Tag: NonFiction

September ’11 is…

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September 2011 will be a mess. I guarantee it.  A complete and utter debacle. For starters, the data migration I blathered about back in June didn’t happen on schedule. In fact, it hasn’t happened at all. Fingers crossed, though. It is set for October. But! But. but, that just means I continue to be without borrowing capabilities because I still to refuse to get a public library card. At least I can admit that it’s because I’m lazy. I don’t feel like driving to the public branch when many ( I need to stress many, many) of the books on my challenge list are either in my own workplace library OR sitting on my shelves at home. I don’t need to reach outside of my resources to find a read. But what this does mean (in terms of planning a list of books to read each month) is that it hasn’t been easy. I let my state of mind dictate what comes next or not. It’s chaotic and more than a little crappy. If I don’t feel like reading The Trial I won’t. It’s as simple as that.

So to spend a long time explaining a very simple thing, I don’t have an expected read list for September 2011. There. I said it. I know this much is true: I want to read something nonfiction since I neglected the didactic last month. I do know that I want to reread The World According to Garp by John Irving. I plan to Let Go of some titles I have been meaning to read; to just admit I don’t want to read them at all (The Compleat Angler being one of them). I have been selected to receive another Early Review book from LibraryThing. If it arrives in September I’ll add it to the list. I’m kind of excited because it’s about football. It would be great to read it in honor of the NFL’s 2011 season opening, but we’ll have to wait and see…

What else can I tell you about September? Hurricane season. Start of the Fall Semester for academics. Nights getting cooler. September is my suspicious month. I’m leery of perfect blue skies. I don’t trust the beauty of the day to not turn into something ugly. Fall means dying – this close to death. It means taking dares with yes and losing. The silver lining (as I must find one) is that September is also a chance to remember falling in love among the falling leaves. A chance to celebrate that love, if for only one day.

It’s Not About the Bike

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Armstrong, Lance. It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.New York: Berkley Books, 2001.

I read this in one sitting, again as a passenger on a trip from Maine. I had the luck (?) of traffic on my side so instead of the usual 4.5 hours to get home it took us over six.

I will be 100% honest. I don’t know what to think about this book. When I first finished it I was expecting some sort of lesson to be learned, some sort of moral to the story. Instead I found the ending as well, an ending. The end. I’m not sure why it wasn’t more for me. I guess it’s because in comparison with Matthew Long’s recovery back to athletics Long’s process was more drawn out, more detailed. I felt that Long’s experience was more painful and not as easy to cope with emotionally. I think that was due, in part, to how little time Armstrong spent describing his road to recovery. In comparison to Long, Armstrong made it a much simpler process with much less emotion. To be fair, one man was hit by a bus and another was hit by cancer in three different areas of his body. Only two similarities really rise between the two men. Both men were ordained by doctors to die and both had an insane willpower to defy all odds and, ultimately, get back to the sports they loved so much.

Everyone knows Lance Armstrong’s story – man with cancer defies the odds and wins the Tour de France a shocking seven consecutive times. But, as the title of Armstrong’s story suggests it’s not about the bike. Instead it is about a different kind of competition. Fighting cancer. Ultimately, as near death moments will do, cancer changed him. It woke him up to the possibilities of a fuller, more meaningful life. He never would have become a philanthropist without the experience of personal pain. It’s Not about the Bike is that journey from hotshot cyclist to a powerhouse with a greater purpose.

Favorite lines: “If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it’s patience” (p 65). “During our lives we’re faced with so many different elements as well, we experience so many setbacks, and fight such hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope” (p 69). Finally, “We watched the World Series and tried to act like we were interested in the outcome – as much as anybody really cares about baseball before brain surgery” (p 110 – 111).

Author fact(s): Two of my favorite details about Armstrong as the person (and not the writer) is he is also a marathoner (three times) and allegedly agnostic.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23)

Deadly Indifference

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Brown, Michael D. and Ted Schwarz. Deadly Indifference: the Perfect (Political) Storm” Hurricane Katrina, the Bush White House, and Beyond. Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2011.

