My Eclectic March Reading

March gave me plenty of time to read, as the weather was unpredictable and the days became longer.  Here are some of this month's new books that I am glad I took time to read: 

The Tobacco Wives: A Novel by Adele Myers
   Maddie Sykes is a young seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.
   When a series of unexpected events thrusts Maddie into the role of lead dressmaker for the town’s most influential women, she scrambles to produce their ornate gowns for the biggest party of the season. But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn’t quite the carefree paradise that it seems: A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems. Although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise.
   Maddie wants to report what she knows, but in a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive, she doesn’t know who she can trust—and fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds.
   The Tobacco Wives sheds light on the hidden history of women’s activism during the post-war period, in the corporate world and in the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth. 

One Italian Summer: A Novel by Rebecca Serle
   When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.
   But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.
   And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.
   I must admit I hesitated to begin this book but by the end I was glad I gave it a chance. The revelations discovered in Italy made a daughter realize one should never make assumptions about her parents.

Shadows Reel by C. J. Box
   A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Joe is called out for a moose poaching incident that turns out to be something much more sinister: a local fishing guide has been brutally tortured and murdered. At the same time, Marybeth opens an unmarked package at the library where she works and finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there?
   She learns that during World War II, several Wyoming soldiers were in the group that fought to Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat in the Alps—and one of them took the Fuhrer’s personal photo album. Did another take this one and keep it all these years? When a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face new questions: Who is after the book? And how will they solve its mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls?
   Past and present also intersect across the Northwest as Nate, travels to recover his stolen falcons in a journey to Portland where he encounters present day extremists. Joe Pickett fans will be delighted. 

Fencing with the King: A Novel by Diana Abu-Jaber
   The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime—fencing—and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan, who must be enticed back from America, where he lives with his wife and his daughter, Amani.
   Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her—even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. In a sibling rivalry that carries ancient echoes, the Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other—one that almost costs Amani her life.
   With insight into modern politics and family dynamics, taboos around mental illness, and our inescapable relationship to the past, Fencing with the King asks how we contend with inheritance: familial and cultural, hidden and openly contested.
   I have been a fan of Abu-Jaber's writing ever since hosting her for an event in Missoula.  Her father is from Jordan and much of her writing takes place there. Since I hope to go to Petra next year, so found the insights and history in her latest book fascinating. 

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom
  In Love is an unforgettable portrait of one couple’s determination to support each other in their last journey together. Amy Bloom and her husband Brian’s world was changed forever when an MRI confirmed the truth they could no longer ignore. Bloom reflects back on the loving marriage they shared, and then the sudden cascade of things going wrong: Brian’s decision to retire, his withdrawal from friends. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and they weren’t able to talk as they always had. Finally confronted with the diagnosis and the daily frustrations and realities of Alzheimer’s, Brian became determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Together they find their difficult way to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace.
   Bloom is a remarkable writer, as is this book. I was not familiar with Dignitas in Zurich, Switzerland, and found this book beautiful—hopeful, sad and brave as Bloom followed her husband’s instructions to “Please write about this” and I am glad that she did. 

Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It by Tracey Gendron
    Ageism Unmasked enables us to see that we tolerate, and sometimes actively promote, attitudes and behaviors toward differently aged people that we would reject and condemn if applied to any other group. It peels back the layers to expose how cultural norms and unconscious prejudices have seeped into our lives, silently shaping our treatment of others based on their age and our own misconceptions about aging—and about ourselves.
   Dr. Gendron’s transformative work inspires people of all ages to embrace aging as our universal and lifelong process of developing over time — biologically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually.

• Ageism Unmasked will help readers let go of our desperate need to stay young… exposing how we personally, systematically, structurally, and institutionally stigmatize being old.
• Ageism Unmasked will help readers appreciate both the challenges and opportunities of how we all age… showing how ageism is prejudice towards both younger and older people.
• Ageism Unmasked will help readers reset our expectations for getting old… providing the tools to anticipate and experience elderhood as a time of renewed meaning and purpose, empowering each of us to create our own definition of successful aging.

