The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

I did not want to read "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman, but it came up for book club at our local library.  Well, I could not put it down, and it blew my mind.  It's a non-fiction account of not only a single Hmong family, but also of how the Hmong came to America.  Along the way, we learn about the rich Hmong culture, which is partially based in ancient legends, bad spirits, and unfortunate animal sacrifice.  Once this culture hits the United States, that's where things begin to break down.  For example, when a Hmong is born, their placenta is buried in a special place under their ancestral home.  When they die, this placenta is their garment in the next world.  Their spirit must retrace all their steps back to this garment, and then run a dangerous gauntlet to a peaceful place of rebirth.  If their soul cannot find this garment, it's condemned to wander eternity naked and alone.  But for a moment, let's go back to how the Hmong came to America.   In Laos, there are different cultures as you move into higher elevations, including the Lao, the Karen, the Khmu and Mien peoples.  "At the highest altitudes, between 1,000 and 2,000 meters, if it is possible, live the Hmong."  These remote locations helped keep their ethnic identity very pure, despite their lack of a unifying literacy.  They rarely visited the plains, which they called the Land of Leeches.  At the end of the 18th century, the British East India Company introduced opium to China, and since then, the Hmong have been master opium growers, "drawn into this international trade they neither created nor controlled."  Fast forward to the Vietnam War.  For geographical reasons, the U.S. provided covert army training in Laos since 1955, and President Eisenhower considered the situation in Laos to be the most important problem facing the U.S.  Then, in 1961, at the Geneva Conference, the U.S. and ten other nations signed an Accord agreeing to the neutrality of Laos.  So what did the U.S. do to control this area without sending in U.S. troops that would violate this accord?  We got the Hmong to fight for us by proxy, and we promised them a safe place to live if they would do it.  And so, this charming and "non-violent" (by normal standards) people fought.  At first, they would fire over the enemies' heads or throw away their weapons.  They were murdered and napalmed for eight years, and had to uproot 90% of their villages and run, and run, and run.  And we-the-people didn't know about it because the CIA forbid journalists from going into this geographical area.  And then the U.S. airlifted thousands of Hmong out to the U.S.  Oh, and then the U.S. also left thousands of Hmong on the tarmac to die, waiting for other planes that never came.  Flash forward to the 1980's.  Here is a people who are totally shell-shocked, clinging to the fragments of their culture, and pooling their welfare checks to buy animals to sacrifice, in an effort to fix things.  Due to PTSD and lack of English Language skills, if they have a simple car accident (for example) and are arrested, they are expecting to be executed.  And all they know how to do is fight guerrilla style, and grow opium.  In 1982, a Hmong girl by the name of Lia Lee is born in Merced, California, and they immediately incinerate her placenta, her garment for the afterlife.  And here is where our story really begins.  A story of the collision of two cultures, and misunderstandings, and heroism and compassion, and sacrifice.  And, it's fascinating.  What if you believed that each person has a finite amount of blood in their body, and then the doctors keep coming in and taking blood from your child?  What if you try to grow crops in the living room of your apartment in urban California?  Or, on the other side of the coin, what if you are two dedicated and caring doctors who spend years trying to save the life of a child that is being raised in a culture you cannot really fathom or communicate effectively with?  As I read this book, I just kept saying, "What!"  This book is very well written and is now on my "must read" list.  Anne Fadiman started out just writing an article about this little girl, but when the article got rejected, she then spent the next eight years writing this amazing book because she could not get this story out her mind and her heart.  Fadiman manages to show the many characters in an objective light, and reveals the incredible compassion and heroism on both sides of this story.  I've heard it said that there are now shamans at the Merced County Hospital, but after reading this book, I know stranger things have happened.  Highly recommended.

Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan

Supposedly, this book by Stewart O'Nan is a reprisal of an earlier novel of his (Wish You Were Here).  I didn't know this until I began writing this review.    However, this quiet novel, Emily, Alone is very good all by itself.

