Category: NonFiction

With His Pistol in His Hand

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Paredes, Americo. “With His Pistol in His Hand: a Border Ballad and Its Hero.” University of Texas, 1958.

Reason read: Parades birth month is in September. Read in his honor.

As with all great legends the stories about them are passed down through the generations to the point where no one knows the truth anymore. Ballads are sung to remember (misremember) and honor (or exaggerate) the legendary events and humans throughout history. “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez” is the ballad for Gregorio Cortez. No one can agree on what he looked like or where he was born. Legend has it he shucked corn for a living. Maybe he picked cotton. Maybe he was a barber? Everyone said he could shoot a pistol and talk to horses. He might have been an expert trail tracker. He certainly was a weather predictor and a womanizer (No one can agree on who he actually married, though). He was also crafty and smart. He often got away from posses by blending in with the common folk on either side of the Rio Grande. He was peaceful yet he killed many men “in self defense.” Posse after posses chased the infamous man and his little mare across the wild Texas countryside. Cortez is able to walk amongst the commoners because, while they all knew of his exploits, he was unrecognizable in a crowd. Exaggerating the villainous nature of the Mexican people only increased the paranoia and prejudice against Cortez. When Gregorio Cortez is finally caught his legal battles raged for over three and a half years. For one trial Cortez’s supposed wife testified in his defense but by the next trial she had divorced him. Despite being found guilty, he was pardoned in July of 1913.
In the end, no one could decide how Cortez died. Was it a heart attack? Poison? He was only forty-one years one.
The second section of “With His Pistol in His Hand” is not nearly as exciting. Paredes spends this time comparing and critiquing the variations of the El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez ballad and describing the narrative elements and the development and quatrain structure of a ballad.

Lines I liked, “If the ballad maker wants to justify the deeds of his robber hero, he will transform him into a border raider fighting against the outside group, the Americans” (p 144).

Author fact: Paredes was able to talk to singers about the variants of corrido the performed.

Book trivia: “With His Pistol in His Hand” was illustrated by Jo Alys Downs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Texas Two-Step (After a Bob Wills Song)” (p 225).

Lyndon: an Oral Biography

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Miller, Merle. Lyndon: an Oral Biography. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980.

Reason read: Lyndon’s birth month was in August. Read in his honor.

Merle Miller spent more than five years compiling Johnson’s oral history. The miles he put in, literally and figuratively, are astounding. Lyndon B. Johnson was a complicated man living in the time of the greatest society. Known for his aw-shucks attitude, he started out being a good ‘ole boy who voted against antilynching and antidiscrimination laws but ended his career as an instrumental advocate for federal aid to education, the creation of Medicare, changes in voter rights, and stronger civil rights. The death of Texas Congressman James P. Buchanan was a turning point in Johnson’s political trajectory. His campaigns were memorable – arriving by helicopter when running for senator. By the end of his political career Lyndon had weathered a tumultuous era: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the march in Selma, Alabama, the Vietnam War.
As with any oral history, the chronology jumps around a bit. Case in point: the birth of Lyndon’s first child came before the purchase of the radio station, KTBC.
Miller provides an intimate primer on the inner workings of the United States government. Probably the most fascinating section was the hour by hour, behind the scenes account of the Kennedy assassination and the transition of power to Lyndon B. Johnson. He also peeled back the curtain on Lady Bird Johnson’s life as well. Just as Lyndon was thrust into presidency, Lady Bird became the First Lady overnight. There was no time for preparation but she acclimated to her position with grace. As an aside, her note of encouragement to her husband was beautiful.

Author fact: Miller died when he was only 67 years old. My copy of Lyndon was signed by him.

Book trivia: Miller does not leave a detail unexplored. By default, readers get glimpses into the personality of President Roosevelt and a short biography of Lady Bird (Claudia)’s life leasing up to meeting her husband, to name a couple.

Music: Lena Horne, “I’ll Be with You When I’m Gone,” “Kate Smith on the South,” “God Bless America,” “San Antonio Rose,” “Dixie,” “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You,” Beethoven, “Hello, Dolly,” “The Eyes of Texas,” and “Ruffles and Flourishes.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Merle Miller: Too Good To Miss” (p 155). If Pearl wanted, she could have included Lyndon in the “Presidential Biographies” chapter as well.

