September 2019 BookPage by BookPage

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DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

LOVE,

LIES ‘Doctor Zhivago’

Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept is a sensational tale of spies, Soviet Russia and one extraordinary love affair

ALSO INSIDE Stephen King, Philippa Gregory & Caitlin Doughty

SEPT 2019

BookPage

SEPTEMBER 2019

cover story

meet the author

Lara Prescott 12

The untold story of the CIA and Doctor Zhivago

11 14

Fall’s most anticipated collections

Stephen King

Nonfiction Young Adult Children’s

columns

22 27 29

YA novels about the ties that bind

Grandma & Grandpa

Fiction

Nonfiction about (hu)man’s best friend

Family drama

Answering kids’ most morbid questions

Dog tales

reviews 28

Exploring life’s biggest mysteries

Caitlin Doughty

Rafael López

The master of horror returns

Novels of faith and purpose

Randall Munroe

Meet the illustrator of Just Ask!

A sweeping new saga begins

Short stories

8/27/19

Meet the author-illustrator of How To

features Philippa Gregory

Miracles Happen Every Day

4 5 5 6 8 9 10

Proudly made 100% in the USA www.chickensoup.com

Audio Lifestyles Well Read Whodunit Romance Book Clubs The Hold List

Picture books celebrate the golden years Cover image from The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, used with permission from Knopf

Create Your Best Life 9/24/19

PRESIDENT & FOUNDER Michael A. Zibart

MARKETING MANAGER Mary Claire Zibart

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Elizabeth Grace Herbert

ADVERTISING OPERATIONS Sada Stipe

PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Trisha Ping

SUBSCRIPTIONS Katherine Klockenkemper

DEPUTY EDITOR Cat Acree ASSOCIATE EDITOR Christy Lynch ASSISTANT EDITOR Savanna Walker PRODUCTION MANAGER Penny Childress

CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy CHILDREN’S BOOKS Allison Hammond CONTRIBUTOR Roger Bishop EDITORIAL INTERN Olivia Rhee

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JUST PACK

HEADPHONES

NEW AUDIOBOOKS FROM

MACMILLAN AUDIO “Bathurst nails it.” —AudioFile on Glass Houses

READ BY ROBERT BATHURST

“Archer is a master entertainer.” —Time

READ BY GEORGE BLAGDEN

From the iconic musicians Tegan and Sara comes a memoir about high school

READ BY THE AUTHORS

audio

by anna zeitlin

H Fleishman Is in

Trouble

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s stunning debut novel explores middle age, parenthood, divorce and the subjective nature of how we perceive other people, even those closest to us. Toby Fleishman is going through a divorce and discovers he’s a hot commodity on all the new dating apps. But when his exwife, Rachel, doesn’t pick up the kids when it’s her turn, he’s forced to navigate parenthood and dating while wondering what happened to his marriage—and to Rachel. He paints her as a neglectful mother and ruthless social climber with little care for his input. She makes more money, and he feels like he put his career on the back burner for her. But wait till you see her point of view. Read by Allyson Ryan with humor and attitude, Fleishman Is in Trouble (Random House Audio, 14.5 hours) is a ruthless look at class and relationships in modern-day Manhattan.

Whisper Network A North Texas-based athletic wear company gets shaken up when the “bad man list” is passed around in Chandler Baker’s Whisper Network (Macmillan Audio, 13 hours). When one of those bad men is up for a promotion to CEO of the company, enough is enough. Four very different women—from high-powered lawyers to a member of the custodial staff—come together to stand up to him and to the company willing to overlook his history of sexual harassment. This #MeToo revenge fantasy makes for a fun listen with a bit of mystery, exploring women’s lives, their relationships to work and how they deal with the bad men they are forced to answer to. Narrator Almarie Guerra does a nimble job portraying the different women with honesty and sympathy.

Conviction “Tautly constructed, fast-paced.” —Booklist

READ BY SUSAN ERICKSEN

“Barr surprises and entertains from start to finish.” —Publishers Weekly

READ BY KATE BURTON

When Anna McDonald’s husband announces he’s leaving her for her best friend, she finds comfort in true crime podcasts— until she recognizes the victim of her new favorite podcast as a man she once knew. When her best friend’s has-been rock-star husband turns up on her doorstep, he becomes the unwitting accomplice in helping her unravel the podcast’s mystery. Soon they’re jet-setting around Europe as Anna becomes entangled with assassins and uncovers a plot involving one of the richest, most secretive people in the world. Much of Conviction (Hachette Audio, 10 hours) takes place in Scotland, and narrator Cathleen McCarron does a great job with accents and secret identities. Denise Mina’s latest thriller is a fun, edgeof-your-seat listen that feels very contemporary with its use of social media and podcasts to drive the story forward.

Anna Zeitlin is an art curator and hat maker who fills her hours with a steady stream of audiobooks.

lifestyles

by susannah felts

H Dark Skies I’d never heard of astrotourism until Dark Skies (Lonely Planet, $19.99, 9781788686198, eBook available) crossed my desk. At a time when 80% of the planet sleeps under light-polluted skies (make that 99% in the USA), stargazing is, more than ever, a brush with the exotic. “Less than one hundred years ago, seeing the unobscured night sky was a birthright; now it is inaccessible to urban and suburban residents across the globe,” writes Valerie Stimac. This thorough book lays out the best dark-sky spots worldwide and contains everything you need to know about astronomical phenomena like meteor showers, aurora and eclipses through 2028. There’s even a section on space tourism (the future is now!).

One-Pot Vegetarian “One-pot” cookbooks have popped up everywhere lately, but none has drawn me in like Sabrina Fauda-Rôle’s One-Pot Vegetarian (Hardie Grant, $19.99, 9781784882570). Why? It could be that I’m eager to incorporate more plant-based cooking into my family’s daily routine. But it might also be the nifty design of this title, which makes the most of its double-page spreads. On the left, we see the raw ingredients collected in the pot—everything neatly parceled, as if in a pie chart— and on the right, the finished, cooked dish. Wildly satisfying, this conceit. Chapters include all-veg dishes, those that mix in plant-based proteins (grains, lentils, soy and such), pasta- and rice-driven meals, soups and even desserts. Some recipes call for a fair amount of chopping and slicing, but otherwise the preparations could not be simpler.

How Your Story Sets You Free Everybody has a story to tell. Though the line has become a bit cliché, let’s not overlook its useful truth. Personal stories are powerful stuff, and that power can be summoned in so many ways: sharing your story, listening to others, learning to craft the story itself. With How Your Story Sets You Free (Chronicle, $12.95, 9781452177519, eBook available), co-authors Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen distill the storytelling process into a tiny, bright yellow volume that feels like its own kind of golden ticket. “When you take the mic and share your story,” writes Box, “you immediately make more space in our culture for someone else.” The title is part of Chronicle’s HOW series, which all seem like jewels of compressed wisdom.

Susannah Felts is a Nashville-based writer and co-founder of The Porch, a literary arts organization. She enjoys anything paper-related and, increasingly, plant-related.

well read | by robert weibezahl

A bright future for bookworms This entertaining look at the past and future of books suggests that literature isn’t destined for the ash heap of history. It’s hardly surprising that a recent spate of books has lamented the lost art of book-reading in our distracted digital age. Writers and readers know best what such a loss could mean. But when Leah Price, a professor of literature and the history of books, began exploring the subject, she discovered that our perceptions of a glorious past of reading books are not entirely accurate. The way we read now hasn’t changed as much as we might think. In What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading (Basic, $28, 9780465042685, audio/eBook available), Price counters the biblio- doomsayers with an incisive look at what the archives reveal about books and reading—then, now and moving forward. In her professional capacity, Price has spent plenty of time among the dusty, forgotten vestiges of the reading past. She’s scrutinized the marginalia in antique school primers and the fingerprint stains on old library books. Studying books can make it hard to venerate texts, Price writes. She’s discovered, for instance, that in old copies of Samuel Richardson’s 18th-century doorstop of a novel Clarissa, the sex scenes are often well-thumbed, while long passages describing pastoral landscapes are in pristine condition. This would suggest that our romanticized reader of the past was just as prone to skimming for the “good bits”—21st-century eBooks just

make the process a little easier. Pundits have been writing about some version of the book’s demise since at least the 19th century, Price finds. But in truth, the future of literacy doesn’t hinge on “whether we read in print or online or in some as-yet-unimagined medium but rather [on] the interactions through which we get our hands on books—and even more fundamentally, the interactions that awaken a desire for them.” Ultimately, she believes the experience of immersing oneself in a world made of words can only survive if readers continue to carve out the places and times to have words with one another. Price takes this affectionate study of the history and future of reading in many disparate directions. She ventures into both contemporary psychiatry and the modern-day “archeology” of preserving and exploring Harvard’s remote library stacks. She takes us across centuries to the time of religious scribes, the innovations of Gutenberg and the digital success of Fifty Shades of Grey. She contemplates the reality that the challenge of reading today is not the availability of books, as it once was, but finding the time to read. Eye-opening and filled with delightful nuggets of truth, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books offers no nostalgia for a more tranquil reading past but rather a hopeful glimpse into an essential reading future.

Robert Weibezahl is a publishing industry veteran, playwright and novelist. Each month, he takes an in-depth look at a recent book of literary significance.

whodunit

by bruce tierney This Poison Will Remain

Fred Vargas’ This Poison Will Remain (Penguin, $16, 9780143133667, audio/eBook available) is the first of her novels that I have read. Yes, I said her: Fred Vargas is a female author who has topped the fiction charts in several European countries, and if there is any justice in the literary world, she will do the same on this side of the pond. Commissaire Adamsberg has been rather peremptorily summoned back to Paris from a fishing holiday in Iceland to investigate a nasty hit-and-run. Police officers are rarely afforded the luxury of pursuing just one case at a time, however. Adamsberg quickly finds himself investigating a series of deaths caused by bites from recluse spiders, small but occasionally lethal creatures that seem to have been working overtime in the vicinity of Nimes, France. Turns out that the victims were all once residents— rather unsavory residents at that—of the same orphanage. Now octogenarians, they are dying off one by one, each succumbing to the venom of the recluse. By turns wry and quirky, and with no shortage of plot twists, This Poison Will Remain will have Vargas’ new readers scurrying to find the six books that precede it.

A Better Man Once the Superintendent of Sûreté du Québec, Armand Gamache has been demoted to a position leading the homicide department. It was a demotion few believed he would accept, but he surprised the naysayers and took the job. As A Better Man (Minotaur, $28.99, 9781250066213, audio/eBook available) opens, the spring thaw is beginning in the St. Lawrence River, and the elements are conspiring to spawn a 100-year flood, the river overflowing its banks as ice dams the flow at every bend. It’s not a propitious time to be investigating a murder, but a young woman’s body turns up in a small but volatile tributary of the St. Lawrence. Her husband is the prime suspect; no surprises there, as he is a mercurial and abusive man. But there are other possibilities, too: a pair, or perhaps a trio, of spurned lovers, as well as a high-ranking police official bent on tanking the investigation if doing so will shed a bad light on Gamache. All the while, the floodwaters rise inexorably. Louise Penny’s latest offers suspense galore, well-drawn characters we’d like to know (even the crotchety poet Ruth and her “fowl-mouthed” duck), a return to the fictional village of Three Pines—where we would all like to live—and some of the finest prose to grace the suspense genre.

The Bone Fire S.D. Sykes’ The Bone Fire (Pegasus, $25.95, 9781643131979, eBook available) is the outlier in this column, and I mean that in a good way. Set in England in 1361, the year of the second major bubonic plague outbreak, it’s the story of a varied band of people, including noblemen, servants, a knight, a fool and a crusty Low Countries clockmaker with his sociopathic nephew/assistant in tow. This medieval cast of characters holes up in the remote island-fortress of Eden for the winter, sealing themselves off from the rest of the world until the danger of infection has passed. But mortal peril wears many masks, and one by one, people in the castle start mysteriously disappearing or dying—and not from the plague. It will fall to visiting nobleman Oswald de Lacy to solve the murders and protect his wife and young son. It’s a task for which he has some aptitude, but then the villain is no slouch either. And just about the time the reader has that “aha” moment, when they think they know the identity of the killer, that suspect dies a particularly gruesome death, and the reader gets sent back to square one. The Bone Fire is a classic and confounding locked-room mystery, with several promising suspects to choose from before the big reveal.

H When Hell Struck

Twelve

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, hand-picked his nephew, Captain Billy Boyle, to serve as his eyes and ears on the ground and to handle investigations and secret missions that are both vital to the Allied effort and exceptionally dangerous. Billy has a fair bit of experience in law enforcement, having served as a police detective in Boston in the years leading up to the war. But as the situation in Europe ramped up, he did what a lot of patriotic young Americans did in those days and enlisted in the Army. When Hell Struck Twelve (Soho Crime, $27.95, 9781616959630, eBook available) finds the intrepid spy/investigator in search of a murderer and, at the same time, tasked with planting the seeds of deception regarding Allied plans for the liberation of Paris. The Germans are on the run, but there is every indication that they will leave carnage in their path as they abandon the City of Light, and it is up to Billy and his team to thwart them in that endeavor—and to try to stay alive in the process. I’ve read every book in James R. Benn’s series, reviewed most of them, loved all of them, and this is the best one yet. Watch for some great cameos by Ernest Hemingway, Andy Rooney, George S. Patton and others.

