Weekend in Missoula

 

 It’s  a marathon weekend in Missoula, in addition to runners gathering for the Missoula Marathon there was also the Norman Maclean Festival. This year’s theme was, Public Lands & Sacred Ground, featuring two days of authors and politicians discussing public lands, native peoples and the wilderness, A few of the authors included: 

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan
   On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fires. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
   Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. The robber barons fought him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves, but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, even as it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today. 

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams
   For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. The Hour of Land, is a literary celebration of our national parks, what they mean to us, and what we mean to them.
   Through twelve carefully chosen parks, from Yellowstone in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas, Tempest Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America. Our national parks stand at the intersection of humanity and wildness, and there's no one better than Tempest Williams to guide us there.   

Was It Worth It? : A Wilderness Warrior's Long Trail Home by Doug Peacock
   In a collection of gripping stories of adventure, Doug Peacock, loner, iconoclast, environmentalist, and contemporary of Edward Abbey, reflects on a life lived in the wild, asking the question many ask in their twilight years: “Was It Worth It?”
   Recounting sojourns with Abbey, but also Peter Matthiessen, Doug Tompkins, Jim Harrison, Yvon Chouinard and others, Peacock observes that what he calls “solitary walks” were the greatest currency he and his buddies ever shared. He asserts that “solitude is the deepest well I have encountered in this life,” and the introspection it affords has made him who he is: a lifelong protector of the wilderness and its many awe-inspiring inhabitants.
   With adventures both close to home (grizzlies in Yellowstone and jaguars in the high Sonoran Desert) and farther afield (tigers in Siberia, jaguars again in Belize, spirit bears in the wilds of British Columbia, all the amazing birds of the Galapagos), Peacock acknowledges that Covid 19 has put “everyone’s mortality in the lens now and it’s not necessarily a telephoto shot.” Peacock recounts these adventures to try to understand and explain his perspective on Nature: That wilderness is the only thing left worth saving.    

Check the complete schedule of the Norman Maclean Festival
  This festival is held bi-annually, so plan to attend in 2024

On top of these events, on Sunday night night famed ethologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall spoke at UM   

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
   Looking at the headlines--a global pandemic, the worsening climate crisis, political upheaval--it can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed.
   Told through stories from a remarkable career and fascinating research, The Book of Hope touches on vital questions including: How do we stay hopeful when everything seems hopeless? How do we cultivate hope in our children? Filled with engaging dialogue and pictures from Jane’s storied career, The Book of Hope is a deeply personal conversation with one of the most beloved figures in today’s world.
   And for the first time, Jane tells the story of how she became a messenger of hope: from living through World War II, to her years in Gombe, to realizing she had to leave the forest to travel the world in her role as an advocate for environmental justice. She details the forces that shaped her hopeful worldview, her thoughts on her past, and her revelations about her next--and perhaps final--adventure.
   There is still hope, and this book will help guide us to it.

These events all followed the news that Missoula Public Library had been short-listed for best Public Library of the Year the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations

13th IFLA BibLibre International Library Marketing Award Winners Announced

 Further details on the shortlisted libraries

 Missoula Public Library MSR architects case study The winner will be announced on July 26 in Dublin, Ireland.

Thankfully not every week is this exciting!!  But I love Missoula, come visit and I'll give you a tour of the library...

 

James Beard Awards

The mission of the James Beard Awards is to recognize exceptional talent and achievement in the culinary arts, hospitality, media, and broader food system, as well as a demonstrated commitment to racial and gender equity, community, sustainability, and a culture where all can thrive. Awards are given to Restaurants, chefs, media programs, and cookbooks. To find out more click here 

Some of the Cookbook winners included:  