No Place Like Nome

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Engelhard, Michael. No Place Like Nome: the Bering Strait Seen Through Its Most Storied City. Corax Books, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I occasionally read interesting books. This one was fantastic!

Engelhard spent a “three year stint” in Nome, Alaska and took the time to write about his experiences. Confessional: I enjoy books that are well organized. No Place Like Nome is separated into four logical parts: first, geography of the place, then the characters and personalities within the place, the business and art of Nome, and finally, journeys around the region.
Engelhard is informative without resorting to didactic explanations. Linguistics (the use of the word Eskimo for example), anthropology, short biographies (Sally Carrighar, Edward Sherriff Curtis, James Kivitauraq Moses, Father Bernhard Rosecrans Hubbard, Roald Amundsen, and Lynn Cox), the importance of whales to the Nome culture (confessional: I did not know their bones were used as construction material), the history of jade, the advent of bicycles. The photography was amazing. My favorite was the one of Serum-Run racer Leonard Seppala.
What seem barbaric and strange in our culture is commonplace in the far reaches of civilizations like Greenland, Siberia and Alaska like hunting practices and diet.
Because I read this an an ebook, it would have been great to have footnotes that jumped to the corresponding image or text.

As an aside – was it a typo when Hrdlicka was later called “Hard Liquor”?

Personal complaint – here is a description that bugged me, “nude mermaid on a floe’s edge with her feet dangling in the water.” Hello? Does anyone remember Ariel? Mermaids have tails, not feet.

Author fact: Michael Engelhard won the National Outdoor Book Award for Arctic Traverse. The photo Engelhard used for Nome shows him drinking what looks like to be a beer. I’m dying to know what kind it is.

Book trivia: No Place Like Nome will be published in September 2025.

Setlist: Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” “Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Paganini, “Float Coat” (to encourage water safety), and Madonna.

Maine Woods

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Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. Decorations by Clare Leighton. Ticknor and Fields, 1864.

Reason read: the Maine Lobster Festival is always the first weekend in August.

Henry D. Thoreau made three separate trips to Maine. Most of the Maine Woods is a descriptive narration about the journey and the nature witnessed along the way. From navigating rapids and hunting moose to observing flowers, trees, and small animals. From a cultural perspective, The Maine Woods paints a picture of Thoreau’s interactions with the natives in Maine: especially their canoe building and cooking skills and their hunting and fishing practices. Thoreau wanted to learn from the natives (“I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew” p 221).
Thoreau could not help but insert a little politics into his narrative from time to time, “The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances” (p 309).
While the narrative just ends abruptly, the appendix includes a list of trees, flowers, shrubs, and birds seen along the excursions. It also includes how to outfit and excursion with tents, tools, etc. There is also a glossary of Indian words and their meanings.
I did not know this about Maine: in 1837 there were 230 sawmills on the Penobscot river.

Thoreau had a sense of humor, “We saw a pair of moose horns on the shore; and I asked Joe if a moose had shed them; but he said that there was a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not shed their heads more than once in their lives” (p 127).

As an aside, I thought of my papas when Thoreau was explaining how to steer a boat into waves to avoid capsizing or taking on water.
As another aside, Thoreau mentioned John Smith from 1614. That is the same year Captain Smith landed on Monhegan. Interestingly enough, Thoreau mentions a “Manhegan Island.” I’m not sure it’s the same one.
I’m glad to know some things never change. The nuisance of mosquitoes was just as bad then as it is now, “We were considerably molested by mosquitoes at this camp” (p 253).

Author fact: beyond being a naturalist and an essayist, Thoreau was a philosopher.

Book trivia: If only there were photographs! Or a map. I swear Thoreau mentions Monhegan (spelled Manhegan).

Music: “O Susanna!”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Maine Chance” (p 135).

Young Men and Fire

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Maclean, Norman. Young Men and Fire. University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Reason read: Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans twenty years ago this month. Young Men and Fire is about a different natural disaster; one started by lightning strikes and odd wind patterns.