I also liked another novel by O'Nan; Last Night at the Lobster, which I read a couple of years ago, and it was a good introduction to his better writing, which is understated but elegant.  In these two books there are no car crashes, murders, or other shocking events.  Maybe there's a snowstorm here and there, but you know what I mean.  Both Emily and Lobster are sort of about the ordinary moments of life.  But enough about Lobster; we're here to talk about Emily.  Emily is a 78-year-old widow and this is about how she navigates through life as such.  Her husband Henry is 8 years gone, and her best friend more recently departed.  Her children do not live nearby.  The everyday challenges are sometimes troubling.  Like, how do you get a big old boat of a car through the steep streets of Pittsburgh, and then actually park it?   Luckily, Emily's sister in-law Arlene lives nearby and these two plucky women help each other through the sometimes-daunting days.  The irony of this is that they were never crazy about each other in their younger days.   What I love about Emily is her effort to keep going with dignity and pleasure, despite the hardships of age.  She works at it and organizes her days to stave off boredom and loneliness.  Her affairs are in order, down to the letter.  She does difficult crosswords, cares for her old dog Rufus and listens to classical music on the radio.  She goes to Eat'n Park for the breakfast buffet with Arlene when they have a two-for-one coupon.  They go to funerals and Emily feels her mortality every day.  She contemplates the past and hopes she never falls and breaks a hip.  She rues the lack of communication from her grown children, and the lack of thank-you cards from her grandchildren--she frets but keeps it mostly to herself.  She tries to hang on to the vestiges of courtesy that were so important in her youth.  In these quiet moments, she has grace.  I read this with interest because, after all, we're all getting older.  Emily gives us a little glimpse of what's coming, if we're lucky.  I was really impressed that a man could write so beautifully from the point of view of a woman.  Author Stewart O'Nan is an avid Red Sox fan, and even wrote a book about the 2004 season with his friend and fellow author, Stephen King.  You can find audio interviews online and on itunes.

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

Girls in White Dresses

I guess some would call this chick lit, but I hesitate because when men write good books, they don't call them "guy lit."  Actually I was thinking of putting a category on this blog called "Guy Books," but that's another story.  Here, we have a group of girlfriends who are like a cloud; constantly changing and floating around.  Sometimes peripheral characters have little vignettes, but somebody from the core group is always there.  These characters are so fleshed out that they seem alive.  This writing is so detailed without being tedious, that your synapses are gathering information in almost the same way you do in a live conversation with someone.  I just read The Family Fang on Kindle (despite all the publisher hype, that was ten bucks wasted), and the Fang family are like paper dolls compared with the characters in this book, and the writing was childish.  I'll state here that I listened to the AUDIO version of Girls in White Dresses.  It was so well read with little accents, nuances and inflections, that despite the wealth of female characters, it was not confusing.  Lauren was one of my favorite characters, and toward the middle and end of the book, I was laughing out loud.  If you can remember what it was like to be a young, single woman living in a city with your girlfriends, you will adore this book.  And I'd recommend it to anyone who just wouldn't mind stepping into that world for a bit, in the same way we do when we read books set in other countries.   Through the relationships (and lack thereof) and many hangovers, they stay friends, but this book is not sticky sweet.  I don't know if the humor will transcend reading the written form, but I hope so.  This is on free library download through Overdrive, so you can slap it on your MP3.  This is not the vapid chick lit that kills so many trees, but something elevated above that.  No crazy plot, no cute gimmicks, no big catastrophes, just realistic writing.  I'll be looking for any future novels by Jennifer Close.