 

 THINK SPRING.  READ BOOKS.   WATCH BASKETBALL!

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2021 Montana Book Award

 

BROTHERS ON THREE WINS THE 2021 MONTANA BOOK AWARD

The 2021 Montana Book Award winner is Brothers on Three:  A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana by Abe Streep, published by Celadon Books. This annual award recognizes literary and/or artistic excellence in a book written or illustrated by someone who lives in Montana, is set in Montana, or deals with Montana themes or issues.  Presentations and a reception for the winning authors will take place on August 3, during the Montana Library Association Conference in Missoula. 

Brothers on Three : A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana
   From journalist Abe Streep, the story of coming of age on a reservation in the American West and a team uniting a community
   March 11, 2017, was a night to remember: in front of the hopeful eyes of thousands of friends, family members, and fans, the Arlee Warriors would finally bring the high school basketball state championship title home to the Flathead Indian Reservation. The game would become the stuff of legend, with the boys revered as local heroes.
   Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana centers on the community of Arlee, on the Flathead Indian Reservation, home to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and tells the tale of a remarkable group of young people who also happen to be remarkable basketball players. It follows Will Mesteth, Jr. and Phillip Malatar, starters for the Arlee Warriors, as they balance the pressures of adolescence, shoulder the dreams of their community, and chart their own individual courses for the future. Brothers on Three is not simply a story about high school basketball, about state championships and a winning team. It is a book about community, and it is about boys on the cusp of adulthood, finding their way through the intersecting worlds they inhabit and forging their own paths to personhood.

Four honor books were also chosen by the 2021 Montana Book Award Committee: 

Blood is Not the Water by Mara Panich
   From the opening poem to the final lines, author Mara Panich addresses issues of being a woman in this world. She exposes that accepted normative fiction compelling women to question themselves, apologize for their perceived body failures, and above all to stand aside when others, especially men, are present.
   In this  debut collection of poems governed by the body, and like a prism held up to the light, Panich’s book reflects and refracts: the body’s heat, its desire, and the myriad ways it fails and betrays us. — Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms (BOA Editions, 2019)
   Note:  Mara is the current owner of Fact & Fiction, Missoula's premiere independent bookstore!   

Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River by John N. Maclean.
   In the spirit of his father's beloved classic A River Runs Through It, Maclean writes a gorgeous chronicle of a family and the land they call home. This is a meditation on fly fishing and life along Montana's Blackfoot River, where four generations of Macleans have fished, bonded, and drawn timeless lessons from its storied waters. 

“The trout completed its curve in an undulating, revelatory sequence. A greenish speckled back and a flash of scarlet on silver along its side marked it as a rainbow. One slow beat, set the hook … in those first seconds I felt a connection to a fish of great size and power."

   So begins John N. Maclean's remarkable memoir of his family's century-long love affair with Montana's majestic Blackfoot River. Maclean returns annually to the simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search of the fish of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally write the story he was born to tell.  

Ridgeline by Michael Punke
   In 1866, with the country barely recovered from the Civil War, new war breaks out on the western frontier—a clash of cultures between the Native tribes who have lived on the land for centuries and a young, ambitious nation. Colonel Henry Carrington arrives in Wyoming’s Powder River Valley to lead the US Army in defending the opening of a new road for gold miners and settlers. Carrington intends to build a fort in the middle of critical hunting grounds, the home of the Lakota. Red Cloud, one of the Lakota’s most respected chiefs, and Crazy Horse, a young but visionary warrior, understand full well the implications of this invasion. For the Lakota, the stakes are their home, their culture, their lives. 