Winning in two categories Baking and Desserts and Emerging Voice
Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries by Kristina Cho
   In Mooncakes & Milk Bread, food blogger Kristina Cho (eatchofood.com) introduces readers to Chinese bakery cooking with fresh, uncomplicated interpretations of classic recipes for the modern baker.
   Inside, you’ll find sweet and savory baked buns, steamed buns, Chinese breads, unique cookies, whimsical cakes, juicy dumplings, Chinese breakfast dishes, and drinks. Recipes for steamed BBQ pork buns, pineapple buns with a thick slice of butter, silky smooth milk tea, and chocolate Swiss rolls all make an appearance--because a book about Chinese bakeries wouldn’t be complete without them!
   Kristina teaches you to whip up these delicacies like a pro, including how to:

• Knead dough without a stand mixer
• Avoid collapsed steamed buns
• Infuse creams and custards with aromatic tea flavors
• Mix the most workable dumpling dough
• Pleat dumplings like an Asian grandma

   This is the first book to exclusively focus on Chinese bakeries and cafés, but it isn’t just for those nostalgic for Chinese bakeshop foods--it’s for all home bakers who want exciting new recipes to add to their repertoires.  

Winning in General category
Everyone's Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health by Gregory Gourdet, JJ Goode, EdD.
   When award-winning, trendsetting chef Gregory Gourdet got sober, he took stock of his life and his pantry, concentrating his energy on getting himself healthy by cooking food that was both full of nutrients and full of flavor. Now, he shares these extraordinary dishes with everyone.
   Everyone’s Table features 200 mouth-watering, decadently flavorful recipes carefully designed to focus on superfoods—ingredients with the highest nutrient-density, the best fats, and the most minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants—that will delight and inspire home cooks. Gourdet’s dishes are inspired his deep affection for global ingredients and techniques--from his Haitian upbringing to his French culinary education, from his deep affection from the cuisines of Asia as well as those of North and West Africa. His unique culinary odyssey informs this one-of-a-kind cookbook, which features dynamic vegetable-forward dishes and savory meaty stews, umami-packed sauces and easy ferments, and endless clever ways to make both year-round and seasonal ingredients shine.  

Winning in the International category
In Bibi's Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean [A Cookbook] by Hawa Hassan, with Julia Turshen
   Grandmothers from eight eastern African countries welcome you into their kitchens to share flavorful recipes and stories of family, love, and tradition in this transporting cookbook-meets-travelogue.
   Somali chef Hawa Hassan and food writer Julia Turshen present 75 recipes and stories gathered from bibis (or grandmothers) from eight African nations: South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Comoros, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, and Eritrea. Most notably, these eight countries are at the backbone of the spice trade, many of them exporters of things like pepper and vanilla. We meet women such as Ma Shara, who helps tourists “see the real Zanzibar” by teaching them how to make her famous Ajemi Bread with Carrots and Green Pepper; Ma Vicky, who now lives in suburban New York and makes Matoke (Stewed Plantains with Beans and Beef) to bring the flavor of Tanzania to her American home; and Ma Gehennet from Eritrea who shares her recipes for Kicha (Eritrean Flatbread) and Shiro (Ground Chickpea Stew).
   Through Hawa’s writing—and her own personal story—the women, and the stories behind the recipes, come to life. With evocative photography shot on location by Khadija Farah, and food photography by Jennifer May, In Bibi's Kitchen uses food to teach us all about families, war, loss, migration, refuge, and sanctuary. 

Winning in US Foodways category
Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou by Melissa M. Martin
   A female Cajun chef and a fresh voice in the culinary world shares the unique and compelling recipes, customs, and stories of her homeland—a disappearing land in the Louisiana bayou—to capture this way of life and its food before it is lost to the gulf forever.
    Named after her restaurant in New Orleans, chef Melissa M. Martin’s debut cookbook shares her inspired and reverent interpretations of the traditional Cajun recipes she grew up eating on the Louisiana bayou, with a generous helping of stories about her community and its cooking. Every hour, Louisiana loses a football field’s worth of land to the Gulf of Mexico. Too soon, Martin’s hometown of Chauvin will be gone, along with the way of life it sustained. Before it disappears, Martin wants to document and share the recipes, ingredients, and customs of the Cajun people.
   Illustrated throughout with dazzling color photographs of food and place, the book is divided into chapters by ingredient—from shrimp and oysters to poultry, rice, and sugarcane. Each begins with an essay explaining the ingredient and its context, including traditions like putting up blackberries each February, shrimping every August, and the many ways to make an authentic Cajun gumbo. Martin is a gifted cook who brings a female perspective to a world we’ve only heard about from men. The stories she tells come straight from her own life, and yet in this age of climate change and erasure of local cultures, they feel universal, moving, and urgent. 