Bruce Tierney lives outside Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he bicycles through the rice paddies daily and reviews the best in mystery and suspense every month.

Stories from the Past

Strong Women to R ead, SHARE, of

and

Discuss

An “emotional story of deep hardship for readers who enjoyed Winter’s Bone and The Book of Ruth,” (—Library Journal ) about a resilient farm family’s hard-won challenges—helmed by an unforgettable

heroine.

romance

by christie ridgway

H Bringing Down

the Duke

Evie Dunmore’s Victorian romance Bringing Down the Duke (Berkley, $15, 9781984805683, audio/eBook available) is a superior debut in every way. Annabelle Archer is smart, poor and desperate. Admitted to Oxford University through a benefactress committed to the women’s suffrage movement, Annabelle meets Sebastian Devereux, Duke of Montgomery, and tries to recruit him to their cause. The sexual tension shimmers on the page, and the pair’s sensual longing and cerebral connection make this romance seem unstoppable—although the conflict between duty and desire may prove to be insurmountable. The historical backdrop is not only well done but also integral to the plot, and the characters feel true to their time and societal expectations. Readers will identify with Annabelle and root for her to achieve all her heart’s desires.

The Blacksmith Queen G.A. Aiken writes fantasy romance with a grin and a wink in The Blacksmith Queen (Kensington, $15.95, 9781496721204, audio/eBook available), the first in a new series. When the Old King dies, a prophecy predicts a new queen, who turns out to be the sister of talented blacksmith Keeley Smythe. To claim the title, there are battles to be fought and allies to win over, forcing Keeley to make new friends (one of them a very attractive warrior). The Smythe clan will steal readers’ hearts and have them cheering for their triumph over evil. Aiken builds a world and characters that feel real despite the sexy centaurs, demon wolves and two suns in the sky. It may be laugh-out-loud funny, but at its heart this is a story of a woman who cares deeply for both the family she has and the one she creates.

From bestselling author Susan Holloway Scott, the previously unspoken history of the man who shot Hamilton— as told by the former enslaved servant,

longtime mistress and secret wife of the notorious Aaron Burr.

Ellen Marie Wiseman’s

international bestseller merges past and present, as the discovery of an

abandoned journal

inside a shuttered state asylum compels a young woman to piece together its original owner’s fate...

ensingtonBooks.com

Availa ble Everyw here Books Are Sold

Nothing to Fear Juno Rushdan provides nonstop action and pulse-pounding suspense in her second novel, Nothing to Fear (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $7.99, 9781492661573, eBook available). Operative Gideon Stone of the super-secretive Gray Box organization knows there’s a mole on the team but also knows it can’t be their cryptologist/hacker, Willow Harper. To prove she’s been set up and to save her life, Gideon and Harper go on the run. Gideon is as stony as his name, but he’s falling for the brilliant and beautiful Willow, who has an autism spectrum disorder. Her vulnerabilities and strengths make her a fascinating character and a good foil for her partner, who manages, in her arms, to find his softer side. Detailed descriptions of tactics and firefights add to the authenticity and excitement of this stellar read.

Christie Ridgway is a lifelong romance reader and a published romance novelist of over 60 books.

book clubs

by julie hale

H The Golden State Lydia Kiesling explores themes of immigration and family in her debut novel, The Golden State (Picador, $17, 9781250238115, audio/eBook available). Daphne, whose Turkish husband has been denied entry into the United States, is raising her infant daughter, Honey, alone in San Francisco. Cracking under the pressure of single parenthood and looking to escape her stress-filled life, she decamps with Honey for the California desert. Once there, Daphne drinks more than she should and meets her neighbors—Cindy, who’s a secessionist, and elderly Alice. But then her connections with the pair take a threatening turn. Told over the course of 10 days, this is an unflinching portrait of motherhood and its many challenges. Kiesling is a perceptive, compassionate writer, and she brings a remote part of California to vivid life in this accomplished debut.

BOOK CLUB READS FOR ING FORSPR FALL THE THIRD DAUGHTER by Talia Carner

“Thoroughly researched and vividly rendered, this is an important and unforgettable story of exploitation and empowerment that will leave you both shaken and inspired.” —PAM JENOFF, New York Times bestselling author

THE CHOCOLATE MAKER’S WIFE

by Karen Brooks

A lush, fascinating story of a young woman who is drawn into the 17th century London world of riches, power, intrigue…and chocolate.

Small Animals by Kim Brooks Flatiron, $16.99, 9781250089571, audio/eBook available When Brooks left her 4-year-old son in the car while running a quick errand, the police were alerted and she became embroiled in a protracted legal battle. Brooks recounts her experience in this fascinating mix of memoir and reportage on contemporary parenting.

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger Grove, $17, 9780802147127, audio/eBook available Suffering from memory loss after a car accident, Virgil tries to reconstruct his past in the tightknit community of Greenstone, Minnesota. Enger’s many fans will savor this bittersweet chronicle of Greenstone and the charming people who call it home.

Heartland by Sarah Smarsh Scribner, $17, 9781501133107, audio/eBook available This powerful memoir recounts Smarsh’s upbringing on a Kansas farm, reflecting on the past and probing the economic and social causes of poverty in America.

Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas Dey Street, $15.99, 9780062851345, audio/eBook available Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Vargas, who is Filipino, learned of his undocumented status at the age of 16, when he tried to get a driver’s license. With a reporter’s instinct for detail, he writes about the challenges of surviving as an outsider in America.

A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale selects the best new paperback releases for book clubs every month.

THE GLASS OCEAN

by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White “...[A]n unputdownable thriller. Williams, Willig, and White form a spectacularly winning team for this action—and romance-packed historical novel.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

THE LOST DAUGHTER by Gill Paul

What really happened to this lost Romanov daughter? A new novel perfect for anyone curious about Anastasia, Maria, and the other lost Romanov daughters…

t @Morrow_PB

t @bookclubgirl

f William Morrow I Book Club Girl

feature | the hold list

Fantasy tourism If you’re armchair traveling, you might as well pick the most fantastical, most impossible location. Here are the fantasy worlds where we’d most like to rent a cottage (or a manor, or a palace).

A Feast for Crows By George R.R. Martin Among the many, many sins of the recent TV adaptation of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga, the series’ total butchering of the wonderful land of Dorne has to be one of its most egregious failings. The most culturally distinct of the Seven Kingdoms, Dorne is known for its incredible wine, gender equality (firstborn children, male or female, inherit) and fantastic horses. Unlike all the other citizens of poor, war-torn Westeros, the Dornish seem to legitimately enjoy their life. And why wouldn’t they? They’ve got a kickass water park/palace called the Water Gardens, where all children, regardless of class, can go hang out, and leaders who actually care about their people, like wily Prince Doran Martell and his total boss of a daughter, Arianne. —Savanna, Assistant Editor

Stories of Your Life and Others

The Mists of Avalon

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Golem and the Jinni

By Ted Chiang

By Marion Zimmer Bradley

By J.R.R. Tolkien

By Helene Wecker

I wish my answer were Lothlórien. Or the hidden city of Gondolin. Or even Doriath. But when stripped of all my pretensions, my true answer is Hobbiton. I wish my heart’s longings could be satisfied by the lofty sophistication of the elves, but in truth, my table manners aren’t up to snuff. No, it’s in the Shire where I would feel most at home, gossiping about Lobelia Bracegirdle and eating unrefined starches. I’d visit the Mathom-house in Michel Delving, tour the Great Smials in Tuckborough and otherwise fill my days with gentle meandering. Of course, it would be difficult to visit without raising suspicion, on account of my being more than four feet tall, but the scenery, whimsy and sheer debauchery would be reason enough to try. —Christy, Associate Editor

During the Gilded Age, New York City was emerging as a global behemoth. In this city of contrasts, working-class tenements butt up against the 5th Avenue mansions of the wealthy and powerful “400.” That’s a world I’d like to visit as-is, but The Golem and the Jinni adds a whole new dimension to the concept of the melting pot by throwing into the mix mythical creatures from the city’s many immigrant cultures—including the titular Jewish golem and the Arabian jinni. The result is an imaginative, richly textured story, featuring a tenderly drawn relationship between Wecker’s main characters. This astonishingly assured debut creates a world readers will be sorry to leave (thankfully, a sequel is said to be in the works). —Trisha, Publisher

If I’m visiting a world that’s different from my own, I’m coming from an observational standpoint. I want to watch, compare and maybe, just maybe, understand a little bit. So I choose a world not so different from our own, except that the mysteries of the universe have landed at humankind’s feet: the Earth in Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” from his collection Stories of Your Life and Others, which inspired the contemplative, sonically soaring film Arrival. Here, a linguist can be a hero and has the power to crack open the way we perceive the passing of time. I want to see the consequences of that knowledge and that close encounter—which, yes, is a very mundane, cause-and-effect way of perceiving history’s events, but I’m only human. —Cat, Deputy Editor

Quick stipulation here: I will only transport myself to Avalon if it’s about 100 years before the Christians arrive in Britain and ruin all the fun. I’m not about to get stuck on an island and have to hide from sexist zealots my whole life. I am not strong enough to deal with the nonsense that Bradley’s Morgaine has to put up with. However, if I can pop back there before the judging begins, life on Avalon seems ideal. A matriarchy of priestesses who can see into the future and use their powers to influence Britain? Only having to interact with men who already see women as equal, if not superior? Wearing lots of flowing robes, making ominous proclamations and disappearing into the mists? Sign me up. —Savanna, Assistant Editor

Each month, BookPage staff share special reading lists—our personal favorites, old and new.

interview | philippa gregory

The tide is changing

Philippa Gregory revels in the imagination and research of a new series. Philippa Gregory’s Tidelands represents a major new trajectory for an author who was propelled into literary superstardom in 2001 with the publication of The Other Boleyn Girl, the first in a 15-book series that centers on real historical women from the Plantagenet and Tudor lines. The new novel blossomed from an epiphany of sorts while Gregory was rereading John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga. In a brief scene from the classic family epic, Soames Forsyte travels to a rural area of England in search of his family’s homestead, only to find himself completely alienated from his ancestral roots and literally stuck in the mud. “I looked at the history of other families I know, and I looked at my own family, and I thought, most of us start in a muddy field somewhere,” Gregory says, “and so I thought, that’s where I want to start this story.” Speaking by phone from London, the author reassures readers who may be apprehensive about her abandoning her royal roots: “I’ve already started writing book two of the series, and I have to say, I think it’s completely thrilling.” Gregory published her first novel, Wideacre, in 1987, while she was completing a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature. Since then she’s written about the British slave trade, English colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, nearly every era of medieval English history and beyond. But a common thread runs rather ostentatiously throughout her extensive and eclectic bibliography. “I like stories about women,” Gregory says. “A lot of my books—The White Queen, The White Princess, The Lady of the Rivers—they are about the power that women have over each other’s lives as daughters and mothers and grandmothers.” One of the things that attracted Gregory to her Plantagenet and Tudor characters was the faintness of their official historical footprint. Though these heroines were well-born, Gregory says, “they don’t all have very well-recorded histories. We still don’t know, for instance, Anne Boleyn’s date of birth. I mean, it’s just extraordinary that we don’t. We don’t know how old Catherine Howard was, and that makes a huge difference to how you regard her. You know, [if] she’s a girl of 14 or a girl of 17, you read her behavior very, very differently.” For Tidelands, however, which opens in 1648 during the English Civil War, there were indeed historical subplots (such as the attempted rescue of King Charles I from prison in the

months leading up to his trial) that demanded what Gregory describes as “very tight, meticulous research,” but for the most part it is a study of the period’s social history. The story centers on the intelligent and dignified Alinor Reekie, an herbalist, midwife and lay healer. Abandoned by her feckless and abusive husband, Alinor lives alone with her children in the tidelands, a marshy estuarial region along England’s southern coast. Although Alinor is fictional, she represents a type of woman that would have been found in most rural communities of the era. Through the recorded social history, Gregory knows what would have gone on inside Alinor’s birthing chamber and what sort of medicine she might have used. “It’s sort of funny that you would think when you’re writing an imaginary character, you’d be much freer of the research,” Gregory says, “but I’m not, because I never imagine the stuff that has been recorded. . . . So when I decided I wanted to write a book about a fictional woman, it was absolutely natural to go to someone whose life we can know about because we have some social history about the time. We know what she would be eating and what she would be paid for different tasks. I could create somebody, in one sense, that could stand for women in that time.” Of course, women in Alinor’s day were, as in most every other period of history, vulnerable to the whims and insecurities of the men who were formally in charge. As Gregory observes, “One of the things that happens when people don’t record women’s history is that they miss that almost hidden power structure.” In Alinor’s case, due to her livelihood as an herbalist and midwife, as well as the reputation of her mother and the insinuations of her absent husband, she lives in fear of being labeled a witch.

