Book Review: The Husbands

The Husbands, by Chandler Baker

Nora is a wife, a mother and an attorney.  All at the same time.  Her husband Hayden tries to be helpful, but Nora us finding herself collapsing under the weight of trying to do it all, while coming up for a partnership review this year in her law firm.  Not to mention, she has another baby on the way.

Their home is too cramped, so they are trying to find a new one before baby #2 arrives.  This leads Nora and Hayden to the perfect neighborhood.  The homes are spacious and stunning and even better, the neighbors are amazing.  All the women are professionals, and their husbands all help so much with household life!  Nora is reluctant to admit she’s jealous.  She loves Hayden, and he does try to be a good husband and father, but these other men put him to shame.  Nora covets the idea that her disorganized life could be easier, better, if only Hayden did his share.  She’s carrying around quite a lot of mom guilt for her parenting skills, not to mention the pressure at work.  

Friendships quickly grow, and Nora gains a client when she agrees to look into a wrongful death lawsuit after one of her new friend’s husband dies in a house fire.  Nora soon finds out that things aren’t as they seem.  Maybe the perfect neighborhood is a little too perfect? 

This murder mystery is a new take on the Stepford Wives.  Only this time it is the husbands who are being manipulated into cheerful, compliant automatons who fulfill the wives’ every need.  Nora has to decide whether she wants to buy into this new neighborhood, or if she wants her imperfect husband just the way he is.

The Husbands is very formulaic, and I figured out the premise very early on in the book.  Nora, despite being an attorney, is apparently not the sharpest tool in the shed, because it took her much longer to piece it together.  That said, it was interesting, with several twists and turns that kept me mostly engaged.  There were some surprises at the end, but I found them unbelievable.  So all in all, not great, not terrible. 

2.5 stars.

Book Review: Mudbound

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan

This older novel (published in 2008) was chosen for my library book club for May.  And what a novel it is.

Taking place mostly in the period directly following World War II, Laura McAllan is a woman in her thirties married to Henry, with two children.  They met and married in Memphis, Tennessee, and she was just fine living there.  She liked her city life.  But when Henry’s brother in law dies unexpectedly, he decides to move the family to his homeland in the Mississippi Delta, to be closer to his sister.  He buys a rundown farm that has been worked by sharecroppers, ready to make a living from the land.  Laura tries hard to hide her anger and disappointment at this turn of events, and at the fact that her sullen, crude, ungrateful father-in-law is moving in.  In frustration, she names the farm ‘Mudbound,’ and it sticks. 

 

Soon, two men return to the farm from the war; one white and one black.  Henry’s younger brother Jamie was a pilot, and carries the emotional battle scars.  He tries to drown his nightmares in a bottle.  Ronsel Jackson, son of one of the sharecropping families, was a Sergeant in a tank battalion.  For the first time in Europe, Ronsel experienced what it was like to not walk in a world of racism.  Now that he’s back in the Jim Crow south, it is difficult to go back to the prejudice.  The quiet story of family soon takes a dramatic and tragic turn as a result of the friendship of these two men. 

Jordan writes from the perspective of each of the characters in the novel.  A story of family bonds, and the lengths we will go to protect those we love.  A story of prejudice and racism in the deep south, and the way it can rip a family apart.  She builds each character with their strengths and their flaws, forcing the reader to choose sides.  Each character unweaves a small part of the story, revealing more and more until the tragic end.

It is a debut novel that you won’t soon forget.

5 stars.

Book Review: The Red Tent

The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant

The Red Tent is the story of Dinah, the seventh child and only daughter of Leah and Jacob, in the Old Testament book of Genesis.  She is only mentioned twice in the Bible, first describing her rape by Shechem, the son of Hamor, prince of the region.  After she was raped, her brothers Levi and Simeon, snuck into the city and murdered Shechem, Hamor and all of the other men they could find, and took Dinah back to her family.