I have to wonder if there is a tell-all grace period. Wait so many years, put so much distance between now and then, and then spill the beans with abandon. Deadly Indifference is that type of book. Michael Brown was Under Secretary of Homeland Security during the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. As Director of FEMA he was the appointed scapegoat of the entire fiasco and for all intents and purposes Deadly Indifference is his chance to clear his name. This is his opportunity to set the record straight and blame other people. As former Under Secretary of Homeland Security he has nothing to lose and therefore can tell all with straightforward clarity. It is to be expected that Brown points the finger everywhere but himself. In the first chapter I was even wondering if he was going to blame the residents of New Orleans simply because they willingly chose to live in a “fishbowl” city well below sea level. When Brown does get around to placing some of the blame on himself he does so lightly and delicately. His heavy hand is reserved for people like New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Louisana governor Kathleen Blanco. While Brown’s book is thought provoking one would benefit from reading several different accounts of what went wrong before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. It would be interesting to compare this to someone with an unbiased point of view.

June ’11 was…

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What a weird month June ended up being! I wanted to stop borrowing books from other libraries while mine went through a transition period with it’s catalog. I chose one book to read, And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hoover Santmyer which I thought would take me the entire month of June. How wrong I was…about everything. First, the migration is delayed so I could have borrowed books from other libraries. In that one instance the library stayed the same while everything else changed: the entire building has had every light bulb changed, I’m in the process of hiring two new people (and an architect for a complete overhaul of the library’s layout), in September I will have three staff members working nights, only two people are in their same offices, and I even got new furniture. What a difference a month makes. I was also wrong about finishing And Ladies of the Club. I was bored to tears. So I moved on to:

  • Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan in honor of D-Day on June 6th, 1944.
  • Atonement by Ian McEwan in honor of June being Family month.
  • Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe in honor of June being National Short Story month.
  • Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler in honor of Food Week

Not a huge month for reading. I spent a lot of time focusing on life in the here and now…

 

Longest Day

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Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day: June 6th, 1944. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1959.

I think people view history as a boring and tedious subject because they forget that flesh and blood people are often the backbone of historical events. Ancestors who could have been the reason for their very being. Cornelius Ryan didn’t forget that the importance of D-Day didn’t lie in how it happened but whomade it happen. In his introduction he makes it clear that The Longest Day is not an military account of June 6th, 1944 but “a story of people…” within a 24 hour time span. The detail and clarity with which Ryan writes about seemingly ordinary men and women makes The Longest Day extraordinary. I thoroughly enjoyed Ryan’s straightforward style.

Line that grabbed me: “Now on this great and awful morning the last phase of the assault from the sea began” (p 239).

Author Fact: Two things – Ryan was born on June 5th (ironically so close to D-Day) and he died a cancer victim.

Book Trivia: Longest Day was made into a movie in 1962. Ryan wrote the screenplay and it starred John Wayne and Richard Burton.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Nonfiction” (p 253). Pearl calls it a “classic” and suggests following up with Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far and The Last Battle.

A Matter of Conscience

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Hoppe, Sherry Lee. A Matter of Conscience: Redemption of a Hometown Hero, Bobby Hoppe.Nashville: Wakestone Press, 2011.