Winning in the Visuals category
Take One Fish: The New School of Scale-to-Tail Cooking and Eating by Josh Niland
   Forget everything you thought you knew about cooking fish with Take One Fish. There are no rules when it comes to fish according to James Beard award winning chef Josh Niland, only an endless world of possibilities.
   With 60 recipes from just 15 global varieties of fish, this cookbook will take you on a gustatory journey – from elaborate to easy, small to large and – always – scale to tail. With flair, color, and flavor, Take One Fish unpacks each of Josh's 15 fish to reveal their true culinary potential, from swordfish cotoletta to pot au feu, to tuna mapo tofu to an ethereal raw flounder.
   Josh continues to open our eyes to the potential of fish in the kitchen, starting from the moment we take our fish home and unpack it – yes that's right: bring it home, take it out of the plastic, let it breathe uncovered in your fridge. Then you are ready. Celebrate the drips, crunchy bits, burnt edges and imperfections that are so central to Josh's mission – to get more people having fun with fish ingenuity every day.

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Father's Day is next week...

These are recent releases I am looking forward to reading, but if I don’t get around to reading them immediately, they would make good gifts!   

The Hawk's Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty by Sy Montgomery
   When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone and yet, she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell.
   Over the next few years, Sy spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts. They are deeply emotional animals, quick to show anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. But they are also loyal and intensely aware of their surroundings. In this mesmerizing account, featuring sixteen pages of gorgeous color photographs, Sy passionately and vividly reveals the wondrous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life, and love.
   First Montgomery gave us The Soul of an Octopus now comes a new wildlife love story, this one takes place in the skies above.  

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays by Barry Lopez, introduction by Rebecca Solnit
   An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveler, and unrivaled observer of nature and culture in all its forms, Lopez lost much of the Oregon property where he had lived for over fifty years when it was consumed by wildfire, likely caused by climate change. Fortunately, some of his papers survived, including five never-before published pieces that are gathered here, along with essays written in the final years of his life; these essays appear now for the first time in book form.
   These essays offer an autobiography in pieces that a reader can assemble while journeying with Lopez along his many roads. They uncover memories at once personal and political, including tender, sometimes painful stories from Lopez’s childhood in New York City and California; reports from the field as he accompanies scientists on expeditions to study animals; travels to Antarctica and some of the most remote places on earth; and to life in his own backyard, adjacent to a wild, racing river. He reflects on those who taught him: the Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world--an eye that, as the reader comes to see, missed nothing. And with striking poignancy and candor, he confronts the challenges of his last years as he contends with the knowledge of his mortality, as well as with the dangers the Earth—and all of its people--are facing.  

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
   Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.
   But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
   As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
   In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than Sedaris.  

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte
   In his previous book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Brusatte, gave readers a definitive history of the dinosaurs. Now, picking up the story in the ashes of the extinction event that doomed T-rex and his kind, he explores the remarkable story of the family of animals that inherited the Earth: mammals.
   Beginning with the earliest days of the mammal lineage some 200 million years ago, Brusatte charts how mammals survived the asteroid that claimed the dinosaurs and made the world their own, becoming the furry animals that we know, love, and sometimes fear. The mammals we share the planet with today, though, are simply the few survivors of a once-verdant family tree, which has been pruned by time and mass extinctions. Saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, and bears three times the weight of a grizzly are but a few of the creatures we learn about along the way. The story concludes, of course with us—human beings—a mammal species that has so thoroughly dominated the Earth that we ourselves have triggered an extinction event that has claimed an estimated 80% of wild mammals in the last century.   

