The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Historical Fiction
2009 Amy Einhorn Books
Finished on 3/25/09
Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding)



Product Description

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

About the Author

Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and Creative Writing, she moved to New York City, where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. This is her first novel.

I was first drawn to the attractive cover art of this book and it quickly found its way to my stack of ARCs, but it wasn't until I'd read Kay and Tara's lovely reviews that I decided the time was right to begin reading The Help. I'd been on quite a roll, reading winner after winner, and I trusted both recommendations, feeling confident I was in for another enjoyable book. And what a great book it turned out to be! The characters are fleshed out and memorable, the dialogue is convincingly believable, and I fell in love with Aibileen and Minny, often forgetting that they were characters in a novel.

Stockett is a terrific storyteller and should be very proud of her debut novel. Coming in at just under 450 pages, I almost wish it had been longer; I hated to leave these characters and longed to see what the future held in store for Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter after I turned that final page. I've been saying this a lot these past three months, but I simply couldn't put this book down and often found myself thinking about the characters when I wasn't reading. They invaded my mind and left a permanent mark on my soul. The setting and time period is one with which I am only vaguely familiar, having spent that portion of my very early childhood in Canada. We did not have maids, nor did we experience the ugly prejudices so rampant in the United States in the early sixties, and thus I cringed as I read passages such as this:

In a rare breeze, my copy of Life magazine flutters. Audrey Hepburn smiles on the cover, no sweat beading on her upper lip. I pick it up and finger the wrinkled pages, flip to the story on the Soviet Space Girl. I already know what's on the next page. Behind her face is a picture of Carl Roberts, a colored schoolteacher from Pelahatchie, forty miles from here. "In April, Carl Roberts told Washington reporters what it means to be a black man in Mississippi, calling the governor 'a pathetic man with the morals of a streetwalker.' Roberts was found cattle-branded and hung from a pecan tree."

It's difficult to write about this book without giving too much away. It's also very difficult -- painful, in fact -- to write about the terrible attitudes of that time and place. I often found myself full of shame for some of the characters represented in this story, many of whom were ignorant and closed-minded. I will say that I enjoyed all the historical references (Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., the March in Washington, D.C. etc.). I especially appreciated the manner in which Stockett dropped little bits of history into the narrative without it feeling like she was going down a list, checking off each historical tidbit as she incorporated it into her story. For example, Chapter 19 begins with the following:

It was 1963. The Space Age they're calling it. A man has circled the earth in a rocketship. They've invented a pill so married women don't have to get pregnant. A can of beer opens with a single finger instead of a can opener. Yet my parents' house is still as hot as it was in 1899, the year Great-grandfather built it.

and

The summer rolls behind us like a hot tar spreader. Ever colored person in Jackson gets in front a whatever tee-vee set they can find, watches Martin Luther King stand in our nation's capital and tell us he's got a dream. I'm in the church basement watching. Our own Reverend Johnson went up there to march and I find myself scanning the crowd for his face. I can't believe so many peoples is there--two-hundred-fifty thousand. And the ringer is, sixty thousand a them is white. "Mississippi and the word is two very different places," the Deacon say and we all nod cause ain't it the truth.

and

On the news, now Roger Sticker is reporting in front of the Jackson post office with the same stupid grin as the war reporter. "...this modern postal addressing system is called a Z-Z-ZIP code, that's right, I said Z-Z-ZIP code, that's five numbers to be written along the bottom of your envelope..."

Funny how you can take things for granted, believing they've been around forever and not just 45 years! I'd never not used a ZIP code when addressing a letter and had never stopped to think that there was in fact a time, not all that long ago, in which they didn't exist.

Suffice it to say, this is a fabulous read. I think it has incredible depth and would be a great book club choice. There's plenty to discuss and it could easily carry a meeting well into its second hour. And I love what the author says in her final words (Too Little, Too Late):

Like my feelings for Mississippi, my feelings for The Help conflict greatly. Regarding the lines between black and white women, I am afraid I have told too much. I was taught not to talk about such uncomfortable things, that it was tacky, impolite, they might hear us.

I am afraid I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or time to portray.

What I am sure about is this: I don't presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don't think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman's paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity. In The Help there is one line that I truly prize:

Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize,
We are just two people. Not that much separates us.
Not nearly as much as I'd thought.

This isn't simply a great book for fans of historical fiction and book clubs; it's an important work of literature that should be taught in history classes in high schools across America. Just as we should never forget the Holocaust, we should also never forget the despicable treatment of our fellow citizens.

Kudos, Kathryn! This is a superb story and one I'll be anxious to recommend to friends and customers alike. I can't wait to see what you have in store for us next!

Further praise from fellow bloggers:

THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett will definitely be one of my top reads of 2009 and it may well be "the top read". It is a marvelous book about a not so marvelous time in history and certainly about a not-at-all marvelous topic, race relations in the South. But it is so much more than that. (Kay, from My Random Acts of Reading)

What I wanted to share last week was a book that I found really excellent. So good, in fact that I'm bordering on using the 'L' word, which I don't often do. So good, that the day after I finished it, I saw it sitting on my nightstand and wished I was still reading it. That book is The Help by Kathryn Stockett and is, amazingly, her first novel. (Tara, from Books and Cooks)

I had no idea this book was close to 450 pages until I picked it up from the library. I was leery about making it to the end, but once I began - there was no stopping me, and then I didn't want it to end! (Joy, from Thoughts of Joy)

The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
Historical Fiction
2014 Penguin Audio
Read by Jemma Lamia and Adepero Oduye
Finished on January 8, 2016
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)

Publisher's Blurb:

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees: a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimkes’ daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Sue Monk Kidd’s sweeping new novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday in 1803, when she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful, who is to be her waiting maid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement, and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in search for something better, and Charlotte’s lover, Denmark Vesey, a charismatic free black man who is planning insurrection.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at one of the most devastating wounds in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.