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Since I enjoyed the book The Heretic's Daughter, I thought there was a good chance I'd like this one too.  And I did. This was a great summer read for me; it really took me out of my element and to another place and time. The setting is the island of Martha's Vineyard in the 1600's. White settlers had arrived in 1641, and, while conning Native Americans out of lands, were hacking homes out of the wilderness, trampling on the clam beds, burning the forests, and infesting the native Wampanoag Tribe with deadly diseases, all in the name of God.   Although the book is called Caleb's Crossing, Bethia (beth-eye-ah) is our narrator; a comely 16-year-old girl, and this re-telling is from her journal.  The author, Geraldine Brooks, went to live on Martha's Vineyard in 2006, and became evermore fascinated by the Native-American and Early-American history.  This is her fictionalized account of Caleb, the first Native American to ever graduate from Harvard (in 1665), as seen through the eyes of a Puritan girl.  Bethia has a brilliant mind, especially in contrast with her brother, Makepeace, who obviously has some sort of learning disability.  Makepeace takes his frustration out on his sister, and she must endure it.  For me, Bethia in this book is a symbol of how women were made to kneel under the oppressive thumb of Puritan male society.  We feel it especially keenly because Bethia is so smart and kind and open.  There's a bit of The Scarlet Letter in this book (literally), although we can hold out more hope for Bethia than we ever could for poor Hester Prynne.  As for the pure and handsome Caleb, he was a real person.  In this book, he strives to save his people by adapting to the Puritan culture.  As Bethia eavesdrops in on Harvard lectures from an open vent while working in the buttery, her thirst for knowledge only grows.  She spends a good deal of her young life coveting the education that is wasted on her brother.  And she absorbs the complicated Wampanoag dialect through her great friendship with Caleb.  She must often pretend she doesn't understand what's going on, and when she does speak her mind, she is made to regret it.  Her frustration is palpable.  So great is her quest for understanding all things that at one point, she covertly drinks an hallucinogenic potion while visiting a local Tribe with her evangelical father.  Any female, young or old, can get a glimpse of what it would be like to endure the harsh living conditions and societal mores of the Puritan culture, but this is perhaps not the most important part of this book.  It's the love that Bethia feels for those around her, and her willingness to sacrifice everything for them, while still managing to keep her faith.  I don't want to put too much detail here because I read this book knowing hardly anything about it, and that's part of the fun.  Like Bethia, we can step onto the liberating path toward the beach, and find something unknown and wonderful, including friendship and love.  I have adored other books of Geraldine Brooks', including Year of Wonders, and her brilliant non-fiction book Nine Parts of Desire.  With all her novels that feature American history, I was surprised to learn that Geraldine Brooks is from Australia.  She won the Pulitzer for her book March, which is about the American Civil War as seen from inside "Little Women."  I'll end by saying that I've possibly made Caleb's Crossing out to be too dark, and it's really not.  It's moody, Puritanical feel was appropriate, and it was a fun read and I would even recommend it as a Young Adult novel, especially for girls.   There is a bit of romance in this book, but in today's world, it's very chastely done.  Thumbs up.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

If Erik Larson never wrote another book, it wouldn't matter, because The Devil In The White City is so damn good.  This is  not only a page-turner/murder mystery, it's also a non-fiction, historical account of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.  And, it reads like fiction.  The first time I read this book, it started out slow for me.  Not so this time, perhaps because I already knew it was going to get better as it went along.   Larson brings an entire era to life here, and this Gilded Age was packed with new inventions and discoveries.  This book will place you in the forefront of American Architecture and also Landscape Architecture.  Eiffel had created his famous Tower and the pressure was on for the Chicago World's Fair to compete with his graceful monument.  If all this isn't enough for you, there's a chilling thread of heinous crime that runs through this book like a dark river, perpetrated by a serial killer who's every bit as charming and deadly as Ted Bundy.  You'll wonder why you've never heard of this person, who's right up there with his contemporary, Jack the Ripper.  And I loved the detective who plodded along and doggedly closed in on the murderer, without the benefits of modern technology.  This Fair was a junction where all kinds of famous people came and went, everyone from Susan B. Anthony to Buffalo Bill.  And in with all the calamity are the inventions that were introduced at this fair.  Think peanut butter and Cracker Jacks, the Ferris wheel and electric boats.  Entire tribes of people were brought over for this fair, from the Middle East and Africa.  Union standards were changed forever, and so were the many laborers who toiled (and sometimes died) for two years to make this grandiose vision a reality.  You'll be up in the swank offices of the elite in the world's first skyscrapers, and down at the gates of Hell in the infamous meatpacking stockyards.  The Chicago World's Fair, also known as The World's Columbian Expedition occurred just 13 years prior to the publishing of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."  Chicago was a paradox; an epicenter of wealth and developing culture fueled by an abattoir.  And the "White City" created by the fair was so beautiful that some fainted upon seeing it.  This spectacle brought work and excitement to the city, and also many young women looking for employment and lodging.  With all the city embroiled in the affairs of The Fair, the killer found the crowds and bustle the perfect distracting environment for his activities.  Reading this book was not only a very entertaining history lesson, but also just a good read!