On August 5th, 1949 thirteen out of fifteen smokejumpers lost their lives in the Montana Mann Gulch fire. Started by multiple lightning strikes, Mann Gulch and the surrounding area was soon a blazing inferno, completely out of control. For years, researchers have studied the tragedy to make sense of how only a handful of men, two being smokejumpers, survived. Someone needed to be blamed. Explanations were dire. Controversy surrounding foreman Dodge’s intentional lighting of an escape fire only added to the mystery. In 1978 Norman Maclean brought Robert Sallee and Walter Rumsey, the two surviving smokejumpers, back to Mann Gulch. Their memories of the tragedy were so sharp they were able to remember a can of white potatoes with two knife punctures. Nearly thirty years later, they could find the same can complete with puncture holes.
Beyond walking the scene of the catastrophe, Maclean and others plotted a course of reasonable explanation. They rationalized that if mathematics could be used to predict fire, why couldn’t math be applied to a past fire to reconstruct it? The science behind this was fascinating.
As an aside, this was the first time I read a publisher’s note explaining how a book which was published posthumously, came to be structured, fact-checked and released to the world. The University of Chicago Press was able to express its gratitude for the people who brought Young Men and Fire to bookshelves. I thought it wise of the University of Chicago Press to include “Black Ghost” as the preface to Young Men and Fire. A seemingly unrelated essay, it introduced Maclean’s personal experiences with fire and why the Mann Gulch tragedy was important to him.
In the end Maclean desperately wanted to believe the thirteen smokejumpers did not suffer. He consulted a doctor who said that asphyxiating in a fire is much like drowning; “it is not terrible,” was the conclusion. If you have read A Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger you might remember his play by play description of what it is like to drown. No thank you.

Memorable line, “No one who survived saw what happened to those who became crosses on that hillside” (p 307).

Author fact: in the introduction by Timothy Egan he shared that when Maclean was looking for a publisher for Young Men and Fire he was approached by a publisher who had previously turned him down for A River Runs Through It. As everyone knows, River was a smashing success. Big mistake. Big. Big. Mistake. Maclean was reported as saying he wouldn’t give this well known publisher Young Men and Fire if they were the last company on earth. Talk about a Pretty Woman moment!

Book trivia: Young Men and Fire includes photographs that not only show the devastation of the fire but also explain how the tragedy occurred.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “What a (Natural) Disaster!” (p 242).

African in Greenland

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Kpomassie, Michel-Tet. An African in Greenland. Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1983.

Reason read: August is the last month of freedom for students returning to school. Every once in awhile I chose a travel book to recognize this fact.

Before Kpomassie can tell you about his time in Greenland he needs to explain where his life began and all that Western Africa entails. To understand his culture you must first embrace his origin story.
Upon discovering a book about Greenland, Kpomassie became obsessed with traveling to that “other” green land. Kpomassie exhibited a great deal of patience – it took him six years just to make it out of West Africa. But he was also smart and ambitious. Being bilingual he was able to pay his way as he traveled. He had hopes of living with seal hunters, sleeping in igloos, and riding the sledge. He wanted the full experience. He got more than he bargained for in the northern Greenland village of Rodebay. Families too poor for groceries ate rabid dogs. Their bathroom was a bucket by the door for everyone to see. A father takes his son-in-law hunting so his daughter and Kpomassie can have four days of intimate alone time. Parents ignore their young son while he practices oral sex on his two year old brother. Dos are so hungry they attack and devour their master. When the community is not hunting or fishing, they are fall-down drunk. Besides culture, Kpomassie learned about the science of fashion; what it took to survive temperatures that reached forty or fifty below zero.
I did not expect to laugh while reading An African in Greenland but Kpomassie’s account of using the grease from a lizard to grow one’s penis was hilarious.

As an aside, animals and there shed blood is very important to tribal cultures. I saw it in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down as well as An African in Greenland. The butchering of whales, seals, and even dogs was difficult to read.

Confessional: Kpomassie’s father had five wives and how the hierarchy within that system worked: who was intimate and for how long; who did the cooking and how other chores were parsed out. Polygamy was natural in Western Africa, yet Kpomassie found it hard to share a woman with another man in Greenland. Curious.

Author fact: Kpomassie is the first African to choose to live in Greenland, trading in one green continent for another.