The Invention of Wings has been extremely popular with readers and book clubs for the past two years. When it was first published, I decided not to read it since, with the exception of The Secret Life of Bees (which I read twice), I wasn't impressed with the author's previous works. The Mermaid Chair was a major letdown after The Secret Life of Bees and Traveling with Pomegranates was only mildly interesting on audio. I was also reluctant to read another novel about slavery, the subject matter for so many novels in recent years (i.e., Mudbound, The Help, The Kitchen House, Wench, The Secrets of Mary Bowser, etc.). However, a few of my friends wrote glowing reviews for the audiobook of The Invention of Wings, which made me a little more tempted to give it a try, in spite of my reservations. Unfortunately, the audiobook was only available on from my library on compact discs and I've ceased to use that format, opting only for downloadable content. It wasn't until I received a membership to Audible.com from my daughter that I was finally able to get this book on audio. And, I can say it was well worth the wait!

I am so glad I decided to go with the audio, rather than reading the print edition, as it was absolutely outstanding. As with the audio of The Help, listening to The Invention of Wings was more like listening to a live performance, as opposed to just listening to a narration of the book. I loved both readers, but I especially enjoyed listening to Jemma Lamia, who reads the part of Sarah Grimke. Lamia is also the reader for Wiley Cash's This Dark Road to Mercy, The Secret Life of Bees, Saving Ceecee Honeycutt and The Help. With a perfect Southern voice, reminiscent of Catherine Taber (reader of The Homecoming of Samuel Lake), Jemma Lamia is quickly becoming one of my favorite audiobook readers.

The Invention of Wings is filled with beautiful language, lush with metaphors. I love this little gem of a sentence:

She was a woman the winds and tides obeyed, but in that moment, she was gentle with me.

One of the things I love about historical fiction is that it inspires me to do further reading of the subject matter. As soon as I finished this book, I hopped on the Internet, searching for photographs of story quilts such as those depicted in Monk's novel. You can view some examples here.

Final Thoughts:

While not quite as good as The Help by Kathryn Stockett, The Invention of Wings is an informative and engaging story that held my interest from start to finish. I can see how it  would be an excellent choice for book clubs, or for that matter, an American Literature course, perhaps combined with The Help or Toni Morrison's classic Beloved. I'm so glad I decided not to dismiss this book!

The Only Plane In the Sky

I published this review in 2020. Today is the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and I have decided to repost it in memory of all those who lost their lives, as well as everyone affected by this terribly attack on our country. May we never forget. 

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff
Nonfiction - History
2019 Avid Reader Press
Finished on January 11, 2020
Rating: 5/5 (Excellent)

Publisher's Blurb:

The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001—a panoramic narrative woven from the voices of Americans on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma.

Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which traced the rise of al-Qaeda, to The 9/11 Commission Report, the government’s definitive factual retrospective of the attacks. But one perspective has been missing up to this point—a 360-degree account of the day told through the voices of the people who experienced it.

Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, award-winning journalist and bestselling historian Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, Graff paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet.

Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York City, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker underneath the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard the small number of unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United Flight 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid.

More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son working in the North Tower, caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger’s last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from rushing into the burning building to try to rescue their colleagues.

At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.

I have so many thoughts about this book. As I began, I discovered I couldn't stop reading, very much like that September morning 18 years ago when I couldn't stop watching the news. It brought back vivid memories of where I was, who I was with, and how the shocking events of the attacks unfolded before my eyes as I watched the news reports in disbelief and horror. Like Garrett Graff's excellent compilation of interviews and transcripts, I simply could not pull my gaze from the scenes. I was afraid there would be more attacks and I felt compelled to know what was happening at every moment. At that time, my teenage daughter and I were living in Texas and my husband was working in Nebraska, so I was even more anxious, not being together as a family to face whatever might come.

From the first pages of this outstanding narrative, I was quickly engrossed, reading far into the night, which was not particularly a good thing since my dreams were full of images of that terrible day. I noticed that as I read, I was holding my breath, literally on the edge of my seat, despite the fact that I knew the terrible outcome as I turned each page. Yet, the intimacy of the oral histories revealed so much more than I saw on the TV broadcasts.

I had considered listening to the audio version of this book, but I'm glad that I decided to go with the print. Each chapter is arranged in a format of individual accounts, noting the name, place of employment, or relationship to a family member involved in the attacks. Without those visual references, I would have lost track of who was who; the print version made it easy to flip back and forth, refreshing my memory of the specific individual describing a particular anecdote. I also think the audio book (and hear all of those stories, which are read by a full cast of actors) would gut me. 