In a nutshell: A Matter of Conscience is about the trial of Bobby Hoppe. 31 years after shooting a man to death the football hero is finally brought to justice.
The first thing I have to say, just to get it out there, is that this is not a neutral, unbiased portrayal of one man’s fall from grace and subsequent redemption. The author fully acknowledges that in her forward. Written by his widow, Sherry Lee Hoppe, Bobby Hoppe is portrayed as a deeply religious man heavy with guilt and regret; a vehemently repentant mama’s boy. Subsequently, from page one his victim, Don Hudson, is painted as the super villain, the guy everyone would have gunned down if Hoppe hadn’t done it first.
Despite his widow’s insistence Hoppe was an angel I had a hard time believing in the depth of Hoppe’s alleged guilt since he never came forward with his self defense claim when the crime was first committed in 1957. True, he may have lived with “demons” for 31 years but he didn’t give much thought to Hudson’s family in that entire time. He probably would have kept his silence indefinitely had it not been for the victim’s family and their never-ending search for justice.
What A Matter of Conscience does really well is paint a socioeconomic picture of North Chattanooga, Tennessee in the late 1950s. Football and bootlegging were the heaven and hell of the day. As a young man in the poverty stricken south you were involved in one or the other. You either played a hero’s game or did the work of the devil. Both earned you a reputation worth fighting for.
But, probably the best aspect to A Matter of Conscience is the heart of the story – the trial. Ms. Hoppe takes you into the court room, puts you behind the defense table, and allows you to have intimate access to every nuance of her husband’s difficult case. Hoppe’s defense team was mesmerizing and the trial, mesmerizing.

Art and Madness

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Roiphe, Anne. Art and Madness: a Memoir of Lust Without Reason. New York: Doubleday, 2011.

From the start I struggled to find the purpose of this snapshot-in-time memoir. In the beginning there is a brief mention of Roiphe at age 11 but most of the book is confined to the 50s and 60s; Roiphe’s artistic coming of age. There is a parade of authors mentioned, name drops like Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Salvador Dali and on and on. Despite a yo-yo’ing time line across the decades there is a constant in Roiphe’s dedication to holding her male counterparts up for success. It was an era when use and abuse of women was the norm and Roiphe takes it all in stride. As she says, she was the muse instead of the writer. Throughout Art and Madness Roiphe illustrates a different side of motherhood as she shamelessly bares the truth about toting her daughter all over predawn New York to answer the drunken beck and call of prominent men. But, with destruction comes the need to rebuild. In the end, Roiphe finds a self-proclaimed redemption. The muse becomes a writer in her own right.

Confessional: Art and Madness was something I would pick up and read voraciously for a day or two at a time. Yet, when I put it down weeks would go by before I would pick it back up again. I read it sporadically, compulsively, and yet, not obsessively. I have no idea why because it really was fascinating.

Persepolis

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Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Whenever I read a book like Persepolis I think about how gluttonous, how wanton, how extravagant my life within this country has been. Imagine being told what to wear and how to wear it. Imagine being told what to not to do or say. Imagine having a curfew. Imagine the banning of alcohol or parties. All common for coming of age, but as an adult? Imagine uncles being executed; bombs exploding and killing your entire family of neighbors. Here one day, gone the next. Persepolis was hard to read. Maybe it’s because Marjane is my age (younger by several months) so all along I kept comparing her her stages of growing up to my own. But, really, how can one compare such things when we are figuratively and literally worlds apart?

The Amercican version of Persepolis is a two-part story. Part one begins when Marjane Satrapi is ten years old. It’s her first year of having to wear the veil, of school segregation, and the disintegration of life as she knew it. The story follows the next four years of her life as she comes of age in revolutionary Iran. She is interested in all the things a typical pubescent girl should be: fashion, rock posters, friends. As she grows up her personal uprising and rebellion run parallel with her country’s political unrest. As the Iran/Iraq conflict escalates Satrapi’s childhood world becomes more and more dangerous. She struggles with religious trust versus media influences touting the extremist view. Finally, her Marxist parents decide her future is more certain if she is sent to a boarding school in Austria.

Striking line: “When I went back to her room she was crying. We were not in the same social class but at least we were in the same bed” (p 36).

Book Trivia: Persepolis was adapted into an animated film.

Author Fact: Satrapi speaks five different languages (according to the wiki I read).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Graphica” (p 105). Obviously.