Book trivia: I do not know why I feel this way, but the preface by Jean Malaurie is a little self-indulgent.

Music: the Beatles

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Where On Earth Do These Books Belong?” (p 258). Armchair travel, maybe?

To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone

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Andersen, Christine. To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone. Cloeofpleirn Press, 2025.

Reason read: this was an Early Review for LibraryThing.

I have this habit of trying to solve mysteries while I read. I needed to know if Maggie was a real person and if she was, who was she to Andersen? Like a detective searching for clues I looked for answers within the words. Andersen’s daughter? No. Stepdaughter? Maybe. As I read on I stopped caring if it was real or fiction. Andersen words flow as a clear stream of meaning and you cannot help but be caught up in the flow. The reader has a vivid picture of Maggie as a child, a rebellious teenager, a lost young adult forever adrift. The imagery of angst and inner turmoil is crystal clear. So is the author’s inability to save Maggie. The feeling of helplessness and the hopelessness of trying to save a drowning soul is palpable. I read this over and over and over. While the words were painful the language was so beautiful. Beauty among the thorns. “To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed” as Natalie Merchant would say.

Confessional: They say that once someone is deemed truly suicidal, meaning they have tried to die more than once, they won’t stop trying until they succeed. If that is the case, really and truly, then I am really and truly fukced.

I Thought I Had You Forever

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Gary’s Mum. I Thought I Had You Forever. Publish Nation, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I often read books that grab my heart and do not let go. This is one such book.

Gary’s mum lost her son when he was just thirty years old. While on vacation in Portugal Gary went to sleep one night and never woke up. For the first fifty pages of I Thought I Had You Forever Gary’s mum does a great deal of soul searching. There is a brief and didactic interlude (about ten pages) about various religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Spiritualism, and Atheist.
I have always compared grief to fire. You cannot control grief just as you cannot control a fire that has burned out of control. Both are unpredictable and ever-changing. Just when you think you have grief (or fire) licked, something will trigger a flare up and the fight starts all over again. Grief can be a rollercoaster of up and down emotions. Grief can leave you drifting without purpose. Grief is the rudder, always determining your course of healing. Grief is searching. Where did you go? Where are you now?
Confessional: I am not a mother. I do not know the pain of losing a child in any capacity, yet I Thought I Had You Forever kept me up at night. We all grieve differently. Gary’s mum lost her ability to enjoy music for nearly five years while I clung to every note and melody and lyric to keep my missing alive. Gary’s mum didn’t listen to music for four years while I couldn’t play mine loud enough.

The lesson learned is grief is grief is grief is grief. It does not matter what the relationship. Losing someone is hard.

Author fact: Gary’s mum wrote I Thought I Had You Forever “from one mother to another.”

Music: “Buffalo Soldier,” John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and David Bowie.

Big Red Train Ride

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Newby, Eric. Big Red Train Ride: a Ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Penguin, 1978.

Reason read: the first electric trains were introduced in the month of July.

Six thousand miles. Seven time zones. The big, red Trans-Siberian train ride took Eric Newby and his wife from Moscow to the Pacific.

Eric Newby and his wife, Wanda, embarked on an epic journey across Siberia back in the late 1970s. All along the way, Newby peers into the habitations of USSR locals with curiosity and humor. His words could be lyrical in addition to being sarcastic and humorous.
It is interesting to read Fear by Anatoli Ryabakov at the same time as The Big Red Train Ride. Reading about Stalin from the fictional and historical perspectives, especially during 1936 – 1938 and the rein of Great Terror. Both books report the arrest of seven million people (not including the criminals) and the death toll during Stalin’s time to be somewhere around twenty million souls. When talking about the Siberian exiles Newby did not mention the Russians who were perceived to have made fun of Stalin and were banished or murdered simply as a result of his paranoia.
It goes without saying that Big Red Train Ride is a bit dated. Written in 1977, there is a great deal of “this will be done” statements. For example, he used the future tense when talking about a railway to be finished in 1980. When Newby was trying to take photographs of certain stations I thought of my sister and her smart phone. She takes stealthy pictures of people all the time. Her subjects are none the wiser. Meanwhile Newby was getting yelled at left and right.
As an aside, I appreciated the humor in Big Red Train Ride. Newby was not a fan of knobbly knees.