O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by Mark Clague
   Mark Clague weaves together the stories of the song and the nation it represents. Examining the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest, he argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects—and is reflected by—the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union. From victory song to hymn of sacrifice and vehicle for protest, the story of Key’s song is the story of America itself.
   Each chapter in the book explores a different facet of the anthem’s story. In one, we learn the real history behind the singing of the anthem at sporting events; in another, Clague explores Key’s complicated relationship with slavery and its repercussions today. An entire is chapter devoted to some of the most famous performances of the anthem, from Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock to Roseanne Barr at a baseball game to the iconic Whitney Houston version from the 1991 Super Bowl. At every turn, the book goes beyond the events to explore the song’s resonance and meaning.
   I grew up close to Fort McHenry, so know the story behind Francis Scott Key’s inspiration for writing his lyrics. But I did not know how it rose to become the nation’s one and only anthem and today’s magnet for controversy. O Say Can You Hear? raises important questions about the banner; what it meant in 1814, what it means to us today, and why it matters. 

Shifty's Boys by Chris Offutt
   Offutt first introduced us to Mick Hardin in The Killing Hills. Now Army-CID-officer-cum-unofficial-PI Mick Hardin is up against unforeseen forces who will stop at nothing. Once again the clans that populate the hollers and their ways show shades of violence.
   Mick Hardin is home on leave, recovering from an IED attack, when a body is found in the center of town. It’s Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney’s mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, it seems there’s more to the killing than it seems. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers, and getting out of town—and most of all, staying out of the way of his sister Linda’s reelection as Sheriff—but he keeps on looking, and suddenly he’s getting shot at himself.

 

HAPPY FATHERS DAY

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Escape into a good book!

The recent long holiday weekend was cold and rainy, so I treated myself to a long overdue reading binge. It was a wonderful time to finish current reading and dig into my TO BE READ STACK. Here’s what I discovered:  

Trust: A Novel by Hernan Diaz
  Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
  This is the book I started reading before the weekend, but happily finished reading. Hernan Diaz has created four narratives in one book, all telling the story of Benjamin Rusk. The first part is the novel Bonds, which Rusk is not pleased with, so he starts to outline his own version of his life in part two. Part three is a memoir of the person he hired to write his story and part four are discovered entries from his wife’s journals. All form an immersive story and a literary puzzle. Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.  

Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay by Merilyn Simonds
   Merilyn Simonds, has written a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman — a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.
   Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. Born in Sweden to a privileged life, she became a nurse, married a Russisan, who was murdered by Bolsheviks. After his death she moved to Canada where she worked for the Canadian Red Cross visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. When Elzire Dionne gave birth to five babies, Louise became nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets. Repulsed by the media circus, she retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her “loghouse nest” became a Mecca for international ornithologists.
   Lawrence was an old woman when the author moved into the woods not far away. Their paths crossed, sparking Simonds’s lifelong interest. A dedicated birder, Simonds brings her own songbird experiences from Canadian nesting grounds and Mexican wintering grounds to this deeply researched, engaging portrait of a uniquely fascinating woman. Louise asked Simonds to tell her story, giving her full access to her journals, research, drawings and photographs. I was drawn in immediately and ever so glad to learn about this remarkable woman. 