Here are just a few passages that gave me pause:

For those at the tip of Lower Manhattan, the only viable evacuation route turned out to be the water. A makeshift, unorganized armada of more than 130 ferries, pleasure yachts, sightseeing vessels, Coast Guard and police vessels, fireboats, and tugboats gathered--many without being asked--at Battery Park and nearby piers. By the end of the day, they had collectively evacuated somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people from Manhattan--a maritime rescue larger than the World War II evacuation from Dunkirk.

and

James Luongo, inspector, NYPD: At one point, there had to be 200 construction workers walking down West Street. I said, "Who's in charge?" They said, "Nobody's in charge. We're here to help." I'll never forget those men--big burly guys, coming down. So much of that day, so much of that day was just New Yorkers. People who can help people. A lot of credit goes to the fire department. A lot of credit goes to the police department and emergency response people. But that's what we get paid for. The amount of New Yorkers--just everyday New Yorkers--who stepped up to the plate that day was incredible.

and

Ileana Mayorga, management specialist, Volunteer Arlington: At 1:00 the phone started ringing, people who wanted to come and help. I put the names of all these people in an Excel sheet and what it is that they wanted to do. They wanted to help dig out the people at the Pentagon. They wanted to secure the area themselves. They wanted to enlist to go and fight. I had a man who called and he said, "I am 80 years old. I still fit in my pilot uniform from World War II. I can still see. I can still hear. I have kept up with my training as a pilot. Tell whoever you can tell that I'm ready to report for duty." That broke my heart, this 80-year-old man saying that.

and

Ileana Mayorga: It was completely amazing, the feeling of support, of unity. I felt so proud that my community, the Hispanic community, were calling. Suddenly the phones were ringing and saying, "This is the country that we chose to come to. Nobody will destroy our country." They would say, "I'm not legal in the United States. Do you think they will accept me to do volunteer work?"

and

As the morning of September 11th passed, a stunned, wounded nation found itself enveloped in a quiet--businesses and schools closed, traffic thinned, the normal air traffic overhead fell silent. Many Americans, both ordinary civilians and government officials, were glued to the television, soaking in the news, overcome with emotion.

and

At Ground Zero, an impromptu bucket brigade had begun work, trying to sift through the acres of burning wreckage in hopes of finding survivors and recovering the dead. The fires at Ground Zero would burn for another 99 days, until they were finally extinguished for good on December 19.

and

Paul McFadden [firefighter, Rescue 2, FDNY]: When everything settled, I lost 46 friends. The were either my friends or they were sons of my friends. 

I've read two other books that deal with the horrors of 9/11. The first is The Usual Rules by Joyce Maynard (reviewed here). The second is a memoir by Abigail Carter called The Alchemy of Loss: A Young Widow's Transformation (reviewed here). Both are excellent and The Only Plane in the Sky has inspired me to pull them from my shelves for a second reading.

Click here to listen to the Garrett Graff explain his research process and motivation for creating this comprehensive and important oral history of 9/11.

We must never forget.

Mudbound

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Fiction
2008 Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Finished on 1/30/10
Rating: 5/5 (Excellent!)
Winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Fiction




Publisher's Blurb:

Sometimes it's necessary to do wrong.
Sometimes it's the only way to make things right.

In this award-winning portrait of two families caught up in the blind hatred of a small Southern town, prejudice takes many forms—some subtle, some ruthless. Mudbound is the saga of the McAllan family, who struggle to survive on a remote ramshackle farm, and the Jacksons, their black sharecroppers. When two sons return from World War II to work the land, the unlikely friendship between these brothers-in-arms—one white, one black—arouses the passions of their neighbors. As the men and women of each family tell their version of events we are drawn into their lives. Striving for love and honor in a brutal time and place, they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale and find redemption where they least expect it.

Wow. This is an incredible book. One of my regular customers at work loaned it to me and as soon as I finished, I knew it was one I wanted to own. And read again. And have my husband read. And have my book club read. And have high school teachers read and teach to their students. I haven't felt this way about a novel since, well, The Help. And The Book Thief. Powerful stuff.

Told in six alternating first-person narratives, we come to know Laura McAllan, her husband Henry, and his brother Jamie, as well as Ronsel Jackson and his parents, Hap and Florence, the family who work the land of the McAllan family. Like Kathryn Stockett's beautiful debut novel of the social injustices of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, Hillary Jordan creates a powerful debut novel of her own, depicting the often shameful treatment of the returning African-American soldiers during and after WWII. I love the way Jordan draws the reader in close to each character, giving different perspectives to a single act. The chapters are full of suspense and tension, creating a page-turner that sucked me in from the opening pages and made me wish for a hundred pages more as I approached the concluding chapter.

Unlike The Help, this novel is fairly serious, lacking any levity or humor. And yet, Jordan is a superb storyteller, shedding light on a dark and often ignored portion of our history without sounding pedantic or preachy.

On Mississippi farm life in the 1940s:

When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patches across the plank floors of the house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown.

When it rained, as it often did, the yard turned into a thick gumbo, with the house floating in it like a soggy cracker. When the rains came hard, the river rose and swallowed the bridge that was the only way across. The world was on the other side of that bridge, the world of light bulbs and paved roads and shirts that stayed white. When the river rose, the world was lost to us and we to it.

One day slid into the next. My hands did what was necessary: pumping, churning, scouring, scraping. And cooking, always cooking. Snapping beans and the necks of chickens. Kneading dough, shucking corn and digging the eyes out of the potatoes. No sooner was breakfast over and the mess cleaned up than it was time to start on dinner. After dinner came supper, then breakfast again the next morning.

On the power of the land:

Slept four nights in that house and by the end of em I'd a bet money there was gone be trouble in it. Soft citybred woman like Laura McAllan weren't meant for living in the Delta. Delta'll take a woman like that and suck all the sap out of her till there ain't nothing left but bone and grudge, against him that brung her here and the land that holds him and her with him. Henry McAllan was as landsick as any man I ever seen and I seen plenty of em, white and colored both. It's in their eyes, the way they look at the land like a woman they's itching for. White men already got her, they thinking, You mine now, just you wait and see what I'm gone do to you. Colored men ain't got her and ain't never gone get her but they dreaming bout her just the same, with every push of that plow and every chop of that hoe. White or colored, none of em got sense enough to see that she the one owns them. She takes their sweat and blood and the sweat and blood of their women and children and when she done took it all she takes their bodies too, churning and churning em up till they one and the same, them and her.

