial, careful observer and rarely offers his own opinion, which allows readers to form their own conclusions and develop a personal investment in the case and those closest to it.

A topical, piercing story about how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are, Reap the Whirlwind shows how police brutality and racial profiling impact Black victims far beyond the actual incident—even when they make it out alive.

The piercing Reap the Whirlwind chronicles a historic 1985 homicide, and shows how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are.
FictionLiterary FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

Pearl

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Sian Hughes’ debut novel, Pearl, offers a coming-of-age story set in rural England, one that reverberates with grief and longing, but also a wry humor.

As the novel opens, narrator Marianne and her teenage daughter, Susannah, are taking part in an ancient mourning ceremony and fair called the Wakes, in Marianne’s home village in Cheshire. It’s a ceremony that Marianne always attends, one that leads her to ponder the loss of her mother. When Marianne was 8, her mother walked out into the rain one fall day, forever leaving behind Marianne and the rest of their family.

Her mother’s unexplained disappearance has colored Marianne’s entire life—a mystery that she can’t move beyond. Marianne recounts her idyllic, idiosyncratic rural childhood in an old farmhouse with her creative mother, who sang folk songs and shared ancient stories. Later, during the bumpy, sad years after the disappearance, Marianne’s father Edward, a history professor, tries to patch together a life for Marianne and her younger brother, Joe. The adult Marianne narrates in an episodic, not-quite-linear fashion, looking back from early middle age to circle the mystery of her mother. The narrative is particularly strong in conveying the younger Marianne’s self-absorbed, mishap-filled adolescence, and her lurch into young adulthood.

Pearl was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, and is based in part on a medieval poem of the same title. Hughes, who is a poet herself, brings an attention to language and to the natural world that lends a beautiful vibrancy to her sentences and images. But there’s a droll sensibility here, too: Humor brightens grief-filled and difficult moments, such as an episode of postpartum psychosis. Pearl is also full of the gentle landscape and hallowed folklore of English village life, sometimes with a slightly gothic cast. To that end, each chapter opens with part of a nursery rhyme or nonsense poem (“As I went over the water, / The water went over me. I saw two little blackbirds / Sitting in a tree”). Throughout, the spirit of Marianne’s missing mother hovers, and this underlying mystery pulls the reader forward, though the story remains more immersive than propulsive.

Hughes has written a tender debut novel which, at its end, brings the reader back around to the grown Marianne at the Wakes, imbuing the festival with a lovely, redemptive new meaning.

Poet Sian Hughes brings vibrant language and a droll sensibility to her debut novel, Pearl, which explores a woman’s grief after losing her mother at 8 years old, set against the gentle landscape of English village life.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Quill the Forest Keeper

Review by Julie Danielson

Marije Tolman brings readers cozy scenes of family and warmth with Quill the Forest Keeper, which was originally published in the Netherlands and is translated into English by David Colmer. At the story’s present-day start, the woods are clean, the air is cold and it smells like hot blueberry pie indoors, where a family of hedgehogs asks Grandpa to tell them about the past.

Grandpa launches into a tale of the long-ago Terrible Rush Era, when animals were always busy and never stopped: “Everything and everyone had to be higher, faster, further, bigger, prettier, more!” But one hedgehog named Quill enjoyed taking it easy, resting in the sun, paddling on the water and cleaning up everyone else’s trash along the way. With compassion, Quill tended to the mountains, the woods and the sea.

One day, however, Quill collapses from the fatigue of constantly taking care of everyone else’s mess. His concerned neighbors help him get back up, and Quill goes home and sleeps through the winter. Soon, the animals begin rushing about again—but this time they also get busy tending to their surroundings and cleaning up after themselves. When Quill wakes, he sees the woods cleaner than he has ever seen them, and his “prickles shook with a shiver of joy.” After presenting him with a gold rake, the animals declare him the official Forest Keeper.

Tolman’s exquisite mixed-media illustrations, with meticulous linework and colors that sparkle, are superimposed upon monochromatic photos of the Scottish Highlands. There’s a visual richness and spaciousness to these spreads, and Tolman includes eye-catching details to delight her young audience: a penguin holding a cell phone, rhinos in shades and an alligator in a winter hat and scarf. It all adds up to a playful and openhearted examination of community, consumption and the value of a life lived slowly and deliberately, with care for the natural world.

As Grandpa wraps up Quill’s story, the hedgehog family heads into the sunshine, leaving readers wanting to head right back to the beginning of this charming Dutch import.

Quill the Forest Keeper delivers a playful and openhearted examination of the value of a life lived slowly, deliberately and with care for the natural world.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Our Beautiful Darkness

Review by Jena Groshek

In award-winning author Ondjaki’s Our Beautiful Darkness, a boy and a girl spend a night together during a power outage in Luanda, Angola, at the height of the Angolan Civil War, which immediately followed Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975.

With the sting of chaos all around these two unnamed protagonists, and the lingering uncertainty that not only comes with war, but also with physical darkness, they find themselves delving into an existential exploration of the heart, as well as an unspoken buildup of affection and yearning. Should the boy lean in for a kiss? Their hands are touching—is that a sign?