Stone Sister by Caroline Patterson
   Spanning the mid to late 20th century and set in the Elkhorn Valley of southwestern Montana, The Stone Sister is told from three points of view — a father’s, a nurse’s, and a sister’s. Together they tell the unforgettable story of a child’s birth, disappearance, and finally discovery in a home for “backward children.” Robert Carter, a newly married man just back from World War II, struggles with his and his wife’s decision to entrust the care of their disabled child to an institution and “move on” with family life. Louise Gustafson, a Midwestern nurse who starts over with a new life in the West, finds herself caring for a child everyone else has abandoned. And Elizabeth Carter, a young journalist, uncovers the family secret of her lost sister as she struggles with starting a family of her own.
   The Stone Sister explores the power of family secrets and society’s evolving definitions of “normal”–as it pertains to family, medicine, and social structure. The novel sheds light on the beginnings of the disability justice movement as it follows one family’s journey to reckon with a painful past. Incredibly, the novel is based on Caroline Patterson’s personal story. As an adult, she discovered she had an older sister with Down syndrome who had been written out of her family history.

The Montana Book Award was founded by the Friends of the Missoula Public Library in 2001 and winners are selected by a committee of individuals representing areas throughout Montana. Members of the 2021 Montana Book Award committee include Gloria Behem, Chester; Amanda Allpress, Missoula; Della Dubbe, Helena, Hannah Mundt, Bozeman, Kim Siemsen, Glendive; Debbie Stewart, Great Falls; Starla Rice, Hot Springs; Chris Brea, Livingston; and Gavin Woltjer, Billings.

 Nominations for the 2022 Montana Book Award are now being accepted.

    How to nominate 

To order copies of winning books contact Fact & Fiction

In the News

COVID no longer seems to be dominating the nightly newscasts or daily newspapers.  But we now have Ukraine and repeating concerns on fentanyl, climate change and of course,  the weather.   Here are a few titles to give you more information:

On the history of Ukraine 

Red Famine Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
   A revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes, the consequences of which still resonate today, as Russia has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more.
   In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil.
   Applebaum’s compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first. 

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
   Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense fight with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence. But today’s conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine’s territory and its existence as a sovereign nation. As the award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine’s past in order to understand its present and future.
   Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that used it as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Roman and Ottoman empires to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. For centuries, Ukraine has been a meeting place of various cultures. The mixing of sedentary and nomadic peoples and Christianity and Islam on the steppe borderland produced the class of ferocious warriors known as the Cossacks, for example, while the encounter between the Catholic and Orthodox churches created a religious tradition that bridges Western and Eastern Christianity. Ukraine has also been a home to millions of Jews, serving as the birthplace of Hassidism—and as one of the killing fields of the Holocaust.
   As Plokhy explains, today’s crisis is a tragic case of history repeating itself, as Ukraine once again finds itself in the center of the battle of global proportions. An authoritative history of this vital country, The ates of Europe provides a unique insight into the origins of the most dangerous international crisis since the end of the Cold War. 

On fentanyl 

Fentanyl, Inc. How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic by Ben Westhoff
   A remarkable four-year investigation into the dangerous world of synthetic drugs—from black market drug factories in China to users and dealers on the streets of the U.S. to harm reduction activists in Europe—which reveals for the first time the next wave of the opioid epidemic
  Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice—and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe— were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs’ effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand. Westhoff visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China’s vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. Poignantly, he chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the U.S. and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many. 

On weather, climate and need to walk  

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
    In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
   Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next,regeneration-based economies right now. 

On the best March escape, get your brackets ready! 

Coach K : The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski by Ian O'Connor
  Coach K is universally regarded as the nation’s most respected and successful collegiate basketball coach. Yet despite always being candid with the media, Coach K has a guarded private side that he rarely talks about in public.
   This open and objective biography will answer all the unanswered questions, including what, at age seventy-three, still drives Coach K to compete; who were his key influences; what were his transformational moments; and what he’s really like when he’s not on the court. It also covers the pivotal games in Coach K's career, his reflections on his numerous All-American players at Duke, and his relationships with top rival coaches. This is the long-awaited biography of a true basketball legend.

  

 STAY INFORMED.   THINK SPRING.   BUY LOCAL.

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