Lines I liked, “It was certainly Saturday, unless sit was Sunday” (p 72). I get that way, too. Especially on Monhegan. Here’s another that reminded me of the island, “…a grey stretch of water on a rocky, fog-bound coast” (p 260).

As an aside, my papa loved trains. He died earlier this month so I cannot help but think of him and how he would have loved this journey.

Author fact: I have four books by Eric Newby on my list. Round Ireland in Slow Gear and Love and War in the Apennines are left to read. I am looking forward to Love and War because my friend has always wanted me to see the Apennines. I am planning a trip this spring.

Book trivia: there are some interesting black and white photographs included in The Big Red Train Ride.

Music: “Auld Lang Syne”, “One Day Over the Urals”, Judy Garland, and “Lord Dismiss Us with Your Blessing”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Making Tracks By Train” (p 138).

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

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Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

Reason read: the Buddhist Lent is celebrated in July.

Fadiman tries to explain the Hmong culture, break down the stereotypes, and debunk the myths about this mysterious population of Southwestern Asia. At the heart of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story of a Hmong child, Lia Lee, diagnosed with epilepsy and the cultural clash between American doctors and Hmong beliefs. Old world meets modern America: pig offal thrown into a Rainbow low-suds detergent bucket during a ceremony to heal a Hmong. Lee’s family were destined to forever search for her soul after she suffered a catastrophic seizure that left her mentally impaired.
I think it goes without saying that we fear what we do not understand. I firmly believe that in order to truly understand another culture, you need to submerge yourself in their world for a least a year. For example, it is not peculiar for a Hmong person to hunt small game with a crossbow. Maybe not down the streets of midtown Philadelphia, but what is the difference to a hungry person when a meal is right in front of them?
As an aside, resources within The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down are a little outdated. For example, the St. Olaf website about the Hmong no longer exists.
As I closed the book on the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‘s final pages, I wondered where Lia was today, or more importantly, where was her soul. I learned she died when she was thirty years old.

Quote that sums up the book perfectly: “…diseases are caused by fugitive souls and cured by jugulated chickens” (p ). No on in modern medicine knows how to practice cross-cultural medicine without offending some spirit.

Author fact: I am reading two books by Fadiman for the Challenge.

Book trivia: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down has been used in classrooms as a textbook.

Setlist: U2, Bon Jovi, White Snake, Motley Crue, “Star-Spangled Banner,” and “Happy Birthday.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Social Studies” (p 205).

Raised by a Narcissist

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Bennett, Serena. Raised By a Narcissist: That Woman, AKA My Mother. Read by Jasmine Morentin.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I am privileged to read (or listen to) interesting books. This is one such story.

In March 2024 Serena Bennett decided she needed to tell her story in order to take her healing from childhood trauma to the next level. In addition to therapy, by writing a book, Bennett was able to confront truths that had been long-hidden. Her story could be considered tragic and yet there is an element of self-discovery and triumph; a phoenix rising from the ashes. She grew up with a mother who belittled, criticized, and failed to display any kind of physical affection. Her mother did not know how to nurture a child at her most formative stages. Bennett grew up with verbal and physical abuse from a woman who cared more about being right and being in control at all times.
There is so much more potential to Raised By a Narcissist. I was struck by how short and not sweet this book turned out. It dropped bombshells (“I was raped”) and moved on without fanfare. The book ended much sooner than I expected. The premise is brilliant: each chapter begins with an intelligent quote and ends with the lesson learned. Each chapter has the potential to show the reader more personal growth and healing. I use the word potential because Bennett’s stories about her mother are disjointed and confusing at times. For example, she tells the story of going to a church party and getting drunk but does not share what happened next. Because it was an audio book, I rewound the section a couple of times to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
I would have liked to learn more about Bennett as a person. I was hoping for a deeper connection with her as a survivor of trauma. While I shared similar battles with my mother, her story would have carried even more weight had I been able to get to know her better.
Confessional: there is a workbook that came with the audio. I have yet to crack it open.