Tidelands Atria, $28, 9781501187155 Audio/eBook available

Historical Fiction Witchcraft as a catchall bogeyman is an age-old tool of social control, which has echoed into the future in other guises, such as the vilification of feminism. “[When I began] speaking out as a woman, if you said you were a feminist, certain people immediately assumed things about you,” Gregory says, “basically, that you were a man-hater, that you were emasculating, which was very like fears around witchcraft. Both of those things can be taken very badly by audiences who are frightened of what they might mean and give in to fear before inquiry.” Tidelands is the first entry in what Gregory hopes will be a sweeping series of six to eight volumes that follow Alinor’s descendants up to nearly the 20th century, leading them, generation by generation, from poverty to prosperity. “I’ll have my people, as it were, scattered around the world in the most exciting places,” Gregory says with an audible twinkle. “That’s the joy of purely fictional writing. Before, I couldn’t really say, well, I’ll see where the story takes me, because I know what the story is. This is a whole new career in a way, and it feels very much freer.” —Kathryn Justice Leache

cover story | lara prescott

Unveiling

CIA book club

the

For years Lara Prescott hated her first name because people so often mispronounced or misspelled it. Today, she’s thankful, because it seems to have led directly to the publication of her debut novel— one she was practically born to write. 1212

Lara Prescott’s first name was inspired by her mother’s love of both Boris Pasternak’s 1957 Russian novel Doctor Zhivago, a love story about Dr. Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova that spans the Russian Revolution and World War II, and the epic film adaptation by David Lean. Naturally, Prescott always felt a connection to the tale, and now she’s written The Secrets We Kept, a fictional account of how Pasternak wrote his Nobel Prize winner— and how the CIA used it as political propaganda during the Cold War. “My mother definitely takes credit for the book after having named me Lara,” Prescott jokes, speaking from her home in Austin, Texas. Prescott’s deft treatment of this littleknown, stranger-than-fiction saga could hardly be more fascinating, and it’s sure to be a blockbuster, having reportedly sold for $2 million at auction. The deal unfolded just as Prescott graduated with an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University Texas at Austin, with her manuscript as her thesis. “It was an almost unbelievable experience that I don’t think sunk in for months and months,” she recalls. “It has been life-changing and will continue to be.” It’s hardly a stretch to say that Prescott’s first novel was a lifetime in the making. Growing up in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, she enjoyed watching the film Doctor Zhivago with her family and sought it out anytime it played at the local theater. In high school she tackled the novel, although she admits, “It’s not the easiest Russian novel to sink your teeth into.” Nonetheless, she found herself “having a connection to the words and the story,” and she says she sees

cover story | lara prescott new meaning every time she rereads it. The tipping point came in 2014 when her father emailed her a Washington Post article about how the CIA secretly helped publish and distribute Russian editions of the novel, which was first given out at the 1958 world’s fair in Brussels. (A miniature paperback edition followed, many of which were given out at the 1959 World Youth Festival in Vienna.) The early CIA was pretty liberal, Prescott explains, with many recruits believing art and literature could be used to show Soviet citizens the freedoms and lack of censorship enjoyed by Americans, in contrast to their own government. As she writes in her fictional account, “The Agency became a bit of a book club with a black budget.” “It was almost the direct opposite of what the rest of the government was doing at the time—the FBI and the Red Scare and all of those things,” Prescott says. “They were definitely at odds with each other.” Wanting to know more about the bookish mission, which was classified under code name “AEDINOSAUR,” Prescott began devouring newly released CIA documents. As she read so many of the names and places that had been redacted from these pages, she felt as though the many participants had “been pretty much erased from history except for the men who signed at the bottom of the secret document.” She began to wonder about the people who “typed these reports and memos and knew the secrets of these secret keepers.” She researched the roles women played in the early CIA, most often as typists, secretaries and record keepers, but sometimes spies as well. Suddenly a novel began to emerge. “The first voice that came to me was the voice of the typists,” Prescott recalls. “It was one of those things that has never happened to me before. I heard the voice in my head in the middle of the night, and I emailed myself a few lines. This was the very first thing I wrote.” She chronicles the lively office pool through this collective voice—their work, lives, loves and gossip—such as in her seemingly heaven-sent opening: “We typed a hundred words per minute and never missed a syllable. Our identical desks were each equipped

with a mint-shelled Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter, a black Western Electric rotary phone, and a stack of yellow steno pads. Our fingers flew across the keys.” Having worked as a political campaigner in Washington, D.C., Prescott says she felt “a personal connection to these women,” adding, “You have these men in positions of power at the CIA—unchecked power, really—and women who could only reach a certain level. I wanted to explore these power dynamics, which often, unfortunately, still exist.” Two characters soon rose to the forefront, both of whom narrate chapters of their own. There’s CIA newbie Irina Drozdova, a Russian American, and Sally Forrester, a former OSS agent and spy tasked with training Irina. As Sally notes, being a “keeper of secrets” is a “power that some, myself included, found more intoxicating than any drug, sex, or other means of quickening one’s heartbeat.” Initially planning to write only about these female spies, Prescott soon realized that this was only half the story. It felt equally essential to chronicle the intricate saga of what was happening in Russia: how Doctor Zhivago was written; how Pasternak’s mistress, Olga Ivinskaya, inspired the character of Lara; how the Russian government forbid the novel’s publication and persecuted Pasternak; and how Ivinskaya was twice sent to the Gulag for her involvement with the literary giant. “I wanted to give Olga a voice that I think she’s been denied throughout history,” Prescott says, “and make people aware of this woman behind the famous man.” The project grew into an “obsession,” Prescott says. Her research was extensive, taking her to libraries galore; to Oxford, England, where she spoke with Pasternak’s niece; and to the dacha outside of Moscow where Pasternak wrote his masterpiece. It’s now a museum, and the author is buried in a nearby cemetery. Prescott describes standing at Pasternak’s grave as “a profound experience, one I will never forget.” In the end, Prescott ties this world-spanning novel together with aplomb. With multiple narrators and two riveting but complicated plotlines set on opposite sides of the globe, The Secrets We Kept abounds with not only intrigue but also plenty of joy, heartbreak and, yes, humor.

“I continue to be fascinated with how words are used to change the hearts and minds of citizens.”

The Secrets We Kept Knopf, $26.95, 9780525656159 Audio/eBook available

Historical Fiction “I love books that deal with very serious topics and tragic circumstances but never lose sight of the humor,” Prescott says. “That is part of life. And that gallows humor is really important, especially in Russian culture.” Ironically, when Prescott began her project, several publishing insiders informed her that readers were no longer particularly interested in Russia. Little could she anticipate how topical her novel would be when the 2016 presidential election helped to bring the Soviet Union back into the headlines. “After researching how the Cold War unfolded and [about] tactics that both the Americans and the Soviets used,” she muses, “I can’t help but think that, of course this has never ended. Why would it have?” She cautions that she never intended to write a good-guy-versus-bad-guy, East- versus-West story, and further notes, “I continue to be fascinated with how words are used to change the hearts and minds of citizens, whether it be through books, as they did in the Cold War, or in the current climate in which tweets and fake news have the same effect.” —Alice Cary

feature | short stories

Fall for short fiction

Kids versus evil

Three of the season’s most anticipated collections are brief, powerful and to the point.

Stephen King returns with a chilling escape tale.

R.L. Maizes chronicles the comedy and absurdity of the human condition in her wry, whimsical debut, We Love Anderson Cooper (Celadon, $25, 9781250304070, audio/eBook available). In the beautifully executed title story, Markus, a seventhgrader grappling with his homosexuality, causes a stir by coming out at his bar mitzvah. (“Why didn’t you talk to us first? We would have understood,” his mother says. “We love Anderson Cooper.”) Markus is one of several characters whose emotions bring unexpected consequences or shifts in perspective, such as in “Couch,” in which therapist Penelope’s new office sofa has the power to impart optimism. Crafted without excess or stylistic extremity, Maizes’ stories have a refreshing forthrightness. Edwidge Danticat’s Everything Inside (Knopf, $25.95, 9780525521273, audio/eBook available), her first volume of short stories since the acclaimed Krik? Krack! (1995), mines the emotional and psychological landscapes of Haitian immigrants through rich narratives that explore the nature of family, identity and home. Many of Danticat’s protagonists are women living with loss or trying to make reality tally up with their expectations. In “Sunrise, Sunset,” a Haitian woman living in Miami is inured to the vagaries of life—“the whims of everything from tyrants to hurricanes and earthquakes.”

feature | stephen king

As she slowly succumbs to dementia, she tries to help her daughter adjust to motherhood. In “The Gift,” a woman meets up with a former lover who lost his family in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special” tells the story of a young nanny with AIDS and the family that employs her. Powerful and poignant, heartbreaking and hopeful, these are narratives about people struggling to connect—across continents, across generations. Rion Amilcar Scott’s electrifying The World Doesn’t Require You (Liveright, $25.95, 9781631495380, audio/eBook available) takes place in the fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, which provided the backdrop for his debut, Insurrections (2016). Settled by the inciters of a slave rebellion, it’s a town shaped by the forces of history and religion. In “David Sherman, the Last Son of God,” God is a Cross River native with 13 children and whose youngest, David, tries to make a place for himself in the community by heading up a gospel band. In “The Electric Joy of Service,” robot slaves are manufactured to serve wealthy masters. Scott mixes tones and moods, moving from solemn and portentous to comic and ironic with unfailing assurance. My advice: Dispense with expectations, surrender to Scott’s singular genius, and enjoy the journey. —Julie Hale

Stephen King’s The Institute (Scribner, $30, 9781982110567, audio/eBook available) is already drawing comparisons to a couple of his older works, Firestarter and It, as well as to the Netflix sensation “Stranger Things.” And with good reason—The Institute includes a ragtag collection of adolescents banding together against a common enemy, a shady organization exploiting children for their unique “gifts.” But whether King is chasing “Stranger Things” or “Stranger Things” is chasing King, the result is the same: shocking suspense and hallmark thrills. In an unexpected move, King opens The Institute with a Jack Reacher-like drifter named Tim Jamieson, who takes a job as a “night knocker” with the sheriff’s department in rural Dupray, South Carolina. It’s more than 50 pages later before we meet the novel’s true protagonist, young prodigy Luke Ellis, whose parents are trying to get him into a prestigious school where his unique intellect will be challenged. But Luke’s world is shattered when he is kidnapped from his Minneapolis home in the middle of the night by a team of highly skilled special operatives. He awakens in a room made to look like his own, though the illusion stops at the door. Once outside his room, Luke finds himself in a strange facility somewhere in Maine. He soon learns he’s not alone, as other kids, ranging in age from 10 to 16, are also being held prisoner. King conveys Luke’s confusion, shock, hopelessness and grief in convincing and heart-wrenching fashion. The concept of family separation takes on an eerie weight here, with unsettling parallels between

the events of the novel and the reallife images we see on the news of kids huddled under silver mylar blankets in cramped cages at the U.S.–Mexico border. In a thinly veiled comparison to callous border patrol agents, Luke’s adult captors lack compassion and are often downright cruel. But King ramps up the cruelty even further, subjecting Luke to physical and mental abuse that, at times, readers may find hard to sit through. Luke and the other kids get slapped around, are forced to receive mysterious injections that cause convulsions and are nearly drowned in a sensory deprivation tank, all to awaken the kids’ latent telepathic or telekinetic powers. The kids are promised that, if they do as they are told, they’ll have their memories wiped and be returned home to their parents as if nothing ever happened. Good behavior is rewarded with tokens to purchase snacks or even alcohol and cigarettes. Kids can even buy time on a computer, though internet access is restricted. After gaining the trust and help of one of the Institute’s support staff, Luke makes a break for freedom. His escape brings him to South Carolina, where Tim Jamieson finally reenters the story just in time to aid Luke in a final confrontation with the Institute’s baddies. King makes no effort to hide his distaste for Trump, as he takes a direct jab at him in the book’s waning pages. Political leanings aside, The Institute offers a thrilling reading experience and rousing tribute to the resilience of children and the unending fight against evil. —G. Robert Frazier

feature | novels of faith and purpose

Is anyone listening? Allowing characters to doubt, to wonder, to see and believe.