Diamant builds on this sparse information to create a full, rich life for Dinah, although not one without its share of tragedy.  It begins with her birth to Leah, and her relationship with her four mothers (Jacob’s four wives).  It tells the story of her growing up among her family, and being the only daughter with many brothers.  It describes her time in The Red Tent, where the women go for their monthly cycle, which is considered a time when the women rest and bond with each other.

Dinah learns midwifery from her mother Rachel (her aunt), and the time she spent living with her grandmother Rebecca to learn if she will inherit her seeing ways.  The experiences prepare her well for her life alone.  As in the Bible, Diamant connects Dinah to Shechem, but this time as a romance that is merely misunderstood by her father.  The result, however, is the same, with Levi and Simeon murdering Dinah’s betrothed.  Dinah curses her father and brother and turns her back on her family, never seeing her beloved mothers again.  Dinah is a strong, resilient woman, who achieves much in a world where women are generally relegated to child rearing and other domestic tasks.  

Diamant writes in a rich, evocative style, bringing the women of the story to life.  The men remain in the background, never playing an important role in the life that the women have created for themselves.  Ancient times come to life, and in the parts of the history that are known, Diamant stays true to the Bible’s telling of Dinah and her family.  But she creates a grand story for Dinah, out of the parts that are unknown.

4 stars. 

Book Review: I’m Glad My Mom Died

I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy

I had never heard of Jennette McCurdy, but apparently she began her child acting career in the early 2000s, and is best known as the star of a Nickelodeon TV show.  Now, I’m of the generation that watched Nick at Nite, back when it aired reruns of Leave It To Beaver, Mr. Ed, and the Donna Reed Show.  I didn’t really watch later on when they were doing their own original programming, nor did I have children who would have watched.  So I (breathes a sigh of relief) stayed blissfully in the dark.

 

Unfortunately, since the dawn of Hollywood time, there have been child stars abused by studio executives, producers, directors and worst of all, their parents.  It seems to come with the territory, the parents who will stop at nothing to make their child a star.  Jennette’s mother was one of those…

Jennette grew up with an intact family, but sadly, her dad was kind of useless, and he never stood up to her mother against the inappropriate things that were going on.  She was also home schooled, so outside her nuclear family, Jennette never really had any adults looking out for her best interest.  So, from the age of six, Jennette was pushed into an acting career, with endless lessons in acting, singing and dancing, and auditions for shows.  When she finally broke through, Jennette became the breadwinner for the family, her parents, two brothers and grandparents. 

Jennette’s mother had clear expectations for her and her career, and her treatment of Jennette was abusive.  Not only the long hours on set…  Her mother taught her at the age of eleven how to calorie restrict, so she could stay thin for the camera.  Imagine a mother teaching her own daughter how to be anorexic? Imagine parents expecting their child to pay for their bills, their mortgage, their vehicles, and their groceries.  And even worse, her mother bathed her until we was almost an adult, claiming that Jennette couldn’t be trusted to wash her hair correctly.  During these shower sessions, her mother subjected her to bizarre bodily exams, telling her she was performing cancer screenings.  Jennette grew up with this being “normal.” 

When Jennette was a young adult, her mother’s breast cancer returned and she passed away.  The narcissistic, selfish, abusive matriarch of the family was finally gone.  Years of therapy has helped Jennette come to terms with the mother that she loved, and the mother who also abused her.  The book is a raw, tragic look at the impacts of the abuse, and Jennette’s lack of ability to live a normal life.  She continues to be controlled by bulimia and other impulsive behaviors.  She tells her story candidly, although she has said how difficult it was to tell her story.

What a heartbreaking story, and how terrible to grow up in a family where the death of your own mother is a relief.

3 stars. 

Note: Quiet on Set is a five part documentary released in 2024 that explores allegations of abuse of other child actors at Nickelodeon.  I have not seen it, but I’ve heard it is very good (and by good I mean disturbing).  Although she doesn’t speak much of Nickelodeon directly, some of Jennette’s comments in this book are widely believed to be about Dan Schneider, the abuser named in the documentary. 