Carrying the Tiger

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Stewart, Tony. Carrying the Tiger: a Memoir: Living with Cancer, Dying with Grace, Finding Joy While Grieving. West End Books, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I occasionally hit upon poignant books that stay with me long after I have read the last word. This is one such book.

Just by the title of the book, you know the subject matter is going to be hard to read. The subtitle “Dying with Grace” pretty much tells you that someone does not survive cancer. And so, almost begrudgingly, you steel yourself for a tough time of it. Tough time, it most certainly was. At times I found myself asking why I was so affected. I don’t know Tony or Lynn at all. Except, the more I read, I felt like I did. Tony’s words were so intimate and honest. Even beyond the unfathomable sadness, quite unexpectedly I ended up laughing, getting angry, and caring. Chapter by chapter, page by page – laughing, getting angry, crying, and caring. Over and over again. Full confessional: I had to read this in fits and starts. Sitting with Stewart’s words for long periods of time was difficult for me to do. I’m still not 100% finished.
Carrying A Tiger starts on a Sunday in September in 2014. Lynn had been feeling ill on and off for two months and on this particular Sunday she learned why. This was the first time the couple learned something was terribly and terminally wrong. For the next six years Stewart (and his wife) bravely shared every part of the couple’s journey through cancer. The intimacy through words is astounding.

As an aside, the title of the book comes from Tai Chi. There is a gesture of scooping low as if to collect a tiger to put him as far away as possible. The further away, the more he is perceived to be small and of little consequence. I have to wonder if Tai Chi is a common prescription for cancer patients. My OM had a bunch of videos found in her collection after her death from a brain tumor and my coworker mentioned Tai Chi while she was going through chemo.
As another aside, I had an ah-ha moment while reading Carrying the Tiger. Tony wrote about “…downplaying painful details” so that friends would not abandon them. Maybe that is what happened with J. Maybe when I shared the awful month when OM died it was TMI and so they ghosted me. I said too much.
As a third aside, Tony’s description of “Covid-19 times” brought back memories. When he described people banging on pots and pans to honor the healthcare workers I remembered my drummer friend who religiously drummed every night at 7pm from his Brooklyn window.

Author fact: Tony Stewart is not a writer by trade. He began his foray into a relationship with words when he kept a journal on CaringBridge.org. The words did not stop just because Lynn was no longer with him. The words became this book.

Book trivia: I was surprised to see color photographs. How lovely.

As an aside, I am a fan of anyone who quotes e.e. cummings.

Confessional: I need to know if Stewart has seen “After Life” written by and starring Ricky Gervais?

Housekeeper’s Secret

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Schnakenburg, Sandra. The Housekeeper’s Secret: a Memoir. She Writes Press, 2024.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I often get to read interesting books. This was one book I inhaled.

Sandra Schnakenburg has always been good with numbers so it seemed like a natural fit for her to become an accountant, but an author? That seems a little farfetched until you learn that her childhood housekeeper of thirty years had a dying wish for Schnakenburg to tell her life story. Then when you read the stories Schnakenburg has to tell about her housekeeper and friend, Lee Metoyer, it all makes sense. This is an important story that needs to be told for many reasons. Lee’s life was as incredible as it was tragic. However, Schnakenburg’s own upbringing is just as compelling. Hers is a story worth telling, too. She grew up in an affluent neighborhood in an extravagant house with five siblings. This was a household where someone had to feed the koi that lived in the pond under the grand staircase. Someone had to iron the bedroom linen. Someone had to line up seven different breakfast juices so that the man of the house could take his pick. The list goes on. Hidden behind the curtain of Schnakenburg’s perfect childhood hides abuse, corruption, and fear. The Housekeeper’s Secret is a story of survival and triumph on multiple levels.
Confessional: sometimes I noticed little inconsistencies. In Housekeeper’s Secret Schnakenburg’s timeline becomes a little skewed. She was six years old when her father took the family to Disneyland, but in the previous chapter she is seven. [Schnakenburg also gets Disneyland confused with Disneyworld. I do, too.] In another scene Metoyer’s cup is empty but she takes a sip of coffee.

Quote of a quote to quote: “There is always that one summer that changes you” -Beth Merlin. Amen to that. I was 23. I experienced the first summer romance of my life and then my father died.