Lucky Turtle: A Novel by Bill Roorbach
   When sixteen-year-old Cindra Zoeller is sent to a reform camp in Montana after being involved in an armed robbery, she is thrust into a world of mountains and cowboys and prayers and miscreants and people from all walks of life like she’s never seen in suburban Massachusetts. At Camp Challenge, she becomes transfixed by Lucky, a camp employee of mysterious origin—an origin of constant speculation—and the chemistry between them is instant, and profound. The pair escape together into the wilderness to create an idyllic life far from the reach of the law, living off their resounding love, Lucky’s vast knowledge of the wilderness, and a little help from some friends.
   But they can run from the outside world for only so long, and the consequences of their naïve fantasy of a future together—and circumstances shaped by skin color—will keep them apart for decades. Cindra gets trapped in a relationship, where she is controlled by a man who claims to be her rescuer. But for Cindra, there will never be another Lucky, and she dreams of one day finding him, the only man she’s ever fully trusted, her soulmate.
   This book was on top of my TO BE READ stack due to the Montana setting. It was not what I expected…it was better. The relationship of Lucky Turtle and Cindra as they meet, run away and live off the land builds the backbone of the later quest to reunite.  

The Bad Muslim Discount: A Novel by Syed M. Masood
   Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, The Bad Muslim Discount is a comic novel about Muslim immigrants finding their way in modern America.
   It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.
   At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl living in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. When Anvar’s and Safwa’s worlds collide as two remarkable, strong-willed adults, their contradictory, intertwined fates will rock their community, and families, to their core.
   I was surveying first chapters before deciding what to read next, this book won because it made me laugh. A friend had lent me the book months ago, now I am glad I can return it! There is humor but many serious topics are discussed including reactions to 9/11 and Trump’s Muslim ban. One reviewer said Masood had an irreverent sense of humor but he also has insight as he examines universal questions of identity, faith (or lack thereof), and belonging.  

Grown Ups by Marie Aubert, translated by Rosie Hedger
   Ida is a forty-year-old architect, single and starting to panic. She's navigating Tinder and contemplating freezing her eggs, terrified that time has passed her by, silently, without her ever realizing it, which feels even more poignant and common in our COVID era.
   All she sees are other people's children, everywhere.
   Now stuck in the idyllic Norwegian countryside for a gathering to mark her mother's sixty-fifth birthday, Ida is regressing. She's fighting with her younger sister, Marthe, and flirting with her sister's husband. But when some supposedly wonderful news from Marthe heightens tensions further, Ida is forced to mark out new milestones of her own.
   This book was in my stack of June releases. It also had the shortest number of pages! I am a fan of Scandinavian authors and Aubert is referred to as one of Norway's rising stars. Modern motherhood, sibling rivalry and family gatherings present much to divide and conquer.   

The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle: An Uplifting and Unforgettable Story of Love and Second Chances by Matt Cain
   Every day, Albert Entwistle makes his way through the streets of his small English town, delivering letters and parcels and returning greetings with a quick wave and a “how do?” Everyone on his route knows Albert, or thinks they do—a man of quiet routines, content to live alone with his cat, Gracie.
   Three months before his sixty-fifth birthday, Albert receives a letter from the Royal Mail thanking him for decades of service and stating that he has now reached mandatory retirement age. At once, Albert’s simple life unravels. Without the work that fills his days, what will he do? He has no friends, family, or hobbies—just a past he never speaks of, and a lost love that fills him with regret. And so, rather than continue his lonely existence, Albert forms a brave plan to start truly living, to be honest about who he is . . . and to find George, the man with whom he spent one perfect spring and summer long ago.
   A Note from Matt Cain, the author of The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle:

“One of the things that inspired me to write this novel was all the joy I felt at seeing gay men like myself being embraced by British society. I think you'd be hard-pushed to find any other minority community in the UK that was as hated, feared and vilified as gay men were fifty years ago and is now as widely celebrated and loved. Acceptance of gay men has become a touchstone of British values within less than a decade, something that even the most optimistic commentators couldn’t have predicted. I wanted to write a book that would celebrate this. And I sincerely hope The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle makes its readers feel good about themselves and the part they’ve played in bringing about this extraordinary social shift.” —Matt Cain

   OK, I stretched the long weekend into a week and just finished this book last night. It is a paperback original, which means book groups can and should pick this up immediately! Happy PRIDE month.

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