It’s no small task figuring out how God fits into life’s decisions, disappointments and joys. In these four novels, with protagonists of all ages and in every stage of life, God is both elusive and ever-present as a giver and taker of life and a wellspring of hope. Questions are posed; answers are proposed. The truth lies in the heart of the reader. In Cara Wall’s thought-provoking debut, The Dearly Beloved (Simon & Schuster, $26.99, 9781982104528, audio/eBook available), the lives of four characters become interwoven as they navigate the rough terrain of maturation on their way to lifelong friendship. Lily and Charles meet in college, as do Nan and James. Strong yet scarred by tragedy, Lily has difficulty fathoming Charles’ faith and his call to ministry. Nan, a preacher’s daughter, finds herself relentlessly wooed by James, who is unsure of his call to be a minister. When the men are assigned to the same church in New York City in 1963, the couples meet. While the men fall into a natural symbiosis (James’ social activism matches Charles’ skills in ministering to the needy and heartbroken), difficulties between the women stir up feelings of loneliness and isolation. But the true tests come when these new ministers struggle to find answers to questions of faith for themselves, their wives and their congregants. Why do good things happen to bad people? How do we handle grief and loss as people of faith? Does God have a plan for our lives? Does that plan include doubt? How should the church handle social activism? Wall doesn’t answer these questions, but she deftly explores the possibilities, honestly and beautifully drawing readers into the hearts and souls of these four characters, in whom we may find a little bit of ourselves. In Rachel Linden’s third novel, The Enlightenment of Bees (Thomas Nelson, $16.99, 9780785221401, audio/ eBook available), she offers a gentle push for readers to realize that small things can make a big difference. Mia West, devastated and rejected by her boyfriend, makes a quick decision to do what she believes are great things in a world that is hurting. Guided by dreams of bees, she goes on a humanitarian journey from the slums of Mumbai to a refugee camp on the Hungarian border. Her desire to change the world is crushed but renewed many times as she finds her way through heartbreaking situations outside her comfort zone. Mia’s past experiences have made her believe she must compromise what she wants in her life, that in order to effect change, she must deny her own heart. Her trip, as well as a budding relationship with a team member, helps change her mind. Linden’s own experiences as an international aid worker add credibility to every description and expres-

sion of Mia’s frustration and joy. This honey-sweet story reveals the power of staying open to possibilities. Father-and-daughter authors Ted and Rachelle Dekker deliver a suspenseful story of light and hope in the midst of a dark and fearful world in their first joint writing adventure, The Girl Behind the Red Rope (Revell, $24.99, 9780800736538, eBook available). A religious community called the Holy Family Church, hiding in the hills of Tennessee, is shaken to its core when a few members question why their group is sequestered. Then two “sinful” outsiders threaten to tarnish the followers’ “purity” when they arrive with what may be answers. The church leader, Rose Pierce, follows her own spiritual guide, believing that he has their best interests at heart—but is the guide an angel or something darker? Questioning Rose’s possibly misguided authority as well as their own faith, brother and sister Jaime and Grace are determined to make the right decisions for themselves and the others while following Christ’s teachings. It’s not until a child leads Grace to see the light—in every way—that the tide begins to turn against the shadows that surround the Holy Family Church. The Dekkers skillfully bring into focus the depth of supernatural evil that lurks around this faithful group and how easy it can be to fall prey to that evil. But ultimately, love conquers all fear, all darkness and all fury. Award-winning author William Kent Krueger explores struggles and strength of faith during the Great Depression in This Tender Land (Atria, $27, 9781476749297, audio/eBook available). Four young orphans—white narrator and storyteller Odie, his brother Albert, a girl named Emmy and a mute Sioux boy named Mose—guide readers through a beautiful landscape after escaping abusive caretakers and horrendous conditions in a Native American boarding school. Krueger’s painstaking research allowed him to explore the lives of the poor, who existed on little means and lots of hope in 1932, and to open a window into Christian missionary-run boarding schools, which cruelly forced assimilation until the 1960s. Reminiscent of Huck and Jim and their trip down the Mississippi, the bedraggled youngsters encounter remarkable characters and learn life lessons as they escape by canoe down the Gilead River in Minnesota. They meet a farmer grieving the loss of his family, a healer in a traveling revival show and a downtrodden family unable to get out of a makeshift Hooverville. These three pit stops underscore diversity of faith and beliefs, charity and hardship, and all three propel the four vagabond children to a new level of understanding how God works in their lives and in the lives of others, even in times of despair. —Lonna Upton

4 novels find God both elusive and ever-present.

reviews | fiction

H Cantoras

By Carolina De Robertis

Literary Fiction Dictatorships cannot abide desire. That visceral human gravitation, the movement of the marrow in the direction of want, is the antithesis of totalitarianism. To express it—and especially to express it in a manner the gatekeepers of mainstream society deem aberrant—is to express a dangerous, powerful kind of freedom. Freedom—its presence and absence, the longing for it—colors every page of Carolina De Robertis’ masterful, passionate and at times painful new novel. Cantoras (Knopf, $26.95, 9780525521693, audio/eBook available) tells the story of five women who must navigate a society in the grips of overwhelming oppression, at a time when being a woman who loves other women carries a sentence of at best ostracization and at worst obliteration. Cantoras begins in late-1970s Uruguay, a country under the control of a merciless military government. Seeking refuge from the oppressive atmosphere of the capital, five women travel to an isolated coastal village

The Beekeeper of Aleppo By Christy Lefteri

World Fiction Like the beehives he tends, Nuri Ibrahim exists at the mercy of forces larger than he. When war encroaches on him and his wife, Afra, they are forced to leave their lives in Syria behind and become refugees. Entrusting themselves to strangers, they journey toward England, where Nuri’s cousin Mustafa waits with his family, but it takes a long time to reunite with Mustafa. Bridging the distance between husband and wife, a rift forged by profound loss, will take just as long. The war has blinded them both: Afra has lost her sight, and Nuri often sees only what he

called Cabo Polonio. It soon becomes a haven where the women can live as they wish, to be lovers, friends, confidants—to be free. So liberating is this place that the women decide to pool their money and buy a small home there. From that first visit to Cabo Polonio, De Robertis unfurls the stories of each of the women’s lives—their hopes, their secret pasts, the suffering they’ve been made to endure by a society in which living openly is more often than not a dangerous pipe dream. The novel covers some 35 years, frequently changing focus from one character to another and yet at all times retaining a powerful sense of intimacy. Each of De Robertis’ central characters is of incredible emotional depth. Cantoras is at its most powerful when dissecting consequences of desire. Several of the central characters are subjected to horrific

wants to see. In The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Ballantine, $27, 9781984821218, audio/eBook available), author Christy Lefteri draws from her experiences volunteering with refugees in Athens, Greece, to build a moving examination of how people make sense of who they were and who they have become. Through Syria, Turkey and Greece, Afra and Nuri move and wait while the pull of the past, both its dark tragedy and its former sunlit joy, travels with them. Hope is a thread Nuri loses, picks up and loses again. But no matter how bleak the present in which they find themselves, hope surfaces when it is most needed—in dreams, in visions, in emails, in an injured bee, in the blue sky, in memory. Not all memories are shadows; some are full of light. Lefteri’s writing is observant and fluid, capturing the contours of life and relationships. The degradation Nuri and Afra must bear made me want to look away, but Lefteri’s thoughtful voice always brought me back. In defiance of all they have witnessed and endured, Nuri, Afra and Mustafa struggle mightily to be “people who bring life rather than death.” —Melissa Brown

violence at the hands of the military dictatorship, but they are also sometimes subjected to violence at the hands of their relatives, people who cannot accept them as they are, who want desperately to “fix” them. In this atmosphere of repression, Romina, one of the five women, thinks, “the path into the forbidden was in fact wide open right in front of you . . . stepping onto it could be a kind of rightness, a vitality more powerful than fear.” The bond the five women form—the way they orbit, attract and repel, take solace and find strength in one another—is the most moving part of Cantoras. By the end of the novel, there is a sense that the reader has done more than simply peer in on the lives of strangers, that instead they have experienced something organic and deeply human—a dangerous, powerful kind of freedom. —Omar El Akkad Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Carolina De Robertis.

Live a Little

By Howard Jacobson

Comic Fiction Even if they don’t live in a nursing home, the fate of most people past age 90 is to become nearly invisible. That’s what makes Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson’s decision to cast two Londoners in their 10th decades as the principal characters in his sly new novel, Live a Little (Hogarth, $27, 9781984824219, audio/eBook available), such a bold one. As she approaches her 100th birthday, Beryl Dusinbery (nicknamed “Princess”) must confront the frustration of living with memories that often resemble a piece of Swiss cheese. When she’s not stitching morbidly

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reviews | fiction humorous needlepoint “death samplers,” she’s doing her best to gather fragments of her colorful, romantic past in a biting journal d’amour. Shimi Carmelli, former owner of a shop that sold phrenology busts, at times wishes he suffered from Beryl’s frequent memory lapses. Instead, he’s afflicted with perfect recall, and much of what he remembers about his distant childhood, including the brother from whom he’s been estranged for decades, is a source of deep pain. Residing in a flat above the Fing Ho Chinese Banquet Restaurant, where he appears periodically to engage in the practice of cartomancy (fortunetelling with ordinary playing cards), he’s considered the “last of the eligible bachelors,” at least among the elderly widows of North London. It isn’t until roughly the novel’s midpoint that Beryl and Shimi meet and Jacobson’s talents as an astute student of human nature and his mastery of witty, acid-dipped dialogue shine brightest. Through an almost continuous conversation that begins in a cemetery and proceeds in a Regent’s Park cafe and elsewhere, the secrets concealed by these strikingly different characters gradually see daylight. “We meet to touch nerves,” Beryl tells Shimi, who believes they’ve come together at “the perfect age to enjoy a verbal friendship.” And though Beryl believes they’re “both stuck with the parts we learnt to play a long time ago,” the subtle changes we witness in these characters belie that rueful assertion. Live a Little’s message—that life isn’t truly over until it ends—is a refreshingly optimistic one for readers of any age. —Harvey Freedenberg

The Ten Thousand Doors of January By Alix E. Harrow

Fantasy Set in the early 1900s, The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Redhook, $27, 9780316421997, audio/eBook available) is the story of January Scaller, whose father travels around the world to find unique curiosities for his

wealthy employer, Mr. Locke. January remains behind with Locke, who keeps her dressed in finery, storing her as carefully as the other specimens he possesses. On the day before she turns 17, January discovers a mysterious book that smells of sea and spices in one of the many rooms of Locke’s house. As she reads the book, she learns that certain locations in the world are doors to other worlds—and that her entire life is tied to those doors. With the help of a few friends, January decides to escape Locke and his strange society of archaeologists and try to find her father before she no longer can. Part-time historian Alix E. Harrow has written a stunning debut novel with inventive worlds, sumptuous language and impeccably crafted details. Several of Harrow’s characters challenge traditional stereotypes in interesting ways, and January in particular is a refreshingly fierce female protagonist. Harrow paces this action-packed novel beautifully, slowly revealing the truth as the reader races through the pages to discover the ultimate conclusion. Readers seeking a fresh fantasy with an enduring love story need look no further, and they’ll be left wistfully hoping to stumble upon doors of their own. —Annie Peters

Akin

By Emma Donoghue

Family Drama Stories about the mysteries of childhood have often been at the heart of Emma Donoghue’s fiction, from the boy who spent his first five years imprisoned in Room to the 11-year-old girl who refused all food in The Wonder. The two characters at the heart of Akin (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316491990, audio/eBook available) grapple with the effects of difficult upbringings, and inner demons and the desire to understand them drive the present-day narrative. It’s February in New York, and Noah Selvaggio is packing for an 80th birthday trip to Nice, France, where he was born. He hasn’t been to Nice since age 4, when his mother, Margot, sent him to live with his father in America.

She stayed behind to care for her own father, a famous photographer, in the later years of World War II. Noah married Joan, a fellow chemist, and they remained together for almost 40 years until her recent death from cancer. When Noah went through the belongings of his recently deceased younger sister, he found nine black-and-white photos from the 1930s and ’40s. Noah suspects that Margot had printed them herself. Part of the reason for his trip to Nice is to learn more about his mother and the places depicted in her pictures. But before he leaves, he gets a call from Children’s Services asking him to be temporary guardian for Michael, his 11-year-old great-nephew. Michael’s father, Victor, is dead from an apparent overdose, and his mother is in jail. Noah is the closest available kin. Reluctantly, Noah agrees to take Michael, an ill-mannered potty-mouth fond of violent video games, on his journey. What follows is an emotionally trying trip to France, with Noah struggling to keep Michael out of mischief as he pieces together the puzzle of the photographs, which suggest that Margot may have had greater involvement in the war than anyone in the family ever knew. Akin isn’t as tightly plotted as Donoghue’s previous works, and many scenes play out like a Nice travelogue more than a novel. But Donoghue does an admirable job dramatizing the sacrifices people are often forced to make for younger generations, sometimes in unimaginably dangerous situations. —Michael Magras

H Dominicana By Angie Cruz

Coming of Age Ana Canción is only 15 when her parents convince her to marry Juan Ruiz, a man twice her age whom she barely knows, and move with him from their home in the Dominican Republic to New York City. They hope she will be able to get a job and that she and Juan will eventually save enough to send for the rest of Ana’s family to join them.

reviews | fiction Ana’s story, inspired by author Angie Cruz’s own mother’s experiences, is undoubtedly a familiar one. When Ana arrives in the Washington Heights neighborhood of NYC in 1965, she quickly realizes the brutal reality of her new life. Juan is a strict disciplinarian and physically abuses Ana for breaking his many rules. She’s rarely allowed out of the sixth-floor apartment they share with Juan’s younger brother, César, so she spends her days cleaning, cooking and washing their work clothes by hand. Ana’s dreary life greatly improves when Juan returns to the politically tumultuous Dominican Republic to ensure that the Ruiz family’s assets remain safe. With her newfound freedom, Ana begins taking English lessons at a neighborhood church, goes dancing with fun-loving César and even sees a movie at Radio City Music Hall. With César’s help, she sells her homemade Dominican delicacies outside his workplace three days a week. She saves every penny, with the ultimate goal of escape, until unexpected family developments threaten to squelch her dream. In her third novel, Dominicana (Flatiron, $26.99, 9781250205933, audio/eBook available), Cruz writes with warmth, empathy and remarkable perception about the immigrant experience. Engaging and illuminating, Dominicana will appeal to readers who’ve enjoyed novels by Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez. —Deborah Donovan

