Happy Mother's Day

Opinion: My Mom - Nobody Loves Me More

How Mother's Day can also be a Holiday for the Childless

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Opinion/Editorial (Section O-1)

BY KATHLEEN GERARD

To read the article in its entirety, click on the highlighted title above

Heart of Palm

A hot, sweltering Florida summer is the setting for Heart of Palm, a debut novel by Laura Lee Smith. The story centers on three months in the lives of the Bravo family of Utina, a sleepy little town near St. Augustine, where Palm Sunday palms and moonshine once offered a prosperous economic existence. But that was years before. Times have changed for the town and for the Bravos, whose long-held properties on the Intracoastal Waterway are of great interest to enthusiastic land developers. What will it take for the Bravos to sell?

The prospect dredges up repressed emotions and looms over the family that consists of the matriarch, Arla, once a "perfect," striking red head and her adult children - Carson, a philandering investment manager with secrets; Frank, the dutiful son and proprietor of "Uncle Henry's," the family's restaurant on the waterfront; and Sofia, an emotionally wounded woman with hair as red as her mother's used to be and a fiery temper to match. But it is Dean, the patriarch, whose absence casts a long shadow over the family's past, as old wounds, secrets, heartbreaks and missed opportunities have woven themselves into the fabric of the present - and maybe even the future, too.

Well-developed characters confronted by an undercurrent of change propel this unhurried family saga. Smith is a careful, detailed writer who assembles big, bold, well-drawn scenes - moments from the everyday lives of the Bravos that resonate with deeper insights into how personal regrets and longings shape the fates of all involved.

Heart of Palm by Laura Lee Smith

Grove Press,  $25.00, Hardcover, 9780802121028, 496 pp

Publication Date: April 2, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/16/13), click HERE.

Manuscript Found in Accra

In July 1099, the walled city of Jerusalem is said to have experienced religious peace and tolerance - Jews, Muslims and Christians worshipped without incident. But beyond the gates of the city, enemy crusaders sharpened their swords, readying to invade the populace and disturb the peace. The people were given a choice to either abandon the city or fight to the death. Most chose to stay.

In Manuscript Found in Accra, Paulo Coelho has written a transcription of a fictional Apocryphal Gospel (not included in any holy religious book), documenting what one prophet, a Greek named Copt, revealed to multitudes on the night before the attack that transformed peace into a war that Copt predicted "will last into an unimaginably distant future."

One wonders why the people gathered to listen to Copt? After all, the manuscript reveals that Copt worked as a shoemaker and did not belong to any one religious sect. What encouraged the inhabitants to defer from making provisions and feeding their anxiety and preoccupation in the face of death and forced exodus to stop and listen? Were the masses who hunkered down simply looking for a way to allay their fears and deepen their faith?

By choosing to leave missing pieces and unanswered questions, Coelho lends greater authenticity to the form and tenor of this novel-turned-gospel-narrative. In Coelho's literary hands, one questions the role of coincidence. Is Copt's name a coincidence or a relation to Coptic Christians? And what about the setting--the square where Pontius Pilate and the crowds condemned Jesus Christ to death? Here, Copt makes his philosophical declarations on a myriad of issues including knowledge, death, work, miracles, loyalty and the future and encourages listeners to write down his words in order to "preserve the soul of Jerusalem" as he believes that peace will one day reign in the region again.

Fitting, too, that Coelho chose not to support this novel with a traditional literary plot, outside of the introduction that briefly details the long, circuitous route the manuscript takes until discovered. Instead, Coelho's parable-like structure and historical presentation heighten the relevance of wisdom shared a thousand years ago to people in peril. Read in the context of modern society--with its wars, terror, divisiveness and decadence--Manuscript Found in Accra points up how the world has continued to be invaded by "demons of intolerance and lack of understanding" for centuries and yet, amid adversity, there still remains the hope that tenets of love and faith can endure, if consciously cultivated.

Manuscript Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho (Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa)

Alfred A. Knopf,  $22.00, Hardcover, 9780385349833, 208 pp

Publication Date: April 3, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This book was provided for review by Alfred A. Knopf Publishers and TLC Book Tours.

Author Event: Elizabeth Strout

The Gene Barnett Literary Society of Fairleigh Dickinson University (NJ) featured Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Strout on April 25, where she spoke about The Burgess Boys.

Strout's morally complex novel focuses on an American community in turmoil, in particular one Maine family, three adult siblings, embroiled in tensions that escalate cultural and familial divides.

During the lively, engaging talk entitled, "Concept to Completion," Strout discussed in depth the seven-year process of crafting her latest novel and the importance of fiction.