Some of the language is difficult to read, but it rings true and wouldn't be accurate if Jordan had toned it down in order to make it fit today's standards of political correctness.

On the return of the African-American soldier:

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. Coon, spade, darky, nigger. Went off to fight for my country and came back to find it hadn't changed a bit. Black folks still riding in the back of the bus and coming in the back door, still picking the white folks' cotton and begging the white folks' pardon. Nevermind we'd answered their call and fought their war, to them we were still just niggers. And the black soldiers who'd died were just dead niggers.

I usually wait until I've finished reading a book to read the back cover and I rarely ever read the blurbs or endorsements found at the beginning of a book. There are 28 review blurbs in Mudbound and I read each and every one. I wanted to read what others were saying about this stunning debut. I found myself nodding my head in agreement on several occasions, but my favorite was written by Barbara Kingsolver:

This is storytelling at the height of its powers: the ache of wrongs not yet made right, the fierce attendance of history made as real as rain, as true as this minute. Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm. Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are still with me.

I finally got around to setting my 2009 Top Ten endcap at work. I'm still handselling lots of copies of my #1 book (The Help), but more and more, I find the customers I talk to have already read it. So I've added one more shelf and placed a couple of copies of Mudbound right next to it. I explain to those who have already read (and loved) The Help that Mudbound is just as good, just as thought-provoking, and just as beautifully written. I've already sold all the copies we have in the store. I may have found my #1 book for 2010.

I know I'll read Mudbound again in the coming years, but now I'm looking forward to the release of Hillary Jordan's upcoming dystopic novel, Red, set thirty years in the future in Crawford, Texas!

See what other bloggers have to say about Mudbound:

Mudbound is not a perfect book, but it is absolutely spellbinding. It's the sort of book you begin to read and suddenly you've read 100 pages and the next thing you know you've finished. It's the sort of book that creates an atmosphere from which it's difficult to surface. It's astonishing really, to read something like this from a first time novelist. Hillary Jordan is an author to watch. (Tara of Books and Cooks)

Jordan has impressive talent and I eagerly await her next novel. This successful Southern read goes on my Best Reads of 2008 list! (Joy of Thoughts of Joy)

Click here to watch the Mudbound book trailer

Click here to listen to Hillary Jordan read a passage from Mudbound, as well as hear speak of the inspiration for this remarkable story.

Click here to visit the author's website and blog.

The Help - Audio

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Historical Fiction
2009 Penguin Audio, Unabridged Edition
Finished on 2/16/10
Rating: 5/5 (Excellent!)



From AudioFile:

Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. White ladies playing bridge and sipping ice tea. Colored maids cooking, cleaning, and loving the white babies. The separate, intertwined paths of these worlds are going to collide. Audio is THE way to be inside this story, brilliantly cast with four voices. The separate casting of the three voices of Stockett's debut novel is astute. Jenna Lamia embodies Miss Skeeter, the young aspiring writer who starts a project that disrupts her privileged and predictable world. Lamia's genteel Southern tones can pass off ingrained prejudice with chilling comfort, screech with outrage, and subtly reflect Skeeter's growing resolve and self-discovery. Bahni Turpin and Octavia Spencer contrast the voices of hot-headed Minny and thoughtful, inspiring Aibileen. Their musical speech and emotional connection to the characters are riveting. Listeners are swept up in the story--shocked and reminded by the times; inspired and proud of these women. R.F.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.

I reviewed The Help just about a year ago this month (read my review here), but wanted to post a quick write-up about the audio version. I very rarely listen to audio books. My commute is less than 15 minutes each way and I just don't spend that much time in my car. However, a good friend loaned me this audio book and said I simply had to give it a listen, even though I'd already read the book. She was so enthusiastic, I couldn't turn her down. And I'm so glad I didn't. What an experience! I fell in love with the book all over again. The readers are all superb and I quickly became engrossed in the story, looking for reasons to drive all over town so I could continue listening. (Why I didn't just copy the discs over to my iPod, and listen while walking on the treadmill, is beyond me. Next time!)

One of the advantages to listening to an audio book is hearing the pronunciation of names and locations, as well as hearing the accents and emotion in the dialogue. I don't know if it's due to a second "reading" that the story is more ingrained in my memory, or whether it's due to the process of listening to it being read aloud, but I feel like I'm able to recall more detail about the plot and remember the characters' names better than when I just read a printed book. Whatever the reason, I'm quickly becoming a fan of audio books and have decided this is a great way to "re-read" some of my favorite books.

Final thoughts: Even if you've already read The Help, I urge you to listen to the audio book. What a superb performance.

Oh, and if you haven't heard the news, Dreamworks Studio has acquired the rights to The Help. You can learn more here.

And, if you've got some free time, take a listen to this marvelous interview between Kathryn Stockett and Katie Couric.

Can you tell I'm a huge fan of this book?! I can't wait to see what Stockett has in store for us next.

The Postmistress

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Fiction
2010 Amy Einhorn Books
Finished 1/20/12
Rating: 4.75/5 (Terrific!)




Publisher’s Blurb:

Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight…

It is 1940. France has fallen. Bombs are dropping on London. And President Roosevelt is promising he won’t send our boys to fight in “foreign wars.”