 

Book Review: Watchers

Watchers, by Dean Koontz

I’m sure I read this 30 years ago, but it was chosen as a book club pick for May, so I gave it a fresh read.  The thing of it is, unless I have read a book multiple times, I forget them, so it was like a brand new book! 

Travis, a well-off widower goes out hiking in hills of southern California to get himself out of his head and ease his depression.  While there, he finds a Golden Retriever, who looks lost.  The retriever seems scared, and concerned about the crashing noise in the bushes that is coming closer, so Travis hurries back to his car with the dog and they leave.

Nora is learning to reclaim her life after spending nearly all of it locked up in the home of her reclusive aunt, who instills Nora with a pressing fear of the outside world.  Her fears are proven when a TV repairman comes to the house and begins to stalk her.

A chance meeting between Travis and Nora is cemented by the dog, now named Einstein, and the two of them quickly realize that Einstein is no ordinary dog.  He is a genius.  But how?  When they learn that he has escaped from a research lab, and that another, extremely dangerous creature has escaped as well, they embark on a journey to keep themselves and Einstein safe both from the creature and the government agents who are searching for the dog.  Throw in an assassin hired by the Russians, who has become obsessed with finding them as a side project, and you have quite the thriller!

The book is formulaic and predictable, and the characters are pretty one-dimensional.  This isn’t going to be the book that wins the National Book Award or the Pulitzer.  But it held my interest with its twists and turns, and will appeal to those who like a little romance with their sci-fi thriller.  That said, it really irritated me that they kept feeding that poor dog chocolate!  You would think if the author is going to write a book about a dog, he should at least know that chocolate is poisonous to dogs.   

And no, I’m not going to give away whether the dog lives. 

3 stars. 

Book Review: A Fever in the Heartland

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan

Most of us probably associate the Ku Klux Klan with the years immediately after the Civil War.  And indeed, that was when the KKK was originally founded, in Tennessee, to intimidate blacks who had recently gained their freedom at the end of the Civil War.  Chapters popped up all over the south, in an attempt to suppress the black vote and intimidate blacks into not running for political office, and for a few years, it was very successful.  After President Grant came into office in 1870, laws were passed to suppress the Klan and prosecute members for their illegal activities, and Klan membership dropped.

However, in the early 1920s, the KKK experienced a resurgence, and Klan chapters were created all over the country, with a large following in the northern states.  This book is about this second wave of the KKK and one of it’s most influential leaders, D.C. Stephenson.  D.C. Stephenson was a drifter, an abuser, and a deadbeat husband, but somehow his charisma still managed to get him appointed as the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan and the lead recruiter for seven other states in the Midwest. 

The KKK during this period grew to a membership of between 3 and 8 million members. They gained this following by presenting themselves as a family values fraternal organization, that fought for women’s rights and sought to weed out the undesirables.  Who did they consider undesirable?  Well, in addition to Blacks, there were the Jews, the Catholics, the Communists, and any number of recent immigrant populations, including the Italians, Russians, and Lithuanians, among others.

Timothy Egan focuses this book on Stephenson’s rise to power, the corruption with which he ruled his section of the Klan, and his ultimate downfall.  Stephenson was a raging alcoholic, and as is frequently a problem with heavy drinkers, he just couldn’t control his behavior.  After a number of attempted and completed sexual assaults of women, where he was able to buy their silence, he attacked a young woman whose silence he could not buy.

Madge Oberholtzer was a young woman working for Stephenson, and after he attacked and raped her, she attempted suicide by poison while she was still his captive.  He did nothing to try to help her, and eventually dumped her back off with her family.  She didn’t die quickly though, and over the next few weeks, gave a detailed account of her time with Stephenson, and the assault.  When she died, he was charged with her murder. 

The book details all of this, from the events leading up to the assault, her suicide attempt, her lingering illness, and her eventual death.  D.C. Stephenson’s arrest and trial were widely publicized, and considered the scandal of the time.  Even so, a conviction wasn’t a sure thing.  It’s tough to call yourself a man of family values after all that. 

Egan did a great job of researching and writing his book, holding my interest throughout as he told the story of the rise, and eventual fall of Stephenson and the Klan. 