Strout had been thinking about The Burgess Boys since writing Abide with Me (published in 2006). The childhood incident surrounding the Burgess children was actually mentioned in an early draft of that novel, but never made it into the finished product.

Strout deems herself a "slow writer," often riddled with "panic and anxiety" about her work.  She does not write her books linearly from beginning to end. Rather her curiosity is "innocent and earnest . . . I do not want to present anything straightforward.  Life is a mess," she said.  "If you want to become an accurate writer (of old fashioned realism) you need to acknowledge that mess."

Character or "an abiding image" is what propels Strout into her work. Themes and storylines gradually evolve through writing, and she "follows her characters" often allowing them to "behave badly." 

"I am not there to judge," said Strout.

She discussed how the prologue of The Burgess Boys emerged five years into the writing of the novel and how she took great pains and had to make "huge decisions" over individual sentences to make those few short pages "truthful in tone and content."  They offer the reader an intimate introduction to the world of the book and provide a map outlining the journey taken over the course of the story.

"I am constantly battling between what I feel the reader needs and what I feel is truthful," she said. "Fiction is truer than most of the nonfiction we read because in fiction one can stay closer to the facts."

Cultural differences play a big part in the fabric of The Burgess Boys - whether a diversity of cultural lifestyles of those in the same family and/or cultural differences between Americans and Somali (Muslim) refugees.  Strout did extensive research into the Somali way of life and also did field work in prison systems in Maine and New York City in order to bring authenticity to the narrative. At times, learning about these cultural disparities became a rude awakening.

Strout believes that, "Novels are there as a social tool to bring the news and make readers understand that people are more alike than they are different. And while those differences can be significant, the only way we can really touch each other's shoulders is through fiction. We only have each other."

When asked during the Q&A about specific books on craft that have influenced her writing, Strout cited War and Peace and The Journals of John Cheever.  "These books are not specifically about craft, but they've greatly instructed me in my work."

Note:  A condensed version of this same article was featured in Shelf Awareness (4/30/13) "Image of the Day: Fiction is Truer than Most Nonfiction." Link HERE to read.

Photographs by Kathleen Gerard.  Please reprint with permission.

Three Graves Full

"The world was short one human being because of Jason Getty," a lonely widower and "crackerjack wallflower" who, on a moonlit October night, was pushed too far and killed a man who had it coming. Jason may have hidden the body, burying the corpse in his suburban backyard, but he can't live with himself. For seventeen months, he goes through the motions of living his life, most nights "watching through the dining-room window for the unavoidable squad car to turn down the street and ruin his life." 

When landscapers come to do a routine clean-up of Jason's property, they discover not one body, but two, that of a man and a woman, buried in the flower bed in the front of Jason's house. (Uh-oh!) The guilt-ridden nightmare of Jason's life suddenly flares. He is thrust into a harrowing investigation to identify the two corpses--how and why they got there--and he is forced to shed his isolated existence. Will the authorities find the third body?

Jason's destiny becomes intertwined with a jilted woman looking for the missing pieces of her own life, an upstanding small-town detective and his astute police dog and a mysterious loner whose own actions and past may very well dictate the fates of all involved.

In Three Graves Full, Jamie Mason has crafted an off-beat, menacing tale about a criminal with a conscience. Irony and dark humor propel the plot in ways that reinvigorate the crime novel, revealing sharp insights into the complexities of the human heart and mind.

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

Gallery Books, $24.99, Hardcover, 9781451685039, 320 pp

Publication Date: February 13, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (2/15/13), click HERE.

Manuscript Found in Accra

Stay tuned...

Will be sharing my thoughts about this book 

May 1st

A much anticipated novel focusing on spiritual issues

To learn more, visit Amazon and/or the Paulo Coelho's website

Ordinary Grace

Mystery writer William Kent Krueger has taken a break from his award-winning Cork O'Connor mystery series to give readers the gift of ORDINARY GRACE, an atmospheric novel about forty year-old Frank Drum looking back on a fateful summer that changed him and his family - as well as his perceptions of the world and people in it. 

The book details Frank's journey in the summer of 1961, when he was 13 years old and living in New Bremen, Minnesota with his traditional, "All-American" family - his father, a Christian minister; his mother a once-budding musician; his younger brother, a stutterer, who is wise and compassionate;  and his beautiful, musically gifted and much-adored older sister, headed for Julliard. In 1961, the country, and this community, was infused with faith and wholesome innocence, but death paid several visits to New Bremen during a sweltering summer via the accidental death of a teenager (was it really an accident?), the natural death of a stranger, a suicide and a murder that shatters lives and futures.