Music: Elvis, “Happy Birthday”, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, Glenn Miller’s “When That Man is Dead and Gone”, “We Are Family”, and “Paper Doll” by the Mills Brothers.

Cracking Up

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Lownds, Gordon. Cracking Up: From Rising Star to Junkie Despair in 1,000 Days: an Unlikely Addicts Memoir. Life to Paper, 2025.

Gordon Lownds begins his story in October of 1998 in rehab. He calls himself an unlikely addict, but how easily a stripper crackhead turned his life upside down (all for the sake of hot sex) indicates otherwise. Annabelle got him to pay for acting classes, an apartment, clothes, jewelry, headshots, twenty-eight days of rehab (which did not work), a vehicle, and so much more. She was a blackmailing siren who took Lownds entire life and dashed it upon the rocks.
As an aside, I seriously could see Lownds’s story ending up in a movie. His over the top personal life of joining a carnival when he was seventeen, being a male go-go dancer for a short time, and being a bass player in a band seemed Hollywood enough; never mind the fact he is a divorced father; there is plenty of graphic sex, violence, wealth, drug dealers, cops, and drama in his adult life. Let’s not forget Annabelle, the gorgeous troublemaker who started this whole adventure. His story is too outrageous to be true. Reading Cracking Up was a very wild ride.

Confessional: I lost a friend to addiction. If it wasn’t outright suicide, it was an accidental overdose. I have to wonder what really made Lownds, at forty-eight years of age, decide to try crack cocaine for the first time? Was a woman really to blame?

Second confessional: my link to Cracking Up expired and somehow the book was not save to Funnel. I did not finish the book.

Setlist: Enigma, Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime”, “Suicide Blonde” by INXS, “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne, “Private Dancer” by Tina Turner, “Purple Rain” by Prince, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”, Nine Inch Nails, “Life in the Fast Lane” by the Eagles, and Tower of Power’s Back to Oakland.

Goodbye to a River

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Graves, John. Goodbye to a River: a Narrative. Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.

Reason read: June is National River Cleanup month. What better way to honor the event than by reading a book about a little known river called the Brazos?

The premise behind Goodbye to a River sounds like something I would do. When John Graves found out the state of Texas was going to dam parts of the Brazos River he decided to take a three week journey on the river of his childhood to say goodbye. Portions of the Brazos clearly reflected Graves’s childhood memories. Other times he reflects on the history, myths and legends of the region. At times he becomes philosophical, thinking of “Saint” Henry David Thoreau and “Prince” Ernest Hemingway, but more often he recounts tales of violence and racism: scalpings, hangings, raps, and murders indicative of the Comanche history of the region. He mentions Charles Goodnight from time to time. Occasionally, he interacts with locals he meets along the way, but most of the time he is alone with a dog he calls the passenger. My favorite parts was when Graves remembered the exact same trees he used to climb and the same beaches he used to build campfires on.
Did you know that October is the best month for traveling the Brazos for the weather is at its most pleasant?

As an aside, I would like to hear a canyon wren singing in harmony with her desert landscape.

Lines I loved, “You are not in a hurry there; you learned long since not to be” (p 3), “The silent air of ruin is fragile” (p 44), “Heights have that kind of humor” (p 126), and “One can get pretty literary on islands” (p 168).

Confessional: when I said Goodbye to a River reminded me of myself, here is what I meant. I was supposed to be paid off from the job I had had for over twenty years. Knowing the end was near, I spent four weeks saying goodbye to every corner that meant something to me.
As another aside, I am watching Only Murders in the Building (yes, I know it has been out for a while). Brazos makes me think of Steve Martin’s character.
As yet another aside, the mention of Alma-Tadema paintings reminded of Natalie’s interpretation of his daughter’s poem, “If No One Ever Married Me.”

Author fact: Graves taught “off and on” at Columbia and spent time wandering and writing (according to his biography).

Book trivia: the children’s version of Goodbye to a River was illustrated by Russell Waterhouse.

Playlist: “Annie Laurie”, Frank Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, “The Good Old Rebel”, “Beulah Land”, “Drink to Me Only”, “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton”, and “Rambling Wreck”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A River of Words” (p 201).