But American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, wants nothing more than to bring the war home. Frankie’s radio dispatches crackle across the Atlantic Ocean, imploring listeners to pay attention—as the Nazis bomb London nightly, and Jewish refugees stream across Europe. Frankie is convinced that if she can just get the right story, it will wake Americans to action and they will join the fight.

Meanwhile, in Franklin, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James hears Frankie’s broadcasts and knows that it is only a matter of time before the war arrives on Franklin’s shores. In charge of the town’s mail, Iris believes that her job is to deliver and keep people’s secrets, passing along the news that letters carry. And one secret she keeps are her feelings for Harry Vale, the town mechanic, who inspects the ocean daily, searching in vain for German U-boats he is certain will come. Two single people in midlife, Iris and Harry long ago gave up hope of ever being in love, yet they find themselves unexpectedly drawn toward each other.

Listening to Frankie as well are Will and Emma Fitch, the town’s doctor and his new wife, both trying to escape fragile childhoods and forge a brighter future. When Will follows Frankie’s siren call into the war, Emma’s worst fears are realized. Promising to return in six months, Will goes to London to offer his help, and the lives of the three women entwine.

Alternating between an America still cocooned in its inability to grasp the danger at hand and a Europe being torn apart by war, The Postmistress gives us two women who find themselves unable to deliver the news, and a third woman desperately waiting for news yet afraid to hear it.

Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress shows how we bear the fact that war goes on around us while ordinary lives continue. Filled with stunning parallels to today, it is a remarkable novel.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so moved by a novel. I first heard about The Postmistress from a former coworker who said it was one of the best novels about World War II that she’d ever read. I love reading books set during that time period, so I tucked the title away in the back of my mind, knowing I’d get to it sooner or later. One afternoon at work, a customer whom I’ve come to know and who shares my taste in books, gave me her copy of The Postmistress, telling me how much she loved it and that she knew I would, too. I added it to my stacks, again, knowing I’d get to it sooner or later. Well, it turned out to be much later! The book is now available in paperback and I’ve only just read the hardcover. But it was well worth the wait!

“A beautifully written, thought-provoking novel that I’m telling everyone I know to read.” ~ Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help

I couldn’t agree more! I loved Blake’s novel, savoring each page, marking passage after passage. Early on, after establishing the relationship between all the characters, I was tempted to stop where I was reading and start all over from the very beginning. I had a feeling this was going to be a great book, one with which I would fall in love and be haunted by for years to come. I knew it was a rare book, much like The Book Thief, Atonement, and The Help. I could have read it much more quickly than two full weeks—it called to me during the day and I couldn’t wait to get home to return to the story—but I wanted to draw it out and make it last.

“Some novels we savor for their lapidary prose, others for their flesh-and-blood characters, and still others for a sweeping narrative arc that leaves us lightheaded and changed; Sarah Blake’s masterful The Postmistress serves us all this and more. Compassionate, insightful, and unsentimental, this masterful novel is told in a rare and highly successful omniscient voice, one that delves deeply into the seemingly random nature of love and war and story itself. This is a superb book!” ~ Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog

On wartime broadcasts:

“The story beneath the story,” Parkhurst agreed.

Frankie nodded. Bill Shirer wrote ten minutes of script for five minutes of airtime, and Murrow often finished every broadcast in a cold sweat, having orchestrated the news so that it went under the wire, his mind ahead of the censor’s bending and swaying to the imagined cut. Early on, she’d learned what she could say she saw—a full moon could be described as a bomber’s moon—and how to seed the story without telling the Germans, who were listening, what they heard. It was a dare—a dance up to the line. It was the performance of what is, what isn’t.

and

…We do not create mood, Murrow had lectured her when she’d first arrived, we tell what there is to tell. Our job is not to persuade. Just provide the honest news. One person to another. And when there isn’t any news, why, just say so. The news is not atmosphere (although there were shelves of disks at Broadcasting House that used to be used for just that—crickets and birdsongs, Big Ben sounding, and nearly sixty bands on one disk devoted to False Alarm: Cheerful Voices with Chink of Teacups). The war news now came live: the newsreaders’ voices, the microphone on the roof recording the progress of the bombs, and the conversation between broadcasters in the very moment of the Blitz. The world could listen to the war as though we were all pulled up to the fire.

On London’s Blitz:

By now, death had long since lost its power to shock. Everyone had a story: there were thousands piled up in London’s heart. But ever since the first of the year, Hitler had been playing with London’s nerves. There were three nights of bombing in January, then nothing for a week. Then again, and heavier. Then nothing. One day, then another in March, then nothing long enough for daffodils to appear and grass to start sprouting on the banks along the Thames. The city slid into April on a month of quiet. Then came the bombings of the Wednesday and the Saturday—bombs so bad, Ed Murrow joked, you wore your best clothes to bed in case your closet wasn’t standing in the morning. And since then, the memory of those nights had settled into everyone’s crouch, everyone’s quick steps, everyone’s fixed attention on the sky. Would they come again tonight? Or was it over? You didn’t know. You went to bed ready to run.

and

On May the tenth, one hundred bombs a minute rained down on London for five straight hours in what was the most devastating night of the Blitz. Fires exploded everywhere at once, and where there had been, even on the other nights, pockets of calm, dips of peace, that night the din in the skies could drive you mad. Hit were Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, and countless houses smashed to pieces.


Unimaginable.