William Kent Krueger renders a thoughtful portrait of small town life and the inhabitants therein. Via strong, multi-layered characterizations, the author maps the deep-rooted values that once marked the souls of flawed, God-fearing people. Frank narrates this story from the perspective of adulthood, which lends authority to the magnitude of grief and the search for understanding when evil impacts the lives and hearts of an entire community. In the end, the themes that emerge in this moving coming-of-age story become timeless as the Drum family could be any faith-filled family--past or present--forced to confront and come to terms with the vagaries of life, guilt and dark nights of the soul.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Atria Books, $24.99, Hardcover, 9781451645828, 320 pp

Publication Date: March 26, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This book was provided for review by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster

A Week in Winter

The Irish are great storytellers. This year, I hold a special affection for the work of Maeve Binchy, a writer of commercial fiction whose stories reflect wholesome values of a changing world - in Ireland and abroad. My first foray into Binchy's work was Circle of Friends, a story set in Dublin in the 1950s, where lies test the meaning of love. I've devoured Binchy's novels and short fiction ever since. Sadly, the author passed away last year. But readers can now enjoy her posthumously published novel, A Week in Winter. 

In this story, Chicky Star transforms an old mansion in Stoneybridge into Stone House, an Irish getaway destination that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. There, she welcomes a cast of eccentric characters who share a week of rest and relaxation. Binchy, a first-rate storyteller, brings together another diverse ensemble cast that provides readers with a cozy means of entertainment and escape.  

So after you indulge in your corned beef and cabbage and a pint of Guinness to celebrate St. Pat's, kick back and relax with this one!
  
A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy
Knopf, $26.95, hardcover, 9780307273574, 336 pages
Publication Date: February 12, 2013
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

The Book of Neil

It's 2012 and Jesus Christ returns to earth, to a "fair little city," where he is completely ignored, dismissed and scoffed at as "another mentally ill street preacher." But one day on the Crystal Creek golf course, when Jesus, wearing "a grayish robe tied by a thick rope around the waist...his hair...long and swept across his shoulders with each practice swing" strikes up a conversation with Neil, a middle-aged man in familial and financial crises, things take a dramatic turn. Jesus is desperate to make his presence known. He enlists Neil's help, as He decides to seek media attention in a secular world driven and preoccupied by technology, materialism and self-indulgence. The two hatch a plan to rob a bank in order to benefit their mutually desired goals.

The hilariously flawed execution of their plan snowballs in The Book of Neil, a smart, amusing story about faith and the nature of belief in the modern world. Author Frank Turner Hollon (Blood and Circumstance, Austin and Emily) narrates Jesus' return to earth via the points-of-view of those whose lives He touches, an array of believers and doubters: Neil, suffering pre and post-robbery panic; the skeptical police chief in town; a bank teller who feels a sudden "peace come over her" during the robbery; a New York Times reporter eager to launch the story of the "Jesus-Bandit"; and even the President of the United States.

Unexpected twists and turns shape The Book of Neil. At the end, on the rapid approach to a chilling climax, the engrossing, satirical aspects of this novel suddenly emerge in a whole new light, and Hollon's literary craftsmanship leaps from mere entertainment into a much deeper, thought-provoking epiphany.

The Book of Neil  by Frank Turner Hollon

MacAdam/Cage, $20.00, Hardcover, 978159692380, 230 pp

Publication Date: November 16, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (12/11/12), click HERE.

different character’ point of view. Not only Neil, but Edwin (the police

The Comfort of Lies

Motherhood is at the crux of The Comfort of Lies, a novel that braids the stories of three, very different women - women bonded by secrets, lies and a child conceived out of wedlock, the byproduct of an illicit affair between Tia, a young woman grappling to find her place in the world, and Nathan, a happily married man and father of two boys. 

When Tia tells Nathan that she's pregnant, he suddenly vanishes from her life. Thus, Tia decides to give her baby girl up for adoption to a woman named Caroline, a workaholic doctor/pathologist, whose husband is pressuring her to start a family.  

Fast forward five years: Caroline, the girl's adoptive mother, persists in working long hours, making excuses and skirting her responsibilities for the child,which takes a toll on her marriage.  Maybe she's just not cut out to be a wife and a mother, after all?

In the meantime, Nathan's wife, Juliette, believes she's put the knowledge of her husband's affair behind her. But when a letter arrives addressed to her husband from Tia, "the other woman," and she discovers that Nathan has a child, a daughter, he's never told her about, Juliette's seemingly re-created life and marriage is again shattered. She secretly goes in search of both Tia and Caroline in order to learn more.

Issues of trust, vulnerability and forgiveness emerge as these three women's lives intersect. Each is forced to face the facts of her life and make hard decisions for the future. Is there any way this five year-old child might be loved by all three women?