H Quichotte

By Salman Rushdie

Literary Fiction Some stories are eternal, and while writers don’t necessarily repeat them word-for-word through the generations, they are capable of crafting compelling echoes that evoke both the time we’re in and the universal emotional constants of humanity. Evoking that sense of universality becomes more difficult when you’re telling a story that’s an open homage to one of the most famous and influential works of literature in human history, but in his insightful

and wickedly funny way, Salman Rushdie pulls it off with Quichotte (Random House, $28, 9780593132982, audio/eBook available). A retelling of Don Quixote, Quichotte follows a man who, on a quest to win the heart of a daytime TV star, has redubbed himself “Quichotte” (pronounced “Key-shot”) and committed his life to the pure pursuit of what he calls “The Beloved.” To aid him in his quest, he imagines a son called Sancho, and the two journey together on a road trip through a half-imagined, enchanted version of the American landscape, staying in hotels where the TV is always on. Quichotte and Sancho’s story is woven through a metanarrative, as Rushdie reveals that their story is actually being imagined by a man who writes spy novels under the pen name Sam DuChamp. DuChamp and Quichotte’s stories are both, in their ways, tributes to Cervantes’ epic quest for love and acceptance, full of journeys to redemption and understanding in a world that seems to have gone mad around them, and it’s in this metafictional journey that Rushdie’s already witty and precise prose really comes alive. By structuring Quichotte as a narrative within a narrative, he’s given himself an inventive way to say something about a world obsessed with everything from reality television to hacktivism. Quichotte is a story of breathtaking intellectual scope, and yet it never feels too weighty or self-serious. Like Cervantes, Rushdie is able to balance his commentary with a voice full of tragicomic fervor, which makes the novel a thrilling adventure on a sentence-by-sentence level and another triumph for Rushdie. —Matthew Jackson

The Grammarians By Cathleen Schine

Family Drama Identical twins Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, both named for the same minor Greek goddess, shared everything: a womb, a language known only to themselves, the red hair that set them even further apart from their peers (only 2% of the

world’s population are gingers, less than the 3.3% that are twins). They also share a love of English that (and they would adore the irony) cleaved them together as much as it cleaved them apart. Long before their first adolescent stirrings, the pair fell head-over-heels for words. Daphne amassed rare ones (rebarbative, hendiadys, aposiopesis) in her notebook, the same way other kids collect sea glass or baseball cards. Laurel looked them up in their father’s massive Merriam Webster’s Second Edition. They played with words, quarreled over words, used words as both rapier and armor. Author Cathleen Schine is a keen student of both language and families, and The Grammarians (FSG, $27, 9780374280116, audio/eBook available) calls to mind the likes of Nora Ephron or Joan Didion. It’s not every verbal stunt pilot that can bring a mid-novel excursus about the differences between Webster’s Second and Third editions to a safe landing.

Cathleen Schine is a verbal stunt pilot, calling to mind the likes of Nora Ephron and Joan Didion. As for the sisters, Schine renders a note- perfect portrait of how shared DNA can foster a ferocious internal rivalry, while it renders the pair nearly impervious to attack from the outside world. When the big rift does descend, it’s a proxy war but devastating nonetheless: prescriptive grammar versus descriptive, Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage versus The Chicago Manual of Style. Daphne’s somewhat hectoring grammar column, “The People’s Pedant,” has found a modest but passionate audience, and it puts her on the obverse side of a coin with sister Laurel, whose poetry celebrates the authenticity of those for whom grammar doesn’t really exist. Words are exchanged, but fewer and more rarely. As they say, the reason that our families can push our buttons is because they’re the ones who installed them. The big question becomes whether there is a dictionary sufficiently large and complex to contain the words that Laurel and Daphne need to build a bridge back to one another, or whether they will remain like their identical DNA, a double helix whose twin coils never really meet. —Thane Tierney

reviews | fiction Red at the Bone

By Jacqueline Woodson

Family Saga Jacqueline Woodson, who is completing her stint as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, returns to her beloved Brooklyn for her second novel for adults, Red at the Bone (Riverhead, $26, 9780525535270, audio/eBook available), which explores the effects of an unplanned pregnancy on an African American family. The story opens in 2001 at a coming-of-age party at a Brooklyn brownstone. Sixteen and outfitted in her mother’s lace dress with a matching corset, garters and stockings, Melody plans to enter the party to an instrumental version of Prince’s “Nikki,” much to her grandparents’ discomfort. But there’s another catch to both the day and the dress. At 15, Melody’s mother, Iris, was pregnant and unable to wear the carefully made dress. Iris’ own coming-of-age birthday was left unmarked, and after her dismissal from private school, the family opted to move to another part of Brooklyn where they could also join a new church. But despite the shame and disruption of baby Melody, Iris was determined to move forward, ultimately getting her high school diploma, enrolling at Oberlin College and moving, almost permanently, out of Melody’s life. Over 21 brief chapters, Red at the Bone, which draws its title from the romantic feelings Iris has for another woman at Oberlin, moves backward and forward in time, examining the effect Melody’s birth had on each character, from her disappointed but loving grandparents to her devoted father and his resolute yet fragile mother. Along the way, the reader learns more about the history of the family’s losses, from 9/11 to the Tulsa Race Riots of 1912. Kin and community have always been of primary concern for Woodson; her National Book Award-winning memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, explored her own childhood transition from Ohio to South Carolina and then New York. Her books combine unique details of her characters’ lives with the sounds, sights and especially music of their surroundings,

creating stories that are both deeply personal and remarkably universal. Though Red at the Bone lacks the cohesion of Woodson’s previous work, this lyrical, lightly told coming-of-age story is bound to satisfy. —Lauren Bufferd

contemporary novel with a main character who’s determined to get the real story and maybe find herself along the way. —Sarah McCraw Crow

H A Door in the Earth By Amy Waldman

The Nobodies By Liza Palmer

Comic Fiction At 36, Joan Dixon sees herself as a complete failure. In the year since she lost her Los Angeles newspaper job, she’s had to move home with her parents and has just blown her last chance to sell the big story she’s been reporting. In desperation, she takes a copywriting job at Bloom, a tech startup where a 24-year-old will be her boss. That’s the setup for Liza Palmer’s latest novel, The Nobodies (Flatiron, $26.99, 9781250169846, audio/eBook available), which satirizes the tech industry’s affectations—its endless free food and drink, ridiculously young workforce and bro-y CEOs who believe their own nonsense. Joan’s reporter’s instincts lead her to suspect that something’s off with Bloom’s business model. Joan makes friends with her young co-workers, and before long they’ve formed an investigative team. As they begin to pursue leads, Joan wonders if she’s leading them down a disastrous path. Joan is stubborn, angry, self-deprecating and funny. Humor is a strength of the novel, and Joan’s first-person narration allows for lots of introspection, although it sometimes comes at the expense of the story and the development of the novel’s other characters. Joan’s co-workers fall in line with her investigative plan quickly, none of them giving more than a slight pushback, even though they stand to lose jobs and health insurance. As I read The Nobodies, I thought of the HBO show “Silicon Valley,” for its funny, bumbling characters, and then “Younger,” whose main character connects with her 20-something publishing co-workers, and finally, The Inventor: Out for Blood, the documentary about the fraudulent tech startup Theranos. Combining elements from all of these narratives, The Nobodies is a fast-paced,

Literary Fiction Former New York Times reporter Amy Waldman left an indelible imprint on readers with her debut, The Submission, which examined the fallout of 9/11 at Ground Zero. Eight years later, Waldman returns with an even more ambitious novel, A Door in the Earth (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316451574, audio/eBook available), which proves to be as politically provocative and challenging as its predecessor. Drawing on her years based in Afghanistan, Waldman takes readers deep into the heart of the country, transporting us to a remote and largely unremarkable village, ringed by mountains far from the ongoing military conflicts that make headlines overseas. Guiding us is Parveen Shamsa, an earnest medical anthropologist who has recently graduated from Berkley. Inspired by a fictional bestselling memoir by Dr. Gideon Crane, which shed light on the abysmal state of women’s health in Afghanistan, Parveen has left the comforts of home in California to volunteer at the women’s clinic established by Dr. Crane and to reconnect with her own Afghan heritage. Unfortunately, the reality of life in the village as well as increasing doubts about the veracity of Crane’s book slowly disabuse Parveen of her youthful naivety, pulling back the veil of her innocence and privilege. When American troops turn their attention to the village, also owing to Crane’s memoir, and begin to pave a road to improve access, this seemingly benign action triggers devastating results for both Parveen and the villagers. A Door in the Earth is a deeply chilling, multifaceted examination of not just the situation in Afghanistan but also the more pernicious and complex consequences of awakening the sleeping giant that is America and receiving its attentions—whether benevolent or not. Waldman plays out Newton’s third law of motion

reviews | fiction on the human scale, demonstrating that for every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. As Parveen learns a little too late, “there is no such thing as an innocuous interaction: there were always repercussions, always collateral damage, for others.” —Stephenie Harrison

Opioid, Indiana

darkly hilarious that you may have to put the book down because you’re laughing so hard. The story offers no clear answers as to what’s going to happen to Riggle, Peggy and all the other characters. But the reader will wonder for quite some time—and there’s really no higher compliment to give a book. —Arlene McKanic

chapters provide an exciting contrast. The Reckless Oath We Made illuminates a life of struggle in middle America and examines how incarceration, poverty and mental illness affect families for generations. —Jessica Bates

Polite Society By Mahesh Rao

By Brian Allen Carr

Coming of Age Two days into reading Brian Allen Carr’s hilarious, heartbreaking Opioid, Indiana (Soho, $16, 9781641290784, audio/eBook available), I made an omelet for the first time in a while. I made it because the teenage hero of Carr’s book, Riggle, is an ace at making omelets. His mother taught him, but she’s dead. So is Riggle’s father. Since then he’s bounced from one foster home to another until ending up in Opioid, Indiana, at the home of his Uncle Joe, a junkie. Soon after the book opens, Joe goes missing. The rent is due, and between Joe, his girlfriend Peggy and Riggle, Joe is the only one who has anything resembling money. At the same time, Riggle is suspended from school because of a medicinally enhanced vape pen. No one is particularly concerned about him being out of school and at liberty. Indeed, it’s shortly after this that he gets a job at the local restaurant after flourishing his mad omelet skills. Peggy insists he use his free time to hunt for Joe. To an outsider, nothing much happens in Opioid, until it does. It’s gray and cold, with everyone just trying to get by. Readers are privileged to be inside Riggle’s head, as this bright, fractious, hurting, lovable boy muses on everything from race and class to drugs and sex. To make sense of a world that makes no sense, he employs a shadow puppet named Remote. Riggle’s mother used to play the Remote game with him when he was little, using the puppet to tell a story of how the days of the week got their names. The book even includes illustrations of hands forming the all-knowing shadow puppet. Carr’s style is delightfully straightforward, and he takes special pleasure in absurdity. The climax of the story is so strange, horrifying and

H The Reckless Oath We Made By Bryn Greenwood

Family Drama Bryn Greenwood’s quirky, page-turning love story, The Reckless Oath We Made (Putnam, $26, 9780525541844, audio/eBook available), is mesmerizing from its opening pages to resonant end. Zhorzha Trego, called Zee, lives with her sister, LaReigne, and nephew, Marcus. She works as a waitress and makes weed runs for extra cash to pay their never-ending bills. Zee suffers from chronic pain from a motorcycle crash, and at physical therapy she meets an oddly chivalrous young man named Gentry. She doesn’t think much of him, even though LaReigne calls him Zee’s stalker. Gentry is an aircraft builder with autism spectrum disorder who speaks in Middle English and hears voices. One of the voices, the Witch, tells him that one day Lady Zhorzha will need a Champion. Ever since, Gentry has been checking in on Zee, waiting to serve his lady. While volunteering at the local prison, LaReigne is kidnapped by two white supremacists, and Zee’s life is flipped upside down. When Zee and Marcus are swarmed by journalists in front of Zee’s mother’s house, Sir Gentry steps in, thrilled to finally be of service. Zee accepts his help reluctantly, embarrassed by the state of her mother’s home even in the midst of chaos. Zee’s mother is a reclusive hoarder; Sir Gentry calls her a dragon. When the police come up short in their search for LaReigne, Zee is still determined to find her missing sister, and Gentry’s deep code of honor mandates that he follow her to whatever end. Chapters told in Gentry’s melodic, medieval voice are hypnotic and haunting, and Zee’s