I rarely ever make the time to reread a book, but this is one I want to return to. Rather than wait several years (which is my typical pattern for rereading), I am going to listen to the audio, as I just discovered that the reader is Orlagh Cassidy. She’s one of my favorite audio book readers! And it’s available for download from my library. Hurray!

Final Thoughts: Is it too early to declare my #1 read of 2012? Now to read Blake’s previous novel, Grange House!

Books added to my reading list:

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson

Murrow: his life and times by A.M. Sperber

No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin

A Stricken Field: A Novel by Martha Gellhorn

Click here to listen to Blake's excellent interview on NPR's All Things Considered.

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield
Fiction
2011 Books on Tape
Reader: Catherine Taber
Finished on 2/22/12
Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)





Columbia County, Arkansas, 1956

John Moses couldn’t have chosen a worse day, or a worse way to die, if he’d planned it for a lifetime. Which was possible. He was contrary as a mule. It was the weekend of the Moses family reunion, and everything was perfect—or at least perfectly normal—until John went and ruined it.


Publisher’s Blurb:

Every first Sunday in June, members of the colorful Moses clan gather for their annual reunion at “the old home place,” a sprawling hundred-acre farm in Arkansas. Samuel Lake, a handsome young preacher with a huge heart and strong convictions, has brought his wife, Willadee Moses, and their three young children to the festivities. For the children it’s a time to vacation away from the prying eyes of their father’s congregation, and for Willadee it’s a chance to be with her beloved mother and father. But tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core and setting the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change.

Samuel soon learns that he has lost his parish back in Louisiana, so he and his family take up temporary residence on the farm. Everyone is drawn to Samuel’s eleven-year-old daughter, Swan, with her outspoken questions and mischievous spirit. Swan, in turn, is fascinated by her powerful, secretive Uncle Toy, a war veteran, and his sultry wife, Bernice, an old girlfriend of Samuel’s whose desire to win back her old beau is a bit too obvious. But when Blade Ballenger, an eight-year-old neighbor, comes into Swan’s life, she focuses all her fierce energy on keeping him safe from his terrifying father, never realizing the possible dangers to herself and to those she loves.

With characters who come to life like members of one’s own family, Jenny Wingfield’s The Homecoming of Samuel Lake is a novel with the universal reach of the most memorable and lasting works of fiction.


I listened to the first five chapters of The Homecoming of Samuel Lake twice. On purpose. I fell in love with Catherine Taber’s southern accent, which is not too sweet or syrupy, but just thick enough to let you know you’re listening to a work of Southern fiction. Superb Southern fiction. Not since Kathryn Stockett’s The Help have I been so moved by a novel.

I need to read the printed version of this book since it’s all but impossible to keep track of favorite passages while listening. I did find this excerpt, which gives you a sense of the writing, over on Random House:

The reunion was always held the first Sunday in June. It had been that way forever. It was tradition. And John Moses had a thing about tradition. Every year or so, his daughter, Willadee (who lived way off down in Louisiana), would ask him to change the reunion date to the second Sunday in June, or the first Sunday in July, but John had a stock answer.

“I’d rather burn in Hell.”

Willadee would remind her father that he didn’t believe in Hell, and John would remind her that it was God he didn’t believe in, the vote was still out about Hell. Then he would throw in that the worst thing about it was, if there did happen to be a hell, Willadee’s husband, Samuel Lake, would land there right beside him, since he was a preacher, and everybody knew that preachers (especially Methodists, like Samuel) were the vilest bunch of bandits alive.

Every year, the day after school let out for the summer, Samuel and Willadee would load up their kids, Noble and Swan and Bienville, and take off for south Arkansas. Willadee already had freckles everywhere the sun had ever touched, but she would always roll the window down and hang her arm out, and God would give her more. Her boisterous, sand-colored hair would fly in the breeze, tossing and tangling, and eventually she would laugh out loud, just because going home made her feel so free.

Columbia County was located down on the tail end of Arkansas, which looked just the same as north Louisiana. When God made that part of the country, He made it all in one big piece, and He must have had a good time doing it. There were rolling hills and tall trees and clear creeks with sandy bottoms and wildflowers and blue skies and great puffy clouds that hung down so low you’d almost believe you could reach up and grab a handful. That was the upside. The downside was brambles and cockleburs and a variety of other things nobody paid much attention to, since the upside outweighed the downside by a mile.

The “old homeplace” had been a sprawling hundred-acre farm, which provided milk and eggs and meat and vegetables and fruit and berries and nuts and honey. It took some coaxing. The land gave little up for free. The farm was dotted with outbuildings that John and his sons had erected over the years. Barns and sheds and smokehouses and outhouses, most of which were leaning wearily by 1956. When you don’t use a building anymore, it knows it’s lost its purpose.

Wingfield has created some wonderfully endearing characters, all with interesting personalities and names such as Willadee, Noble, Bienville, Swan, Calla, Toy, and Blade. Reminiscent of Scout Finch, with her spunk and tender heart, Swan Lake (yes, that is her name) is one I will never forget.

The most delicious thing in Swan’s life was this one week every summer of wearing boys clothes and forgetting about modesty. She could scoot under barbed-wire fences and race across pastures without those confounded skirts getting in her way. She was little. She was quick. And she was just what Noble dreamed of being. Formidable. You couldn’t get the best of her, no matter how you tried.

When I first read The Help, I was completely bowled over by Stockett’s writing. I loved it so much that I went on to listen to the audio.

It was just as good.

When the movie came out, I went to see it with my daughter.

It was just as good.