Randy Susan Meyers (The Murderer's Daughters) has written a multi-faceted, thought-provoking novel about the complicated lives and challenges contemporary women--and families--face. Chapters told from alternating viewpoints allow readers to experience the psyches of the characters as their private motivations and pain are examined until truth is ultimately exposed.

The Comfort of Lies by Randy Susan Meyers

Atria Books, $25.00, Hardcover, 9781451673012,  336 pp

Publication Date: February 12, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This book was provided for review by Atria Books/Simon and Schuster

Documentary: SET FOR LIFE

"Ageism is alive and well . . . " According to statistics put forth by SET FOR LIFE, a compelling, award-winning documentary that delves into the stark realities of Baby Boomers who are faced with the trickle-down effects of the faltering U.S. economy, the unemployment rate for workers 50 years of age and older is worse than it was during the Great Depression. While the national job report numbers appear to be improving every month (on paper), negative trends for older workers are not reversing.  It takes, on average, 14 months or longer for older workers to find new employment - if they can find work at all.  

SET FOR LIFE fleshes out the personal stories behind these statistics to great effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Susan Sipprelle and Samuel Newman of Tree of Life Productions traveled around the United States and documented the stories of 100 unemployed Americans, 50 years of age and older.  (These interviews can be viewed on the "Over 50 and Out of Work" project website. Link HERE)

The related documentary, SET FOR LIFE, follows, in depth and with compassion, the lives of three Baby Boomers who have been thrust into unemployment and forced to face the erasure of their American Dream. Each story brings into focus exacerbated personal hardships, struggles and downsized expectations, where those out of work submit hundreds of resumes, often for jobs beyond/beneath the scope of their expertise, while house payments cannot be met, health insurance lapses and retirement benefits are cashed in.

One case study revolves around a 52 year-old husband, a third generation steelworker and cancer-survivor in West Virginia, who, after a twenty-five year history of being laid-off and rehired, must choose between the continued cycle of working intermittently at the mill or pursuing another line of work, which offers more steady employment.

 

Another thread of the film follows the decisions made by a 60 year-old, single woman in South Carolina who is laid off as a college records officer due to "federal and state cutbacks" and becomes dependent on her sons to help pay her mortgage, put food on the table, etc. Can a part-time job she finally lands as a grant researcher for a non-profit organization--that barely pays minimum wage--prove enough to make ends meet?

The most moving story of the trio is that of a 58 year-old I.T. Specialist in California whose high-tech professional life goes belly up around the same time his son, a young father of two children, returns home from active military duty as a double amputee and now depends on the help, care and support of his extended family.

Sipprelle and Newman have created an important, engaging documentary that addresses the personal perils of a national crisis. This situation may become even more grave if and when the eligibility age for Social Security benefits is raised. The film asks viewers to contemplate larger questions of self-worth, resilience and the necessity for change and reinvention in the midst of an uncertain world.

To watch the trailer for SET FOR LIFE, link HERE

To purchase a copy of SET FOR LIFE, link HERE

To learn more about TREE OF LIFE PRODUCTIONS, link HERE

To learn more about writer and photojournalist Susan Sipprelle, link HERE

To learn more about filmmaker Samuel Newman, link HERE

  

Vanity Fare: A novel of lattes, literature, and love

Molly Hagan is a struggling, forty-year-old single mother who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She suffers the sting of a husband who left her for a younger woman; a traumatized six-year old son who asks too many questions and is begging for an exotic pet; a mother who's financial future has gone belly-up and now has nowhere to live; and well-meaning friends and a shrink who pressure Molly to make changes in her life. Molly's troubles grow even deeper when she learns that she's penniless and can't even pay the rent.

When an old friend offers Molly a copyrighting job for a new bakery, Molly jumps at the chance for employment. The venue is located near the New York Public Library and the owner wants to make the bakery "a destination point, just like the library." Inspired by the challenge, Molly comes up with a "literary-food-is-delicious" schematic for what she envisions will become, "Vanity Fare." In the midst of pulling together her presentation, Molly suddenly finds herself being wooed by a sexy British pastry chef with an "upper-crust, devil-may-care Hugh Grant accent" and his aloof business partner, who becomes more attractive as he forms a bond with Molly's son.

Each chapter commences with blurbs that cleverly pair a syrupy literary reference/pun with a bakery offering such as "Much Ado about Muffins," "A Room of One's Scone" and "Catcher in the Rye Bread." Author Megan Caldwell has whipped up a delicious, well-plotted romance where her smart, self-deprecating heroine conquers real-world issues with good humor.

Vanity Fare: A novel of lattes, literature, and love  by Megan Caldwell

William Morrow, $14.99, Trade paper, 9780062188366,  416 pp

Publication Date: December 26, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (1/9/13), click HERE.