Popular Fiction India is the second most populous country on this planet, with the world’s largest democracy—yet most conversations about India seem to dance around its spicy food or perhaps a yearning for a spiritual voyage. Mahesh Rao’s Polite Society (Putnam, $26, 9780525539940, audio/ eBook available) adds something fresh, funny and insightful to the age-old chatter about this fascinating country by detailing the world of the uber-rich who call it home. Channeling his love for Jane Austen’s commentary and observations on relationships, society and power, Rao’s American debut takes us into the inner sanctum of 20-something Ania Khurana, who is a member of the wealthiest upper echelon of the capital city of Delhi (and perhaps all of India). Ania’s life resembles that of a Hollywood celebrity, complete with designer clothes, lavish parties and paparazzi. Born into privilege, Ania is an aspiring author whose motivation is slightly lacking. Her newest obsession is playing matchmaker for her muse and friend, Dimple, who is neither rich nor privileged. In Ania, we see some of the same qualities that make Austen’s Emma so irresistible: She’s self-absorbed yet compassionate, impatient yet persistent. Supporting characters (such as Ania’s widowed father, Dileep; Ania’s childhood friend Dev, who is least affected by his wealth; the fame-chasing reporter Fahim; and a bevy of women of a certain age) complete a picture of what it’s like to chase happiness in a society riddled with codes and an endless supply of money. Hilarious, scandalous and fascinating, Polite Society adds an interesting, modern layer to a complex culture. —Chika Gujarathi

interview | caitlin doughty that.” Therefore, says Doughty, “I’m speaking not only to children but to the adults who never got to have this open conversation about death.” Engaging in these conversations has been Doughty’s passion throughout much of her adult life. At the age of 22, with a newly minted medieval history degree concentrating on death and culture, she embarked on a bit of an independent personal research project by working at a San Francisco crematorium. The connection was instant. Doughty went on to become a mortician with her own funeral home, as well as a high-profile death activist with a massive following on YouTube and Instagram. “It was pretty immediate. And this is kind of woowoo, but as soon as I started, I just knew, ‘Oh, this is what I’m supposed to do. I am supposed to help people understand this and be an advocate for this,’ and that’s what I’ve done every day since then.” Frustrated by exploitative practices in the commercial funeral industry and what she calls a “culture of silence” surrounding death, Doughty advocates for more transparency in the funeral industry and for practices that better lend themselves to death acceptance in American culture. She explains that our squeamishness about death “has a lot to do with the modernization of culture in general.” It wasn’t until the early 20th century that people started dying in hospitals instead of at home. Around the same time, funeral homes rather than family members started caring for the deceased. The rise of slaughterhouses took the killing of animals away from the home and into a private, secret area at the edge of town. “You used to have all of this death around you all of the time—people dying, dead bodies and wakes, killing animals for food—and all of a sudden, all of that disappeared. You know Mortician and death activist Caitlin Doughty takes on questions from that’s going to have a profound effect on your culture.” In Doughty’s first and the grimmest, most macabre members of society: children. second books, she pulled “Kids, far more than adults, tend to ask questions about the body. And if back the curtain on the I had to choose just one thing to learn about for the rest of my life, it would American funeral industry and prebe the many adventures of the dead body. So kids are sort of interested sented a window into the varied death in the same things that I’m interested in,” Caitlin Doughty says, laughing. practices in other countries. Equal We’re on the phone between Tennessee and Los Angeles on a sunny day— parts intrigued by the questions she perhaps too sunny, given the content of our discussion—talking about her received from children at her events new book, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? and bothered by the lack of honesAn author, mortician and death activist, Doughty has filled her third ty they had received about the final book with answers to questions posed to her by children—who tend to transition, Doughty set out to proask, with characteristic bluntness, about the gruesome details that adults vide some facts. “Every time a parent won’t. For example, why do we turn colors when we die? Can we give brought a kid to the event and they Grandma a Viking funeral? What would happen if you swallowed a bag asked a really good question, I was of popcorn before you die and were cremated? (A cremation machine is like, ‘Excellent, we’ll file that away.’” three times hotter than the ideal temperature for popping corn, so the Boasting answers to “100% ethically kernels would just burn.) sourced (free range organic)” quesIt’s not that Doughty doesn’t want to answer questions about the aftions from real kids, Doughty covers Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? terlife—those aloof, philosophical questions that grown-ups tend to ask. questions from funeral practices to Norton, $25.95, 9780393652703 “We just also need education that’s a little more frank and basic than the biological ins and outs of decomAudio/eBook available that,” she says. “Sometimes it can feel like we don’t even have the vocabposition with the grace, humor and ulary to have the more adult conversations about death.” candor that she feels all people (small Social Science Doughty begins building that vocabulary—and issues an invitation ones included) deserve. Providing the to join her—in this straightforward but humorous meander through younger generations with facts and a thanatology. A more traditional Q&A book, informed by the distance and language for death gives Doughty hope for how we address death and politeness of adults, might pose questions like, “What happens during dying moving forward. an embalming?” And Doughty, the mortician, would answer. But in our “What I’ve found from working with adults, and I don’t think that kids death-phobic society, Doughty believes we can all benefit from children’s are any different, is that you fear death less the more that you know,” she deep curiosity about mortality—those “really specific, kind of gory, kind says. “So I don’t think that a kid who already has an open mind and already of just great questions about death.” (What would happen if you died on wants to know about decomposition and these harder things is going to a plane? Do conjoined twins always die at the same time?) think that’s terrifying. They’re going to think that’s cool and interesting.” Children won’t know the answers to the questions in Doughty’s book, —Anna Spydell of course—but most adults won’t either. After all, adults are simply kids Visit BookPage.com to read our review of Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? “who have long since given up on getting the answers to questions like

Morbid curiosity

reviews | nonfiction

H The Plateau By Maggie Paxson

Social Science Maggie Paxson is an anthropologist who uses analytical methods to see how groups of people click. In her fieldwork, Paxson has seen countless examples of conflict and violence—so many, in fact, that she didn’t want to study war no more (as the old spiritual goes). She wanted to study peace. But instead of going “down by the riverside,” Paxson went to a plateau: the Plateau du Vivarais-Lignon in southern France. The people of the plateau are extraordinary. They have provided refuge to the hunted and unwanted for centuries. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, honored the plateau village of Le Chambon as “Righteous Among Nations”

Alexander the Great By Anthony Everitt

Ancient History Greece. Bulgaria. Turkey. Syria. Lebanon. Israel. Egypt. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. Pakistan. In only a dozen years, Alexander the Great created an empire that encompassed large parts of what are now these 11 countries. It still seems a staggering feat—even more so now, when the United States has been fighting a war in just one of those countries for 18 years and counting. Every age since the young Macedonian king’s death at age 33 in 323 B.C.E. has come with its own interpretation of his exploits. As author Anthony Everitt notes, to one respected historian in the 20th century, Alexander was the perfect English gentleman; to another, he was the prototype of a totalitarian dictator. Of course, he was neither: He was a man of his own time and place. In Alexander the Great:

for their aid to Jewish refugees. Daniel Trocmé, who was a distant relative of Paxson, died in a concentration camp because he refused to abandon his Jewish students. Even now, the plateau continues to welcome and protect refugees. Here, Paxson thought, was the perfect laboratory for determining how peace can be created by a community. The Plateau (Riverhead, $28, 9781594634758, audio/eBook available) is the result. Paxson soon discovered that, unlike the individual acts of violence that make up a war, peace cannot be counted. Peace is not linear

His Life and His Mysterious Death (Random House, $30, 9780425286524, audio/eBook available), Everitt, an expert storyteller, has written a riveting narrative that restores Alexander to his own context—and takes a whack at solving the remaining mysteries. Did he kill his father? Was he straight or gay? Visionary or winging it? Genius or lucky? Big-hearted or a violent drunk? And the ultimate question: What—or who—killed him? Everitt marshals the facts and makes his case. Along the way, he takes us on a spirited passage through the ancient world, from the Balkans to South Asia, with effective explanations of battles and sieges and a useful description of the ordinary Greek soldier’s experience. One conclusion is incontrovertible: Alexander was a military strategist of rare talent, defeating larger armies by brilliantly analyzing their deployments and seizing the initiative with aggression and deceptive tactics. He was helped enormously by the disciplined army that his late father (and victim?), Philip, left him. Everitt is particularly perceptive about the impact of Alexander’s charismatic parents, as well as the snake-pit royal court where he was raised. Alexander left no dynasty, but he did change the Middle East for centuries. And we still remember him more than 2,000 years later. That would have pleased him. —Anne Bartlett

but is the result of the deliberate interaction of the past with the present to create a future. Consequently, Paxson’s book is also nonlinear. She pieces together her own memories, observations from her life among the inhabitants of the plateau and, especially, the details of Daniel Trocmé’s life and death. Paxson’s beautiful writing threads these stories together so exquisitely that at times I had to stop and take a breath, even cry, before carrying on. Although it has elements of memoir, biography and anthropological fieldwork, The Plateau is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a complex portrait of a place whose inhabitants have made a commitment to loving the stranger who arrives at their door, even when to do so demands the greatest sacrifice. Paxson acknowledges the difficulty and danger that this kind of love demands, but ultimately The Plateau demonstrates that it isn’t an impossible ideal to achieve. It is real and attainable, because it has been and continues to be practiced on the plateau. —Deborah Mason

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now By Chris Ingraham

Memoir As a rural northerner, I was skeptical heading into Christopher Ingraham’s memoir of moving his family from Ellicott City, Maryland, to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota. I could see why he did it—Ingraham, his wife and their twin toddlers lived in a 952-square-foot row house, the only place they could afford and still get Ingraham to his job at The Washington Post each day, a commute that took 90 minutes if he was very, very lucky. Who wouldn’t want to trade that in for acres of open land, a homebased office and ridiculously friendly neighbors? Still, D.C. to Minnesota? Ingraham wasn’t a true believer either when he first heard of Red Lake Falls. As a data reporter for the Post, he’d discovered that Red Lake County was rated the ugliest county

reviews | nonfiction among some 3,000 counties surveyed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He wrote his headline—“The absolute worst place to live in America is (drumroll please) . . . Red Lake County, Minnesota”—and the responses poured in, many from angry but unfailingly polite residents of the maligned county. It just wasn’t true, they said. He should come see for himself, they said. So he did. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now (Harper, $24.99, 9780062861474, audio/eBook available) chronicles what Ingraham found— not only the charming parts, like running along the frozen river with sled dogs and beating the locals at ice fishing, but also the difficulties, such as when the family needed to consult an autism specialist about one of their sons. In Maryland, the nearest E.R. or urgent care facility was a mere three miles from their front door; in Red Lake Falls, it was 16 miles away. Even through the challenges, Ingraham mostly writes fondly of his new home, while poking gentle fun at his citified self as he settles in to what turns out to be the absolute

best place to live in America, for his family. —Sheila M. Trask

My Time Among the Whites By Jennine Capó Crucet

Essays As Jennine Capó Crucet makes clear in her provocative collection of essays, My Time Among the Whites (Picador, $17, 9781250299437, eBook available), whether you are or are not white isn’t just the point—it’s everything. If you are white, the culture that absorbs you so easily may well be taken for grant-

ed. In this country, you’ve known little else. If you are not white, it’s the depth and breadth of that white culture that either pushes you to the side or inspires you to push back. For Crucet, there’s no question about which way to go, and in her exquisitely fierce way, she does. Born to Cuban American parents who were little help when it came to navigating the whiter world outside Miami, Crucet became her family’s cautious, always mindful pioneer. She learned fast—first at Cornell as an undergrad, later when she married (and then divorced) a middle-class white “dude” and finally as a tenured professor at the University of Nebraska. Like Crucet’s debut novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers, the first essay in this book could serve as a primer for first-generation college freshmen. Crucet and her family drove from Florida to Ithaca, New York, to begin her first year at Cornell, a school she chose because she liked the fall foliage pictured on a brochure her high school guidance counselor was about to throw away. After orientation, her parents and grandmother didn’t know it

reviews | nonfiction was time for them to leave. There was only one Latinx professor (who became her mentor) in her time there. Her classmates struggled to comprehend the culture she wrote about in class. She became “the official Latinx ambassador . . . an unintentional act of bigotry [that] has a name: it’s called spotlighting.” In the hilarious “Say I Do,” Crucet battles with Freddy, her mother’s choice for wedding DJ. His playlist catered only to her Cuban family, because “all those Americans . . . don’t dance. They don’t nothing.” In “Imagine Me Here,” as a guest speaker at a predominantly white Southern college, Crucet compelled the students to address the lack of color in their faculty. It did not go well. “Is it uncomfortable reading all this?” Crucet asks in this timely, vital collection. “Does your answer depend on your race, on whether or not you consider yourself white?” Or “are you not yet uncomfortable . . . because, as a white person, you’ve gotten to be just you your whole life?” —Priscilla Kipp