In this young adult graphic novel, translated from the original Portuguese by Lyn Miller-Lachmann, all of this takes place while the two characters contemplate the possibility of the impossible—such as sending wishes to the stars that wars would cease to exist, children would no longer be taken by them and there could be a rainbow bridge that brings home people who have died in the war.

Antonio Jorge Gonçalves’ illustrations pair perfectly with the blackout setting, in that each spread leaves something to be questioned and interpreted, just as the two characters do through dialogue. While the boy and girl discuss their pain and the cruelty of war, they rejoice in the little things the darkness has brought them: closeness, silence, time with nothing else to do and a determination to make this night together as beautiful as possible. With such a stunning representation of not only pain and conflict, but also the joy that is still able to make its way through, Our Beautiful Darkness is sure to leave readers considering, appreciating and reflecting on the world around them.

With such a stunning representation of not only pain and conflict, but also the joy that is still able to make its way through, Our Beautiful Darkness is sure to leave readers considering, appreciating and reflecting on the world around them.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

Parachute

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

When I first saw Parachute: Subversive Design and Street Fashion, I didn’t think I was familiar with the Montreal-based brand, which was founded by American architect Harry Parnass and British designer Nicola Pelly in the late 1970s. But after spending only a few minutes with the book, I realized I was wrong. Parachute’s influence on New Wave style was so pervasive that it was almost impossible to miss. Think about exaggerated trench coats or kimono-style jumpsuits, and you’re likely thinking of Parachute-influenced designs. Though the brand’s heyday was the ’80s, the book itself feels very current, with text in both English and French and a dynamic layout that changes from section to section. Author Alexis Walker is associate curator of dress, fashion and textiles at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal, and she presents her subject as if in a comprehensive museum archive. It’s rare to see a brand as subversive as Parachute become so influential, and the book gracefully walks the line between commerce and art. In a chapter dedicated to Parachute’s enduring, collaborative relationship with the musician Peter Gabriel, Gabriel is quoted as saying “Parachute always seemed different—smarter and highly original.” This book is that, as well.

 

The dynamic, photo-heavy Parachute shows the titular brand’s influence on fashion and culture.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

Nicked

Review by Chika Gujarathi

Acclaimed young adult author M.T. Anderson is now crossing into the world of adult fiction with Nicked. Inspired by true events from the year 1087, Nicked follows the heist of the 7-century-old corpse of St. Nicholas, in a thrilling and fast-moving international adventure narrated with wit and humor.

We begin in Bari, Italy, where a pox has afflicted half the town, with the other half in fear of soon joining the first. In response, the monks of St. Benedict take a week-long vigil to ask for healing, and their prayers are answered when a vision of St. Nicholas appears to a lowly monk named Nicephorus.

There is something endearing about Nicephorus which seems not of his time. Skeptical about the authenticity of his vision, which came after going without food and sleep, Nicephorus tries to dissuade the town officials from interpreting his dream as a direct order from the saint to steal his corpse from a church in Turkey. The leaders of Bari are undeterred, however, and when a relic hunter named Tyun shows up with his entourage, which includes a giant named Shchek and a dog-headed man named Reprobus, they eagerly engage his services.

Tyun, a handsome, fearless man of dubious morality, agrees to be the captain of the expedition in exchange for a huge sum of money, and the naive and pious Nicephorus is forced to join as witness and authenticator of the corpse. What follows is an epic adventure on land and sea, enjoyable not just for the Byzantine strategies and sabotage, but also because of the unpredictable pairing of passive Nicephorus with the aggressive and worldly Tyun. And there is a twist—of course there is, because what is an epic adventure without one!

Reminiscent of Indiana Jones and The Princess Bride, Nicked delivers an entertaining and grown-up adventure rooted in religion, humanity and friendship.

Inspired by true events from the year 1087, Nicked is a thrilling and fast-moving adventure in which a naive monk accompanies a relic hunter on a quest to steal the corpse of St. Nicholas.
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

No Road Home

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Wait for the next dark and stormy night to dive into John Fram’s No Road Home. This twisty murder mystery, rife with cleverly employed elements of horror and the supernatural, comes to a head during a mighty deluge.

As in his debut novel, The Bright Lands, a BookPage Best Book of 2020, the Texas-born Fram sets this darkly dramatic, gothic tale in the Lone Star State. He draws readers into Ramorah, an expansive compound home to the uber-wealthy Wright family, presided over by patriarch Jerome Jeremiah Wright, a fire-and-brimstone televangelist.

Things are off-kilter at the estate these days: Jerome has been making increasingly fatalistic prophecies, and the Wrights are worried about the future of their family business. It doesn’t help that threatening messages in blood-red paint have begun appearing on the mansion’s bedroom doors.

Toby Tucker has no inkling of the danger that awaits him when he sets out to visit Ramorah with his son, Luca, and brand-new wife, Alyssa, Jerome’s granddaughter. Luca is a sweet child, who “wore his hair long and dressed in lots of pink and mauve and called himself a boy, which was fine with Toby.” This combination is not, Toby soon realizes, fine with the Wrights, who stare at and mutter derogatory comments about Luca despite Alyssa’s assertion that “[her] family’s too rich to be bigoted.”