The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig

This is a somewhat sweet, old fashioned story.  We start out in 1950 with Paul Milliron, a school superintendent charged with the duty of closing down the old one-room schoolhouses out in the countryside of Eastern Montana.  As Paul worries over this onerous task, he flashes back in time to when he was a 13-year-old boy, and just such a schoolhouse meant the world to him.  His mother had died not too long ago, and his father Oliver was now raising Paul and his two brothers on their homestead.  Oliver, overwhelmed with raising his three sons alone and running a dryland ranch,  spies an advertisement in the newspaper.  A housekeeper looking for work has written a witty ad that starts with "Can't cook, won't bite."  They of course hire the writer of this ad, Rose.  Rose is full of surprises, beginning right from the moment she steps off the train, resplendent in a satin dress.  Rose has inexplicably brought along her brother Morrie, who eventually becomes the sole teacher of the one-room schoolhouse.  This book is really the adventure of childhood in the turn-of-the-century West, complete with horse races, revival meetings, Sunday suppers with the family and hunting for Indian arrowheads.  Rose and Morrie bring flash and excitement to the Milliron family, arriving in tandem with Halley's Comet.  Paul is mature for his age and perhaps this is why he's asked to keep secrets that trouble his dreams at night.  He literally learns a new language, helps his Dad navigate being a widow, mentors his younger brothers and comes of age in doing so.  The only parts I thought were overdone were Paul's nightmares; a little would have gone a long way on that front.  But if you want to saddle up and ride back to 1909 Montana, to a simpler place and time, this might be the book for you.   If you end up liking this book or this genre, I also recommend Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck.  Also, the PBS docu/reality series Frontier House (available on netflix).  And, The Wilder Life, Wendy McClure's memoir of trying to understand her childhood obsession with The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.   Finally, for a starker look at life on a Montana dryland ranch (this one is set in the 1940's), Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I could tell you that this book is an historical account of cell culture, but that's too confining, and too boring for some.  It's the story of how a woman unknowingly helped catapult science forward, and save millions and millions of lives.   It's about family and irony and ethics, and it's set in the most modern laboratories in the world of today, and the tobacco fields of Virginia in the Jim Crow era.   Henrietta Lacks is our heroine; a beautiful young Black woman with five children, and a fatally philandering husband.  The promise of work brings Henrietta and her family to the bustling Baltimore of the 1940's, and within the vicinity of Johns Hopkins Medical Center.  Due to Jim Crow era laws, Johns Hopkins was one of the few places African Americans could get medical care, and there our story begins in earnest.  One of the biggest ironies here is that Henrietta's children and grandchildren could not afford medical care or medical insurance.  The author, Rebecca Skloot, spent about 10 years writing this book, and got very involved with Henrietta's surviving family, especially the daughter, Deborah.  One of the other characters in the book that is not so often mentioned in the written reviews is the remarkable and brilliant scientist who discovered the perpetual growth of HeLa cells, George Gey.  He had a true love of science and could have become very rich for his efforts, but all his energy went to proceed ever on with his work, spending his and his wife's own modest incomes to build their laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, and at the end of his life, submitting his own body to torturous experimental cancer treatments.  In the interest of science, he gave away HeLa cells to other scientists and laboratories all over the world, and they were often carried in the breast pockets of airline pilots from one country to another.  The ethics of this book are incredibly complicated and many laws have since been established to protect patients.  These laws grew out of fascinating cases of modern-day patient exploitation that are also encapsulated in this book.  I couldn't believe what I was reading sometimes!  So, you've got everything;  science and family and race and ethics and history and greed and poverty and despair and politics, and love and betrayal of the deepest order.  The author, Rebecca Skloot, has a science background that no doubt helped her write this wildly popular book.  She's a contributing editor for Popular Science Magazine but also writes on other subjects, including food.  This book has been translated into 25 languages and is being made into an HBO movie produced by Oprah Winfrey.  There are good photos on the amazon page, as well as a great little author video, and I also enjoyed quite a few good podcast interviews on itunes.