May 2011 was…

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May was a month of deja vu. The Just Cause walk. Wanting to go home. Same old, same old. Nearly everything I read this month reminded me of something else I have already read. Out of Control by Suzanne Brockmann reminded me of The Defiant Hero by the same author was the most obvious because the plot and characters were very similar. Almost too similar. To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite reminded me of Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell. They had similar plot lines: taking on a difficult classroom of students as a new teacher. Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham reminded me of Where the Pavement Ends by Erika Warmbrunn. Two stories about traveling through difficult, foreign terrain by bicycle.

So, here’s the list:

  • To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite ~ in honor of National Education Month. This was a really quick (but good) read. Read in one day.
  • Catfish and Mandala: a Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew X. Pham ~ in honor of May’s Memorial Day. This was probably my favorite book on the list.
  • Out of Control by Suzanne Brockmann ~ in honor of Brockmann’s birth month. I have mixed feelings about this book (as my review pointed out). Read in one day.
  • A Child’s Life and Other Stories by Phoebe Gloeckner ~ in honor of May being Graphic Novel month. This was super hard to “read.” Read in one day.
  • Antigone the play by Sophocles ~ in honor of May being the best time to visit Greece. I keep forgetting this plot so it was good to read it again. Read in one day.
  • Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong ~ in honor of Asian-American Heritage month. Read over a weekend. This was one of my favorites.
  • Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery ~ in honor of Eeyore’s birth month. This was an audio book and very different than everything else I have listened to so far.
  • Seabiscuit: an American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand ~ in honor of the Kentucky Derby.
  • The Dean’s List by Jon Hassler ~ in honor of Minnesota becoming a state in May. This reminded me a little too much of my own work place!
  • A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters From the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward edited by Isaac Metzker. Read in two days.
  • City of Light by Lauren Belfer ~ in honor of history month. Interesting story about Niagara Falls and the advancement of electricity at the turn of the century.
  • Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi ~ in honor of May being the best time to visit Iran. This was amazing. Can’t wait for part II. 
  • Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman ~ in honor of Prayer Day being the first Thursday in May. This was a fun murder mystery. Read in one car ride home.

I didn’t get to three books on my orginal list: China, To Me, House on the Lagoon, and, Art and Madness. I forgot to pack them and ended up finding Persepolis and Friday the Rabbi Slept Late at home.

May was also the month for crazy travel. I slept no more than two nights at a time in Bolton, Concord, Boston, Chicopee, Peaks Island, Rockland and Monhegan all in eleven days time. I took two boats, one bus and three different cars. Walked over 75 miles. Saw family. Saw friends. Breathed in the woods. Inhaled the ocean. I enjoyed every second of it.

Seabiscuit

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Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: an American Legend.New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.

I love underdog stories (or, is it underhorse in this situation?). Seabiscuit is a head-scratcher of a racehorse. “Red” Pollard, his jockey, is a head-scratcher of a jockey. Their humble beginnings make them perfect partners for anything but success. But, succeed they did, as everyone who has seen the movie knows. Hillenbrand carefully reconstructs the era surrounding Seabiscuit’s unlikely “pony” start. The 1930s come alive as the fascinating characters of Seabiscuit’s entourage are introduced; his owner Charles Howard, trainer Tom Smith, jockey Johnny “Red” Pollard, the hungry-for-more media and of course, the fans who followed Seabiscuit’s every race. Hillenbrand writes with such clarity that every competition is pulse-pounding excitement. One can hear the roar of the crowd, taste the anticipation, see the pop of flash bulbs, and practically smell the winnings.
I admit I learned a few things about horse racing from this book. Who knew that the stakes were so high that before certain races there was the threat of horses being sponged and riders being kidnapped. Horses and riders required bodyguards!

Favorite lines: “The horse’s name was Seabiscuit, and for a bent-backed trainer on the other side of the backstretch, the brief exchange of glances between the horse and Tom Smith was the beginning of the end of a long, pounding headache” (p 34), “then, like a mighty shit Godzilla, it slid out to sea and vanished” (p 88).

Book Trivia: Seabiscuit was one hot read in 2001. Every media source from The New York Times to NPR and People Magazine acknowledged it as the best book of some sort.