4 stars.

Book Review: The Lieutenants

The Lieutenants, by W.E.B. Griffin

What can I say about this book?  It is a bit of a challenge to describe.  It is a novel of the men in World War II, but largely it isn’t about the war.  Instead it is a series of stories, with characters who are all, at some point, Lieutenants.  They might have started out at that rank, or ended there, or they may have just been passing through their time as a Lieutenant somewhere in the book.  They got there in a myriad of ways, through West Point, or combat promotions, or the fluke promotion by a General who wanted a man for his polo team. 

The stories start out as largely disconnected from each other, of men who are fighting in the war or who join after, but eventually their stories weave together, as they know each other, or have a friend of a friend, or a commanding officer who worked with one of the others.  The reader learns that the Army can be a very small place indeed, as these happenstance connections continue to bring them together throughout the book.

There are likable characters and ones who aggravate with their bumbling.  Griffin pokes fun of the Army with the absurdity of some of the situations.  Such as 18 year old Lowell, who is promoted to Lieutenant because, as a rich kid, he learned to play polo.  His assignment is gravy until his commanding General dies on the polo field, and another commander decides to get rid of him by sending him to the battle front in post-war Greece.  The reader is privy to stories of their wives and sweethearts, and the complicated social structure that prohibits officers and their wives from fraternizing with enlisted soldiers and their spouses.  The random nature of how decisions are made is also front and center in the novel. 

It got off to a slow start, but I did begin to appreciate the characters, and the fact that most of them were trying to do the right thing, while looking out for themselves at the same time.  Others didn’t have that same set of morals, and were only in it for themselves.  Griffin does a decent job with his character development, creating a nuanced set of characters with the conflicting motivations that we all carry with us.

If you are turned off by bad language or racism, this will not be the book for you.  It is set at the end of World War II, and the fact is, racist terms that we denounce today were still in widespread use.  Anti-semitism was common, and it affects how a Jewish character is treated.  The author could have avoided this language and not addressed it at all, and some other reviewers would have preferred that.  However, the novel’s language is accurate for the time, and provides a sense of realism. 

Overall, I didn’t love or hate this book.  It held my interest, but wasn’t particularly memorable, and didn’t make me eager to pick up the next books in the series. 

3 stars. 

Book Review: The Snow Child

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

I had gotten good feedback on this novel from social media, so I decided to check it out!

Jack and Mabel are a couple nearing their fifties when they decide to leave their home in the Eastern U.S. and take a homestead in wilderness Alaska in 1920.  They were never able to have children, and they believe this might be the fresh start that they need.  But the work is brutal, and life there is isolating, and their marriage is crumbling under the strain. 

When the first snow arrives, they decide to take a few minutes for fun, and they build a snowman.  Jack carves a beautiful child’s face in the snow, and Mabel dresses the snow child with a red scarf and gloves for a child they never had.  In the morning, the snow child is gone, and so are the scarf and gloves.  But soon, they see fleeting glimpses of a real child, a toehead blonde running through the forest with her red fox friend.  And she is wearing a red scarf and gloves.  Is this their snowman come to life?

Over time, they gain her trust, and come to see Faina as their daughter, however eccentric she is.  She refuses to settle down and live with them, instead preferring to continuing living in the woods, trapping and gathering berries.  But she visits often, accepts their kindness, and returns love to them when they need it the most.  Her existence is an enigma, as it seems impossible that this young girl could survive the harsh wilderness of Alaska.  That is, if she really is a girl.

Of course, it isn’t just a story of a strange child wandering the woods, but instead it is a story of grief, and healing from loss, of hope, of tenacity, of friendship, and of what is important in life.  Life is hard, and there are no guarantees, and we must make of it what we will, just as Jack and Mabel are trying to do. 

Eowyn Ivey’s novel draws upon a Russian folktale, and it blurs the lines of realism.  The reader is left to their own devices to figure out what is real, what is fantasy, and what may be the madness caused by cabin fever.  At times beautiful and joyful, at times heartbreaking and raw, she draws the reader expertly into the story, and leaves you curious until the very end.