My gut tells me that the printed version of The Homecoming of Samuel Lake will be just as good as the audio. How wonderful if someone were to option the rights for a film. I imagine Reese Witherspoon as Willadee and maybe Jon Hamm as Toy or Samuel.

See what some of my blogmates have to say about this remarkable novel:

Jenny Wingfield does an admirable job in recreating a mid-century Southern family. The food, community, gossip, and landscape all come together to firmly place the reader in the South during a time in history when reliance on faith and belief in family were strong. (Wendy, of Caribousmom)

Just finished and just amazed. I loved this book…The book has so much to offer. It is filled with a family of terrific characters that in one way or another touch your heart. You just can't help but let them in…This "best read" is now on my list of "must purchase" so I can add it to my personal bookshelves. (Joy, of Thoughts of Joy)

Recommend? An EMPHATIC yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This was a home run read for me and one that lingers in my mind still. One of the best reads for 2011. (Staci, of Life in the Thumb)

Jenny Wingfield weaves together a beautiful story about family, about humanity. It's both heartfelt and humorous, and also dark and tragic. It's about being there for family and others when they need you the most. This book is certain to make my top 10 list for 2011. You MUST read this novel. (Diane, of Bibliophile By the Sea)

Final thoughts: Jenny Wingfield is a consummate storyteller who has written the proverbial Great Read. I believe it will be The Help of 2012. Read it!


About the Author

Born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, Jenny Wingfield was a preacher's kid who grew up "pretty much all over Louisiana". She graduated from Southern State College in Magnolia, Arkansas, and for several years, taught English, French, and Language Arts. She lives in Texas with her rescued dogs, cats, and horses. Her screenplay credits include The Man in the Moon and The Outsider. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake is her first novel.


Go here to listen to an excerpt, read by Catherine Taber.

Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Nonfiction - Current Affairs
2006 Penguin Books
Finished on 7/14/08
Rating: 2.5/5 (Average)




"If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else," Mortenson argued to Parade's readers, "then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs."

Publisher's Blurb:

In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Three Cups of Tea is a story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools -- especially for girls -- in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.

I received this this book for my birthday last year and was excited when my face-to-face book group chose it for this month's selection. The friend who gave me the book loved it, so I couldn't wait for the opportunity to dive in. Well, as you can see from my rating, I can't say I share her enthusiasm for the book. Not only that, but from what I've heard from some of the women in my book group, it hasn't been their favorite either. I wouldn't be surprised if only a few of us actually finish it, which is a shame, since the last third is really the most interesting. I'm not sure where the problem with the book lies, whether it's my history/political/geographical ineptitude (thank goodness the authors provided two maps at the front of the book!), specifically pertaining to the Middle East region and the conflicts between various tribes and sects, or a lackluster writing style that failed to draw me into Mortenson's story.

And, yes, in spite of my overall reaction to the book, it's a marvelous story. As I finished the book, I realized I was glad to have read it, but what a shame it lacks any literary finesse. From the very first chapter, I found myself nodding off, quickly flipping to the table of contents to figure out how many chapters I'd need to read each night in order to finish in time for the book group discussion. I plodded along, marking pages with sticky notes (over two dozen), hoping that I wasn't the only member in the group struggling through the book. I enjoy reading nonfiction, as it never fails to teach me something, but at the same time it can be intimidating and can sometimes (especially when history and politics are involved) make me feel like a complete idiot.

So, I came away from this reading experience with a little more knowledge about the conflicts in the Middle East than I had going in, but I certainly wouldn't want to be quizzed on any of that information! I have a strong admiration for Greg Mortenson and all he's done as a humanitarian. His passion to help educate the children of Pakistan and Afghanistan is truly heroic. And I don't use this term loosely. The man sacrificed years with his wife and children, traveling alone to Pakistan at least 27 times for months at a time, taking only a meager annual salary of $28,000. But it wasn't just the financial burden and time away from family: Mortenson was kidnapped, probably by mujahadeen, and held captive for six days. He was also caught in the crossfire of a turf war between opium smugglers. I'd like to see a sports hero try to do accomplish all Mortenson has done, while facing life-and-death obstacles such as these. If you still aren't sure of his heroic worthiness, just take a look at all the awards he's won:

Humanitarian Awards:

1975 US Army Commendation medal
1998 American Alpine Club David Brower Conservation Award
2002 Peacemaker Award from Montana Community Mediation Center
2003 Climbing Magazine "Golden Piton Award" for humanitarian effort
2003 Vincent Lombardi Champion Award for humanitarian service
2003 Peacemaker of the Year" Benedictine Monks, Santa Fe , NM
2003 Outdoor Person of the Year - Outdoor Magazine
2003 Salzburg Seminar fellow, sponsored by Microsoft "Closing Gender Gap with Education"
2004 Freedom Forum "Free Spirit Award" - National Press Club, DC
2004 Jeanette Rankin Peace Award - Institute for Peace
2004 e-Town Achievement Award – NPR radio (Boulder 12/2004)
2005 Men's Journal 'Anti-Terror' Award by Senator John McCain
2005 Red Cross “Humanitarian of The Year” Montana
2006 University of South Dakota Alumni Achievement Award (Graduation Commencement Speaker)
2006 Golden Fleur-de-lis Award from Comune Firenze , Italy
2007 Medical Education Hall of Fame Award, Toledo , Ohio
2007 Brookdale Community College (NJ) - Global Humanitarian Award (Feb)
2007 Rotary International - Paul Harris Award
2007 Mountain Institute - Award for Excellence in Mountain Communities
2007 The Dayton Literary Peace Prize
2007 Kiriyama Award - Nonfiction book contributing to Pacific Rim peace and awareness
2007 Mountain Institute - Excellence in Mountain Community Service Award (Nov)
2008 Citizen Center for Diplomacy - National Award for Citizen Diplomacy
2008 Courage of Conscience Award
2008 Graven Award - Wartburg College, IA
2008 National Award for Citizen Diplomacy - Citizen Center for Diplomacy
2009 Academy of Achievement Award

Mortenson doesn't just build schools. He has also created Women's Vocational Centers, as well as working to bring clean water to the villages. It came as no surprise to read that Mother Teresa was one of his heroes.