Author Fact: Laura Hillenbrand graced the cover of “Natural Solutions” (March 2011, issue 132) to speak out about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called ” Sports and Games” (p 225). I read Seabiscuit in honor of the Kentucky Derby always being held in May (May 7th this year).

Bintel Brief

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A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters From the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward. Isaac Metzker, ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971.

Despite its small size (214 pages), A Bintel Brief contains the very essence of Jewish-American New York. Between its pages the culture, society, ideals, hopes and dreams of immigrants struggling to call America their own come pouring out. As a section in the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper, the Bintel Brief was a section of letters to the editor, edited by Isaac Metzker. Many of the letters were based on ethical conundrums; people seeking advice on issues like relationships, work ethic, and the daily struggle to make ends meet. The writers of these letters placed a high value on the opinion of the editor, seeking his advice, his blessing, his approval. However, some are attempts at communication with a missing loved one; a calling out of sorts. The Bintel Brief was a vehicle for exposing mistreated spouses, publicizing petty family arguments, and searching for loved ones.

Author Fact: When Metzker was 20 years old he came to America as a stowaway.

Favorite photo: “Shopping on Hester Street, 1895” (p 10-11). Looking into those eyes I can almost touch the desperation.

Most striking letter: “This is the voice of thirty-seven miserable men who are buried but not covered by earth, tied down but not in chains, silent but not mute, whose hearts beat like humans, yet are not like other human beings….” (p 110). how can that not draw you in?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 133).

Fifth Chinese Daughter

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Wong, Jade Snow. Fifth Chinese Daughter. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950.

I have to start of with a confession: Chinese culture makes me think Americans are unspeakably rude.

Fifth Chinese Daughter is an autobiography written in simple and straightforward language in the proper Chinese third person. As a result I read it in two day’s time. It covers the first 24 years of a Chinese-American girl, Jade Snow Wong. From the very beginning, growing up in San Francisco, California, Wong struggled with cultural differences between modern America and the Old World Chinese of her parents. Everything from food, physical contact, gender discrimination, mourning the dead & burials, order of names, to education was contradictory and Wong had to wade through it all during her most formative years. While she didn’t mean to disrespect her parents she struggled with independence in a new world, especially when she sought an education normally expected of males in her culture.

I am borrowing this book from a school so it shouldn’t surprise me that someone has drawn in it, and yet it bugs me just the same.

Favorite moments in the book: first, I love the cat in the illustration on page 22. Second, I found the description of the treatment of rice (p 58 – 59) to be very interesting.

Book Trivia: Fifth Chinese Daughter is actually the first volume in a two-volume autobiography. The second volume is No Chinese Stranger but, sadly, Pearl only recommends Fifth Chinese Daughter.

Author Fact: Wong was an accomplished potter and some of her pieces made into museum shows.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called ” Asian American Experiences” (p 26).

Catfish and Mandala

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Pham, Andrew X. Catfish and Mandala: a Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam. New York: Farrar. Straus and Giroux, 1999.

It has been several years since I read a bicycle memoir (the last being Where the Pavement Ends by Erika Warmbrunn). I was very excited to start Catfish and Mandala. So much so that I started it two days before May began. Even though May is Bicycle Month I read this for Memorial Day. I’m glad I went that route because it’s not really about the bike.

Catfish and Mandala is more than an adventure story about biking across Vietnam. It’s a cultural exploration and by turn, an explanation. Comparing American versus Vietnamese differing viewpoints on mundane topics like when a child should move out of his parent’s home after reaching adulthood. And yet. Noticing similarities: we all want our fathers to be proud of us, in any culture.
The story of Pham’s father’s imprisonment in the Labor Camp is brief, but heartbreaking just the same. After reading pages 16-20 I will never look at catfish the same.
Pham’s ability to weave past with present is brilliant. He recaptures his family’s flight from Vietnam to the U.S. when he was a small child seamlessly while recounting his own journey from the U.S. back to Vietnam as an adult. His confusion over what he remembers is intertwined with his inability to articulate what he is really looking for. Pham finds himself asking “what am I doing here?” time and time again. As he faces prejudice and violence and corruption I asked the same question.