5 stars.   

Book Review: One Summer in Savannah

One Summer in Savannah, by Terah Shelton Harris

I was poking around on the library’s Libby app, and found this book, which was being promoted by the library (I’m not sure what program it was, and couldn’t find it again).  At any rate, I downloaded it and started listening.

Sara Lancaster is a young woman who moved away from her home in Savannah, Georgia at the age of 18.  She wasn’t trying to escape an overbearing father, she wasn’t eager to travel the world.  She wasn’t even going to an out of state college.  Instead she was fleeing the circumstances of her life.  Sara was the victim of a rape by a fellow student at the age of 17, and she was now pregnant with his child.  Although he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crime, she felt she needed to flee to prevent him (and his family) from having any custody or visitation rights to her child.

Now, eight years later, her father is ill and could die.  Sara and her daughter Alana, return to Savannah to see her father and spend time with him for whatever time he has left.  Over the next few weeks, she encounters her rapist’s twin brother, who figures out who Alana is.  Sara decides to allow him to have time with Alana, but only if he promises to keep her a secret from the rest of his family.

Overall, I enjoyed the book.  The story flowed and it kept me engaged from the beginning to the end.  However, there were some details that I found quite unbelievable in the story line. 

Here are the spoilers!  Sara’s father is educated and wise; a bookstore owner (that part I loved!).  However, he speaks only in poetry, leaving his friends and family to try to decipher his meaning.  There is no medical reason for this – he hasn’t had a stroke that has changed the synapses in his brain – he just likes poetry.  Somehow the other characters just seemed to get it, but I ended up having to gloss over his character to not get bogged down with whether their interpretations made sense.  The poetry thing seemed arbitrary and inconvenient, and would drive me nuts! 

The story is a love story; which ordinarily I’m a fan of love stories, but… Sara finds herself falling in love with Jacob, who is no less than her rapist’s IDENTICAL twin brother.  She is traumatized by the rape, but somehow finds a way to fall in love with this man’s identical twin.  I’m going to call that unlikely… 

Of course, there’s a happy ending, with a little bit of a cliffhanger, so I was left wondering about a few details at the end of the book.  Even with those weaknesses, it was a good book.  It spoke of facing your past, moving past your traumas, and the importance of familial bonds. 

One more thing – I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator (Zuzu Robinson) was awful.  She spoke with a cadence that was way too slow, with a strange sing-song rhythm and too-long pauses at odd times.  I sped the narration up to 1.5x to make it less annoying, but if you want to read it, I would recommend reading it instead of listening. 

3 stars. 

Book Review: Still Life with Bread Crumbs

Still Life with Bread Crumbs, by Anna Quindlen

Rebecca Winter is a photographer who has fallen on hard times.  She is divorced, with a mother in a dementia care home, and her business income has dropped off.  She needs money.  Rebecca decides to rent out her ritzy Manhattan apartment and rent a small cabin in a tiny town in upstate New York, sight unseen. 

Of course, she’s a city dweller, and moving to a small rural community is quite a culture shock for her.  She’s licking her wounds, and she retreats into herself and into her small, dark, cold, cabin.  She can’t do it for long though, as she has a raccoon in the attic, she needs to figure out where to buy food, and she needs to stock up on wood for the winter.  Little by little, she meets some friends, and begins to establish her roots in her new community. 

Quindlen expertly tells the story of Rebecca’s rebirth, as she takes small jobs to support herself and sells her photographs at the local cafe.  She spends her free time hiking in the woods, and comes upon small tributes left by someone.  A child’s doll, a high school trophy, a photograph of a mother and daughter.  Rebecca doesn’t understand what they mean, but she begins taking photographs of the memorials in the woods, putting together her next exhibit.

The novel is a love story of life, a tale of learning to heal and reinvent yourself, and a story that life is what you make it.  There will always be joys and heartaches.  Fame and fortune are fleeting, but the fundamentals of friendship, family, and a life well lived are what will remain.

4 stars.