I can't write about the wonderful aid Mortenson has provided without mentioning another hero, whom I happen to know personally. My uncle has been helping Guatemalan refugees in Belize for at least the past ten years. He has helped them build a complete village (Selena): church, school, houses, cook house, laundry and latrines. He and my aunt live in Southern California and during the summer they'll sit in the church parking lot on busy weekends and holidays and rent parking spaces to beach-goers to raise money for the Belize project*. They take people from their church and other churches down to help with the building, but my uncle will often go down on his own. He has built a soccer field, and this last trip in May took a big suitcase filled with soccer uniforms. They leave the suitcases there for the people to use as dressers.

It's people like Mortenson and my Uncle Brian that make me wonder what I've been doing for the past 46 years!

Mortenson lingered at the new dispensary, where Zuudkhan village's first health care worker had just returned from the six months of training 150 kilometers downside at the Bulmit Medical Clinic CAI had arranged for her. Aziza Hussain, twenty-eight, beamed as she displayed the medical supplies in the room CAI funds had paid to have added on to her home. Balancing her infant son on her lap, while her five-year-old daughter clung to her neck, she proudly pointed out the cases containing antibiotics, cough syrup, and rehydration salts that CAI donations had bought.

With the nearest medical facility two days' drive down often impassible jeep tracks, illness in Zuudkhan could quickly turn to crisis. In the year before Aziza took charge of her village's health, three women had died during the delivery of their children. "Also, many people died from the diarrhea," Aziza says. "After I got my training and Dr. Greg provided the medicines, we were able to control these things."

"After five years, with good water from the new pipes, and teaching the people how to clean their children, and use clean food, not a single person has died here from these problems. It's my great interest to continue to develop myself in this field," Aziza says. "And pass on my training to other women. Now that we have made such progress, not a single person in this area believes women should not be educated."

"Your money buys a lot in the hands of Greg Mortenson," McCown says. "I come from a world where corporations throw millions of dollars at problems and often nothing happens. For the price of a cheap car, he was able to turn all these people's lives around."

The women and children weren't the only ones learning valuable lessons:

When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke. "If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways," Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl. "The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die," he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson's own. "Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time."

That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned in my life," Mortenson says. "We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their 'shock and awe' campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them."

I found the following quotes from one of Mortenson's speeches especially powerful:

"I supported the war in Afghanistan," Mortenson said after he introduced himself. "I believed in it because I believed we were serious when we said we planned to rebuild Afghanistan. I'm here because I know that military victory is only the first phase of winning the war on terror and I'm afraid we're not willing to take the next steps."

I'm no military expert," Mortenson said, "And these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education of the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"

This may not be a great work of literature, but it's an incredibly inspiring book. Thirteen-year-old Jake Greenberg of Philadelphia was just one of many inspired by Mortenson's efforts, after reading Parade magazine's April 6, 2003 cover story:

...was so fired up by reading about Mortenson's work that he donated more than one thousand dollars of his bar mitzvah money to the CAI and volunteered to come to Pakistan and help out himself. "When I heard about Greg's story," Greenberg says, "I realized that, unlike me, children in the Muslim world might not have educational opportunities. It makes no difference that I'm a Jew sending money to help Muslims. We all need to work together to plant the seeds of peace."


Maybe more young people will read this book (it happens to be one of five nominees for our One Book, One Lincoln this year) and feel compelled to volunteer, make a monetary contribution, or begin their own project to help the people in Central Asia.

Apparently, I got a lot more out of this book than I originally thought. I would even feel safe in saying that it's worth the effort. In spite of my strict reading schedule, I managed to read all 23 chapters (plus the introduction) in 14 days.

I make it a point to avoid reading reviews about the book I'm reviewing until after I've finished and posted on my blog. This time, however, I decided to see what others had to say about Three Cups of Tea. The majority of Amazon reviewers gave it high ratings, yet there were quite a few who thought it was lacking. Their comments ranged from "tedious," "poorly edited," "lacks focus," to "egocentric," "hagiography," and "hero worship." I had to laugh in agreement when I read one reviewer's statement that the biographer never met an adjective he didn't like. And many felt that Mortenson was selfish to leave his wife and children for such long periods of time, only to return home to hole up in his basement, talking on the phone with associates in Pakistan in the middle of the night. Mortenson may be a hero, but his wife is obviously a saint!

I agree with many that this would have been a fabulous magazine piece rather than a 300+ page book. Or maybe it should've been told by Mortenson in the first person, with a ghost writer like Rick Bragg or Anderson Cooper rather than Relin. It's too bad the poor writing (and lack of editing) detracts from the actual story, as I still believe what Mortenson has accomplished is worthy of recognition.

I'm looking forward to hearing what my book club has to say about Three Cups of Tea. Did any of you love it?

For further reading, check out these sites.

Mortenson's Blog

Central Asia Institute

Greg Mortenson in the Media

*4 the World Organization