Favorite lines: “Somehow they got by on love and rice” (p 17),” Everything could shift, and nothing could change” (p 107), “I have an urge to kick myself in the head” (p 158), and “A stray mutt curls up at my feet and shares his fleas with my ankles” (p 200).

Author Fact: I have to start of by flirting. Pham is a good looking guy! My next fact is actually a question – how can you be a “starving” restaurant critic?
Book Trivia: Catfish and Mandala is Pham’s first book.

Things that need further explanation: what, exactly, are “angry egg-eyes”, and what do they look like? Pham mentions five different types of bananas. Now I want to know their names and characteristics.

Pham mentions Miles From Nowhere by Barbara Savage. I’m so excited it’s actually on my list. Sad to say I won’t be reading it until probably May 2016 though!

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Bicycling” (p 36). Simple enough.

ps~ I enjoyed Catfish and Mandala so much that I added Pham as a favorite author on LibraryThing.

To Sir, With Love

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Braithwaite, E.R. To Sir, With Love. New York: Jove Publishing, 1959.

Confession: whenever I hear the words “to sir with love” I do not think of Sidney Poitier. I do not think of LuLu. I don’t even think of Braithwaite. I think of MTV’s 1993 inauguration ball for President Clinton. Natalie Merchant sang ‘To Sir, With Love” accompanied by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. What this says of me, I’m not sure!

E.R. Braithwaite is in the company of a select few: teachers who make a difference. Leaders in education have no trouble touching the lives of one or two of their students. That happens all the time, but to change an entire class is no small feat. I think that’s why they make movies like “Dead Poet’s Society” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” Such teachers are an inspiration to the of world education. Braithwaite enters the world of teaching by default. As an out-of-work engineer who cannot get a job due to the color of his skin he is forced to apply for positions outside his area of expertise. A chance meeting with a stranger leads him to apply for a position with the Greenslade Secondary School in London’s ill reputed East End. There, Braithwaite meets children more callous and uncouth than any adult he’s ever encountered. They are defiant and daring, determined to run Braithwaite out of  school, just has they had done before. Only Braithwaite is not so easily cowed. And so begins the odyssey of E.R. Braithwaite and his remarkable story. He is able to turn thieves and would-be prostitutes into respectful, intelligent individuals.

Book Trivia: To Sir, With Love was made into a 1967 movie starring Sidney Poitier.

Author Fact: Braithwaite became a popular teacher by applying two fundamental philosophies to his teaching: treat the children with respect and relate everything they learn back to something they already are familiar with. Both tactics engage the children emotionally and intellectually.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Teachers and Teaching Tales” (p 231).

Note: In the index of Book Lust Braithwaite is listed as Ricardo and not Edward Ricardo. Even though Braithwaite went by “Ricky” or “Ricardo” it would have been a show of respect to list his full name.

Good Daughter

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Darznik, Jasmin. The Good Daughter: a Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011.

There is a third party detachment to the way Darznik tells her mother’s story. It’s cool and aloof, without personal reaction or reflection. The Good Daughter reads like a novel because Darznik does not offer us any emotion. She includes so many fly-on-the-wall details about her mother’s first marriage and first born in such a way that the story could have been about anyone – friend or colleague. But, having said that – this is a story worth telling. In the early 1950s Iran, Darznik mother is barely into her teen years before she marries and has a child. After suffering abuse at the hands of her husband she does the unthinkable for a woman in Iranian culture: she arranges for a divorce. She is forced to abandon her daughter when she remarries moves to America. Upon having a second daughter she drops hints about the “Good Daughter” she has left behind. It’s a passive aggressive tactic to make Darznik behave, but the “Good Daughter” is never explained until Darznik discovers tangible evidence of her mother’s secret past.

Favorite line: “I was often lost those days and almost always the happier for it” (p 314).