H Guest House for Young

Widows

By Azadeh Moaveni

World Politics Azadeh Moaveni offers what is sure to become a modern classic, answering the question of how Muslim women become, as the Western media puts it, “radicalized.” In Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of Isis (Random House, $28, 9780399179754, audio/eBook available), Moaveni persuasively argues that the West’s broad narratives of radicalization fail to account for the lived experiences of Muslim women. She seeks to remedy this by following a group of a dozen women over the last decade, each of whom individually (or occasionally, in a group) made the momentous decision to move to Syria to become the bride of a fighter in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These women differ in nearly every conceivable way. Some are from Europe (Germany and England), while others are from Africa (Tunisia). Some are barely teenagers, while others

are heading into middle age. From isolated divorcees to devoted little sisters, the propaganda of the Islamic State deeply resonated with these women, and they headed for a literal war zone to live under a government that promised to expressly adhere to the laws of Islam. The stories are utterly captivating, particularly when Moaveni turns her attention to a group of teenage girls in East London who sneak to Syria under the noses of their astonished teachers and parents. Moaveni offers a deep dive into this story, providing a glimpse into the blogs these teens were reading, the images they were posting to social media and how Twitter enabled bloggers to act as direct emissaries to the caliphate. Indeed, the role of social media—from YouTube to Twitter, from Facebook to WhatsApp—cannot be overstated. Moaveni not only provides granular views of particular women as they navigate this sociopolitical minefield but also situates these stories in a broader cultural context, rendering them legible in compelling ways. She raises as many questions as she answers, wondering, for example, what will fill the void left by ISIS and how the home cultures of these vulnerable women could have interceded in their responses to online rhetoric. I couldn’t put the book down. —Kelly Blewett

Inconspicuous Consumption By Tatiana Schlossberg

Climate Science

about it. Full disclosure: She does not paint a pretty picture. The detailed scientific evidence and statistics she uncovers are mind-boggling and very scary, particularly the complexity of the consumer impact on the environment and how swiftly it’s altering our world. But she does her best to lighten the mood by mixing these cold, hard facts with witty prose. She breaks the book down into four main sections of human consumption: technology and the internet, food, fashion and fuel. Most folks have heard about how food and fuel contribute to climate change, but technology and fashion are lesser-known culprits. The reasons behind the environmental footprint of these two industries are eye-opening, such as the enormous quantities of water required to grow cotton to make our jeans and the huge amount of power wasted by devices in off, standby and sleep mode (equivalent to a quarter of all residential energy, as per one study). As pointed out by Schlossberg, what it boils down to is that many of our daily activities are “much more connected to each other, to global climate change, and to each one of us than we think.” Although she offers suggestions for many of the pressing issues, she admits that our ripple effect on climate change is confusing and that “it’s really hard to know the right thing to do.” As we continue to push the Earth to its limits, Inconspicuous Consumption is a call to action for our future success and survival. —Becky Libourel Diamond

H Learning from the Germans By Susan Neiman

U.S. Politics We are inundated daily with reports about the devastating effects climate change is wreaking on the planet. Just when we thought we had heard it all, former New York Times science writer Tatiana Schlossberg brings new issues to the forefront in her debut book, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have (Grand Central, $28, 9781538747087, audio/eBook available), outlining how our individual habits and the products we use play a significant role in the changing climate. Schlossberg’s investigative reporting skills are a huge asset in explaining how we got to this point, why it matters and what we can do

What does it mean to live in the wake of past crime? Susan Neiman tackles that question in her richly rewarding, consistently stimulating and beautifully written Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (FSG, $30, 9780374184469, audio/eBook available). Neiman is a professional philosopher (director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, in fact) with the skills of an investigative journalist and historian. She deals with the most horrible experiences in the real world—slavery, racism and Nazism—and how

reviews | nonfiction we should consider remembering the events and their victims. Her background is unusual: She is a white Jewish woman who grew up in the segregated South in the United States, lived in Israel for several years and has been a resident of Berlin for most of her adult life. Alternating background information, firsthand accounts drawn from her many interviews in America and Europe, and insightful analysis, Neiman describes how the German people worked, with great difficulty, to acknowledge the evils their nation committed during the Nazi period. She points out that the highest proportion of Nazi Party members came from the educated classes. After vigorous and ongoing public debate, Germany has made many positive changes in school curricula and elsewhere and constructed the famous Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. German artist Gunter Demnig designed a much smaller but more unsettling reminder, with more than 61,000 “stumbling blocks” hammered into sidewalks in front of buildings where Jews lived before the war. Each plaque lists a name and the dates of birth and deportation. Nothing comparable on this scale has been done to acknowledge the victims of racism and slavery in the United States. Americans may understand that wrongs were done, but we prefer narratives of progress. Neiman seeks to encourage a discussion of guilt and responsibility as serious as the one in Germany, “not in order to provide a set of directions, but rather a sense of orientation won through reflection that is no less passionate for being nuanced.” She provides the crucial facets of any successful attempt to work off a nation’s criminal past. They include a coherent and widely accepted national narrative that is conveyed by education and appropriate symbols. Neiman spent an extended period of time in Mississippi interviewing civil rights icons, which gave her valuable insight into what she was up against, as well as hope. She was encouraged during an interview with Bryan Stevenson, the lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and the creator of what is known informally as the National Lynching Memorial. He is the only public figure on record who has taken Germany’s confrontation with its terrible past as a model for the U.S. He said that nothing similar has been done here because of the lack of shame about what was done. This brief overview barely begins to convey the way this disturbing but hopeful and insightful book wrestles with the questions of who we are as human beings and what values we have as a nation. I strongly recommend it. —Roger Bishop

H Into the Planet By Jill Heinerth

Memoir “When I describe the act of cave diving to most people, they think I have a death wish,” notes Jill Heinerth, who has spent over 30 years diving all over the world, often into deep, pitch-dark, narrow and, yes, highly dangerous places. She has explored, filmed and photographed remote underwater regions for National Geographic, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other institutions, and she’s not only an outspoken environmental advocate but also the Explorer-in-Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Jill Heinerth has spent her life “swimming through the veins of Mother Earth,” delighting in the wonders of ice-filled caves beneath Siberia’s Ural Mountains and lava tubes inside Spanish volcanoes. So it’s hardly a surprise that the journeys she describes in Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver (Ecco, $29.99, 9780062691545, audio/eBook available) make for exciting, edge-of-your-seat reading. Not only is Heinerth’s memoir thoughtfully structured and adrenaline-filled, but it also offers a fascinating account of exactly how one becomes a renowned, record-setting adventurer. As a girl growing up in Canada, Heinerth decided she wanted to learn to dive as soon as she saw Jacques Cousteau on TV. That’s despite the fact that one of her earliest memories is of nearly drowning and that she failed her

first swimming lesson—because she was, of course, so busy floating and gazing intently at the underwater world that she didn’t bother to attempt any strokes. As a young woman, she sold a successful advertising business in Toronto and bought a ticket to the Cayman Islands in hopes of becoming a diver, shocking family and friends. Her wild gamble paid off, and Heinerth has spent the rest of her life “swimming through the veins of Mother Earth,” as she calls it, delighting in the wonders of ice-filled caves beneath Siberia’s Ural Mountains and lava tubes inside a Spanish volcano. Such wonders and achievements have not come without dramatic, dire sacrifices, particularly as a woman in a testosterone-heavy field. A number of close friends have perished in diving accidents; she has repeatedly helped with the heartbreaking task of body recovery. After she suffered a severe case of the bends, a doctor advised Heinerth to “never dive again,” which she ignored. She narrowly escaped death several times amid the caves and crevices of an Antarctic Circle iceberg, all while suffering a leaky glove in the icy 28-degree waters, just one-tenth of a degree away from the freezing point of salt water. After her narrow escape, she commented, “The cave tried to keep us today.” Hours later, as she and her team were preparing to dive yet again, they watched the iceberg completely collapse, which would have meant certain death had they been in the water. There’s never a dull moment in Into the Planet, which bursts with full-throttle exuberance for the highs, and sometimes even the lows, of being a pioneering, modern-day explorer. As Heinerth concludes, “When we transcend the fear of failure and terror of the unknown, we are all capable of great things, personally and as a society.” —Alice Cary

The Ungrateful Refugee By Dina Nayeri

Memoir In 1988, when she was 8 years old, Dina Nayeri and her younger brother fled Iran with their mother, a doctor, who had received death threats from the government’s

feature | dog tales moral minders because of her activism as a Christian convert. They went first to Dubai, then were refugees in Italy before being granted asylum in the U.S. and arriving in Oklahoma. In her well-received second novel, Refuge, Nayeri wrote a fictionalized account of her experiences. In The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You (Catapult, $26, 9781948226424, audio/eBook available), her first work of nonfiction, Nayeri offers a searing, nuanced and complex account of her life as a refugee and of the experiences of other more recent refugees from Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. The stories are terrifying, disheartening, sometimes uplifting and definitely worth reading and meditating on. One of the most illuminating sections of the book is called “Camp.” In 2017, seeking to revisit her own experiences of exile, Nayeri volunteered in a refugee camp in Greece, where she served and talked to many refugees. It wasn’t all bleak. “People think of a refugee camp as a purgatory, a liminal space without shape or color. And it is that. But we kept our instinct for joy,” she writes. Still, it was a place of soul-destroying indignity and waiting. Refugees aren’t allowed to work. They’re not welcome at local schools. Young men entertain themselves by fighting. Then there are the government bureaucracies that certify some refugees’ stories as “believable” enough for asylum and others not so much. Through her narrative, Nayeri makes vividly clear the Catch-22 of the process, especially for those asylum-seekers who are poorer, less educated and more desperate. Nayeri is not really an ungrateful refugee, as her title suggests. She writes about how as a youth she was driven to excel in order to escape her identity as a refugee. She went to Princeton, Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. But, as she points out, refugees are expected to be grateful in ways that deny their experience of loss, of leaving a place or a family they deeply love. In Oklahoma, for example, Nayeri realized that her education in Iran had been far better and more rigorous than her classes in the local school. Yet she was expected to say everything here was better. It wasn’t. Nayeri is neither a journalist nor a polemicist. She’s a storyteller who invites our moral engagement. She doesn’t write directly about the situation at the U.S. southern border, but an engaged reader will certainly infer the stark human costs of our current official attitudes and policies. —Alden Mudge

Dog days Two works of nonfiction celebrate our enduring relationship with (hu)man’s best friend. The dog days of summer may be winding down, but for many of us, dogs are an integral part of each day. Two new books explore our lives with these inseparable companions. In Our Dogs, Ourselves: The Story of a Singular Bond (Scribner, $28, 9781501175008, audio/eBook available), canine cognition researcher Alexandra Horowitz, bestselling author of Inside of a Dog, explores a spectrum of tail-wagging topics. Some essays tackle thought-provoking issues like the legal rights of dogs, health problems caused by inbreeding and research on the impact of early sterilization. Others are more lighthearted, such as the chapter “Things People Say to Their Dogs.” Ever the researcher, Horowitz started capturing snippets of human-to-dog conversations overheard in New York City, and here she presents them to readers who can surely relate: “‘Leave it. We have better ones at home.’ (Man to dog desperately searching for lost tennis ball.)” Another favorite: “‘Hi, honey. Did you vote?’ (Woman to pleased-looking dog outside voting center.)” If you love dogs, and even talk to them, you’re going to rejoice at this entertaining and enlightening book. Not only do we hold conversations with our dogs, we also take them places. Inspired by John Steinbeck’s classic Travels with Charley, author Peter Zheutlin took his 75-pound rescue Lab mix, Albie, on a six-week journey across America, which he chronicles in The Dog Went Over the Mountain: Travels with Albie: An American Journey (Pegasus, $27.95, 9781643132013, audio/eBook available).