Toby’s already-present desire to flee Ramorah multiplies a thousandfold when Jerome is found murdered, but floodwaters make that impossible. As the storm rages outside and the Wright clan whispers that their newest visitor may to be blame for Jerome’s death, Toby resolves to solve the murder, clear his name and get himself and Luca the hell out of there—especially since Luca claims to have seen a ghost, and Toby believes him. 

Fram expertly ratchets up the tension as Toby and Luca desperately search for allies and answers as the devious Wrights circle around them. Fans of everyone’s-a-suspect stories will be riveted as long-held secrets float to the surface, twisted motivations are revealed and revelations of generational trauma and abuse prompt them to consider whether the most outwardly pious might just be the biggest sinners of all.

Set at a televangelist’s compound as floodwaters rise, John Fram’s No Road Home is a darkly dramatic murder mystery-thriller hybrid.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

Meet the Neighbors

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Brandon Keim’s thought-provoking, beautifully written Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World is perfect for those who love to read al fresco, surrounded by the very creatures the author urges us to view with curiosity, compassion and kinship.

From adorable bumblebees to fearsome grizzly bears and everything—well, everyone—in between, Keim is a staunch advocate for viewing animals as fellows, and not just those we’ve brought into our homes: “Even as we recognize our beloved pets as thinking, feeling beings with a first-person experience of life, and grapple—however inconsistently—with the selfhood of animals used for food and research, that’s not how we’re socialized to regard wild animals.”

So what if, in addition to cats and dogs plus “a select few stars, such as chimpanzees and dolphins,” we acknowledge that raccoons, coyotes and salamanders are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are? There’s plenty of scientific evidence that wild creatures are self-aware and think strategically, Keim explains, even if it’s not always in a form we recognize. To wit, earthworms can distinguish between soil displaced by their own slithering and the push of a shovel, coyotes can invent games, and starlings are more relaxed after having bathed—just like us!

In addition to translating copious scientific revelations with reverence and aplomb, Meet the Neighbors sheds light on damaging biases in conventional wisdom, such as the value of instinct. ’Tis true, humans are encouraged to follow their instincts to boost awareness, safety or success. However, Keim notes, “When applied to animals, it’s used dismissively. Then instinctive means thoughtless, the opposite of reasoned, a lesser form of intelligence than our own.”

The journalist and author of 2017’s The Eye of the Sandpiper also delves into animal rights philosophy, hunting regulations, wildlife management and more. Through it all, Keim exhorts readers to consider: “How might an awareness of animal minds shape the ways we understand them and, ultimately, how we live with them on this shared, precious planet?” Meet the Neighbors offers an edifying, awe-inspiring start.

Brandon Keim’s awe-inspiring Meet the Neighbors exhorts us to consider that all animals, from dolphins to salamanders, are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are.
NonfictionTrue Crime

Mississippi Swindle

Review by Anne Bartlett

The public attacks by NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre and his nationwide legion of fans were bad enough. But Mississippi State Auditor Shad White also faced hostility close to home, even at church, from friends of the well-known family that was the focus of his investigation into the theft of millions in public welfare funds. You might think of their incredulity as the “nice lady” defense: How can you be going after Nancy New? She’s so nice at PTA meetings.

White’s team plowed ahead, and New, the head of an education nonprofit, and her son Zach ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges for financing their high-spending lifestyle with money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program—including $250,000 used by Nancy to buy herself a new home in an affluent neighborhood. So much for nice. White, a Republican wunderkind (Rhodes scholar, Harvard Law) who became auditor at 32, gives us his insider perspective in Mississippi Swindle: Brett Favre and the Welfare Scandal That Shocked America, a lively account of a case that has raised questions about Favre, former football player Marcus Dupree and White’s own mentor, former Mississippi governor Phil Bryant.

Starting with a whistleblower’s tip actually forwarded to him by Bryant, White directed his team of auditors and agents to probe odd spending of federal welfare dollars by the head of Mississippi’s Department of Human Services, which they soon discovered included treatment at a luxury drug rehab center for a personal friend of the agency director. It ballooned from there.

Readers will be engrossed by the feud that developed between Favre and White after the investigation uncovered payments of welfare money by New’s nonprofit to finance a “deluxe” volleyball facility at the university where Favre’s daughter was a volleyball player. New’s nonprofit also paid welfare funds to Favre Enterprises for speaking engagements that Favre never did. Favre adamantly denies wrongdoing, while White points to evidence in the form of text messages and other records. (Favre has not been charged with any crime; he was sued in civil court by the state over the money.) But White’s harsh critiques of fellow Republican officials, notably a U.S. Attorney who White thinks tried to undermine him out of professional rivalry, are equally fascinating.

This isn’t a book about politics, but it’s not hard to discern White’s conservative views. Some readers will disagree with them. But everyone can unite around his anger at a broken system that allowed poor people to suffer so that an elite few could spend tax dollars on luxuries.

Mississippi Swindle is the shocking true story of how public welfare funds were used to finance the extravagant lifestyles of an elite few.

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