The travel bug flows through Zheutlin’s genes: He’s a descendant of Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, better known as Annie Londonderry, who cycled 9,000 miles in the 1890s. Zheutlin’s travels were by car, exploring back roads and scenic byways to meet and talk with ordinary Americans along the way. “I wasn’t so much interested in driving across the country as I was in diving into it,” the author explains. He wanted to experience a personal journey but also offer something to the rest of us—“to share a more lighthearted, heartfelt, and dog-friendly tour of America, and in the process remind us what remains wonderful and grand and good about it, even as it seems the country is coming apart at the seams.” Like his cycling greatgrand-aunt, Zheutlin traveled close to 9,000 miles, loosely following Steinbeck’s route from New England to California and back. While the journey itself wasn’t always easy, his easygoing writing style makes for comfortable reading. The book includes a photo section, which (naturally) features the photogenic Albie in just about every picture: enjoying the view from the Grand Canyon, posing in front of a Route 66 sign and making new friends (human and canine). Your own next adventure might only be as far as the dog park, but reading The Dog Went Over the Mountain may inspire you, like Zheutlin, to end the trip with an ice cream cone and a hug for the dog who is part of your journey. —Deborah Hopkinson

reviews | young adult

H Have a Little

Faith in Me By Sonia Hartl

Fiction Dumped shortly after finally having sex, CeCe is determined to win back her bornagain boyfriend. She decides to follow him to Jesus camp in order to prove she’s exactly the kind of girl he needs in his life. There’s just one problem: CeCe knows nothing about Jesus. Her best friend, Paul, goes to camp with her to help her play the game without getting caught, but everything goes awry when CeCe learns that her ex is dating one of her cabin mates. As CeCe scrambles to win back her boyfriend, learning more about herself, her

H Pet By Akwaeke Emezi

Science Fiction Akwaeke Emezi, the acclaimed nonbinary author of last year’s buzzy adult novel Freshwater, further asserts themself as a unique, bold new voice in fiction with the surreal Pet (Random House/Make Me a World, $17.99, 9780525647072, audio/eBook available). The people of the town of Lucille live a

“Young readers will cheer for this plucky main character as she struggles to do the right thing.” —BookPage

feelings and her friendship with Paul, she realizes that what she wanted may not be what she needs after all. Have a Little Faith in Me (Page Street, $17.99, 9781624147975, eBook available) is a romantic comedy that explores feminism and comprehensive sex education against the backdrop of a conservative religious summer camp. First-time author Sonia

blessed life. The heroes known as angels chased away all the monsters, and kids like Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up without the threats that kept their parents and grandparents in fear. Jam’s mother, Bitter, tells her daughter that monsters and angels aren’t like the ones she might have seen in old books. “It’s all just people,” she says, “doing hard things or doing bad things.” But Jam starts to reconsider her mother’s words when a frightening creature in her mother’s latest painting comes to life. The creature asks Jam to call it Pet and says that it’s on a mission—to hunt and kill the monster that, Pet claims, is lurking unseen in Redemption’s otherwise loving and happiness-filled home. Jam is skeptical, not to mention fearful. But as she begins to trust Pet, she starts to question much of what she’s been told, and soon she and Redemption must decide for themselves what brand of justice is best suited for the monster that might lurk in their midst. By conceptualizing sexual violence, physical abuse, drug use and other social ills as literal monsters, Emezi gives young readers much to think about, from questioning authority and received wisdom to redefining justice. Emezi’s characters are diverse in race, physical ability and especially gender. Jam is a transgender girl, and Redemption has three parents, one of whom is nonbinary. Despite Jam’s growing realization that Lucille is far from the utopia she’s been told it is, readers might see in Jam’s surroundings a version of a world that they, like Jam, might choose to fight for. —Norah Piehl

Hartl tackles all of these topics and more with finesse—always candid, always open-minded and very rarely heavy-handed. CeCe and her cabin mates ask questions about sex and love that many young readers will already have on their minds, and Hartl answers them in a way that is both gentle and empowering. And through Paul, she gives young readers a role model for how we should treat one another and expect to be treated in romantic relationships. Hartl’s debut is a powerful read for teens who are beginning to explore romantic relationships and sexuality. —Sarah Welch

Frankly in Love By David Yoon

Fiction What does it mean to be Korean? What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be in love? To be a family? These, among many others, are the complicated questions posed by David Yoon in his debut novel, Frankly in Love (Putnam, $18.99, 9781984812209, audio/eBook available). For 17-year-old Frank Li, disappointing his stubborn, high-strung Korean immigrant parents is to be avoided at all costs. When Frank falls for a white girl named Brit, he knows that he has to keep their relationship hidden from his family. To cover his tracks, he becomes entangled in a fake relationship with Joy Song, a close family friend. But when disaster after disaster strikes, Frank learns the hard way that some things are more important than high school romance. Through funny, relatable prose and some truly heartbreaking moments, Frankly in Love wrestles with important questions of race and identity. Yoon encapsulates the teenage experience, not only for young Korean Americans but for all teens. He also tackles stereotypes,

feature | family drama and though the novel does occasionally play into them, many are eventually broken down in surprisingly clever ways. Having grown up Korean in America, I had points while reading this novel when I nearly wept from the feeling of having been seen for the first time in YA literature. Frankly in Love is an absolute must-read for young people grappling with questions of identity. —Olivia Rhee

As Many Nows as I Can Get By Shana Youngdahl

Fiction “Maybe it’s impossible not to connect our experiences to one another in a really linear way,” narrates Scarlett, a rising college sophomore and physics star. “But Einstein gave us another approach. Time [is] like a flipbook—each image still there but only moving because we turn the pages to see it.” As readers turn the pages of Shana Youngdahl’s debut novel, As Many Nows as I Can Get (Dial, $17.99, 9780525553854, eBook available), time flips back and forth. We see a road trip after Scarlett’s first year at Colwyn College. We see the year before, as she prepares to say goodbye to her small Colorado town and to David, the local golden boy harboring dark secrets. Just as she’s settling into her new home with her roommate, Mina, Scarlett learns that she’s pregnant. Should she keep the baby, have an abortion or seek adoptive parents? What will her pregnancy mean for her college experience, her intended career as a scientist and her self-image? As the narration flips between Scarlett’s senior year of high school, her first year of college and the life-changing summer in between, she realizes that, like physics, life is all about thinking, observing, rethinking, drawing a conclusion—and then asking more questions. YA literature, some say, is about the moments when one state of being changes to another. In its structure and its story, As Many Nows as I Can Get is a perfect example of this sometimes bumpy, sometimes poignant transition. —Jill Ratzan

Families on the mend Two acclaimed YA authors explore what family is, is not and can be. These new novels can be challenging and even downright harrowing, but their authors imbue them with warmth and humor. When Hằng arrives in Texas, she has lost everything except a filament of hope. Six years before, she helped her younger brother, Linh, get out of Vietnam as the war came to a close. But when Hằng finally follows Linh to America, she discovers that he’s grown into a young man with little to no memory of his life before. Butterfly Yellow (HarperCollins, $17.99, 9780062229212, audio/eBook available) follows their halting attempts to reconnect. National Book Award-winning author Thanhhà Lại (Inside Out & Back Again) spares her protagonist very little. Hằng has lost nearly all of her family, she is wracked with guilt about her brother, and her journey to the U.S. on a dangerously overcrowded boat is so traumatic that she practically folds into herself with PTSD. Her unlikely friendship with a Texas cowboy named LeeRoy allows her to find some relief. Lại writes Hằng’s dialogue phonetically, and it may take readers a while to acclimate before they can easily understand her. It’s a small choice that gives this tender story that much more of an impact. Dove “Birdie” Randolph is beginning to yearn for some independence when Carlene, an aunt she barely remembers, shows up at her Chicago home. Birdie spends her time studying ever since her parents made her quit the soccer team, but she’s emboldened to claim a little more freedom by Booker, the guy she likes but can’t bring home yet. Meanwhile, Aunt Carlene is not only enabling but even encouraging Birdie's rebellious impulses. The Revolution of Birdie Randolph (Little, Brown, $17.99, 9780316448567, audio/eBook available) is either going to shake things up or burn it all down. Brandy Colbert, author of the Stonewall Book Award-winning Little & Lion, has created a world that readers will want to hang out in, from the snug apartment above the family’s beauty salon to the rooftop with its view of the city. When Birdie and her sister go to Chicago Pride, the mix of excitement and claustrophobia is palpable. There’s a big twist in the story—a bombshell of a family secret—that throws Birdie’s life into disarray, and the struggle to define herself separately from the strong women in her life has the potential to pull her apart. Thankfully, her web of friends and family form a net that won’t tear so easily. —Heather Seggel

feature | grandma & grandpa

The goodness of grandparents New picture books celebrate beloved family members in their golden years. With memories to share, knowledge to pass along and the power to positively impact younger generations, grandparents are grand indeed! These books honor our cherished elder family members. Alison Jay’s heartfelt Looking for Yesterday (Candlewick, $16.99, 9781536204216, ages 2 to 5) pays tribute to the guidance only grandparents can provide. The boy at the center of the story longs for yesterday—a day so fabulous, he wants a repeat. But how can he go back and reexperience it? Via time machine? Supersonic rocket? Maybe a wormhole? The boy considers these time-travel options and turns to Granddad for help. “Yesterday was a wonderful day,” Granddad tells him, “but there are many more happy days to come.” Granddad then provides evidence, sharing anecdotes from his own life while flipping through a photo album with the boy. As it turns out, Granddad has done some remarkable things, like flying in a hot air balloon and climbing a snowy mountain. “Every day brings the chance of a new adventure,” he says. Jay’s winsome paintings have a timeless, classic quality. Readers will fall for magical scenes of the boy soaring with his dog in a rocket and sliding down a wormhole. Emphasizing the importance of focusing on the here and now, this is a title to be treasured. Samantha Berger’s exuberant I Love My Glam-Ma! (Orchard, $17.99, 9781338151831, eBook available, ages 3 to 5) features a diverse lineup of glamorous grandmothers who are aging more than gracefully— they’re infusing the experience with youthful enthusiasm and full-on flair. These abuelas, omas and nanas

possess an energy that’s infectious (“Glam-mas don’t just come over. . . . They make a grand entrance!”) and always have treats for the grandkids (“Glam-mas don’t just carry a purse. . . . They carry a treasure chest!”). Fashionable and feisty, the ladies are equally at ease rocking out at a concert, cooking in the kitchen or building a sandcastle on the beach. Artist Sujean Rim dresses the glam-mas to the nines in chic, patterned outfits accessorized with funky hats and glasses. Her watercolor-and-collage illustrations are a perfect match for this stylish story. While saluting women who are aging with attitude, the book also emphasizes the special bond that exists between grandmothers and grandchildren, and it ends on a tender note of love. Wendy Meddour sensitively explores coping with grief in Grandpa’s Top Threes (Candlewick, $16.99, 9781536211252, ages 2 to 5). Henry, an inquisitive little boy, is puzzled by Grandpa’s silence. Henry tries to get him to play trains, but Grandpa remains taciturn and tends to the garden. “Grandpa’s ears aren’t working,” Henry tells his mom. “Just give him time,” she says. Clearly, something is amiss. Henry finally draws Grandpa out by quizzing him about his favorites—his top three sandwiches, top three jellyfish and top three animals at the zoo. As the game progresses and Grandpa plays along, the reader comes to realize that his silence has been caused by the loss of someone special. Daniel Egnéus’ richly detailed watercolor illustrations provide a delightful backdrop for this moving tale. Henry’s love for his grandpa shines through, and his story demonstrates the power that family members possess—regardless of age or experience—to lift each other up. Providing a fresh approach to the topic of loss, this big-hearted book shows how love works across generations to unite young and old. —Julie Hale

reviews | children’s

H Lalani of the Distant Sea By Erin Entrada Kelly

Middle Grade Rooted in Filipino folklore, Lalani of the Distant Sea (Greenwillow, $16.99, 9780062747273, audio/eBook available, ages 8 to 12) is the story of Lalani Sarita and her fantastical journey to save her mother and all the villagers who live on the island of Sanlagita. Sanlagita exists at the foot of the wrathful Mount Kahana. The island’s long drought has caused all medicinal plants to stop growing, and rations are scarce. As a deep lover of stories, Lalani knows the island’s superstitions and legends—especially that of Ziva, a courageous young maiden who stowed away on a ship bound for Mount Isa, “where all of life’s good fortunes seem to be.” Years ago, Lalani’s father sailed away toward Isa as well,

but like all Sanlagitan sailors, he never returned. When her mother pricks her finger and falls ill, Lalani, remembering the ancient legends, knows that the juice from a flower on Mount Isa can save her mother and perhaps rescue the entire island. And so Lalani steals a boat and begins her quest.

Lalani’s atmospheric journey is filled with mythical creatures, deadly plants, island spirits and unexpected friends. The way is unclear, death is always near, and Mount Kahana casts a dark shadow. Lalani is weary and confused, bloody and battered, starving and dehydrated, but in these moments, readers see her bravery, humility and deep empathy. Newbery Medal winner Erin Entrada Kelly’s latest begins as a story of darkness, but beyond the shadow of Mount Kahana is light overflowing. Lalani reminds us that strength and skill may not be able to defeat darkness and restore light—but kindness, integrity and steadfast love can. In the words of another Newbery winner, Madeline L’Engle, “Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving,” and this one does just that. —Emmie Stuart

meet RAFAEL LÓPEZ meet How would you describe your book?

What books did you enjoy as a child?

Kids with different abilities make the world a kinder, more diverse and vibrant place.

Who has been the biggest influence on your work?

Tamayo–Textures Simplicity–Leo Lionni Stylization–Charlie Harper Who was your childhood hero? My mom. Her resilient spirit and drive to become an architect made me believe in my dreams.

La Fontaine’s Fables, where remarkable animals teach people.

In Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, I explored imaginary worlds.

What one thing would you like to learn to do?

Play the bass in a jazz trio.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and award-winning artist Sotomayor and award-winning artist Rafael López celebrate uniqueness Rafael López celebrate uniqueness in Just Ask! (Philomel, $17.99, in Just Ask! (Philomel, $17.99, 9780525514121, eBook available, 9780525514121, eBook available, ages 4 to 8), which introduces readages 4 to 8), which introduces readers ers to a diverse group of kids who are to a diverse group of kids who are building a community garden while building a community garden while talking to each other about their talking to each other about their different abilities. López lives and different abilities. López lives and works in San Diego and San Miguel works in San Diego and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. de Allende, Mexico.

What message would you like to send to young readers?

Accept yourself and others. It’s OK to be different. 31

“An absolutely fascinating, beautifully rendered story of love, loss, and heroism in the dark days leading up to World War II.” — K R I S T I N H A N N A H , New York Times bestselling author of author of The Nightingale