Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

books

The Power of a Plant #bookreview #memoir

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If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you know I love to garden. It’s summer in the Pacific Northwest, and I just took my third load of juicy plums to the food bank. When I’m not writing fiction, you’ll find me outside growing things, and there’s nothing I love more than sharing fresh, organic food with people.

I am also a big fan of Donorschoose.org, an organization we have supported for many years. When we put on our NYC hats in the fall and winter, I also work in their offices. Recently I noticed a post (on Twitter, I think) that referenced South Bronx teacher Stephen Ritz, who has created a gardening revolution, using gardening to teach students a variety of subjects.

Stephen, as it turns out, has a book…so of course I bought it. While I normally stick to reviewing fiction here, I can’t help but share this book. If you are feeling uninspired about the state of the world today, Stephen Ritz and co-author Suzie Boss will lift you up.

The Power of a Plant: A Teacher’s Odyssey to Grow Healthy Minds and Schools tells the story of a chance occurrence in his classroom one day, where the sudden appearance of daffodils broke up a fight, that led Ritz down his current path.

Prior to this event, Ritz had no gardening experience, but he always “knew a guy,” and thus found people to learn from. Through the lens of gardening, he taught math, science, and the importance of healthy eating. Along the way he managed to lose 100 pounds himself as he changed his own eating habits. He heads up the Green Bronx Machine, and his students have met the White House chef under Obama and received numerous awards for their work. Not too shabby for students who live in the poorest congressional district in the nation!

If you get a chance to see Stephen Ritz on YouTube, you’ll find a man larger than life, filled with such passion he appears almost as a madman, with flailing arms and bugging eyes. He is, quite literally, a force of nature. The Power of a Plant, though bursting with his incredible energy, is also an honest reflection about his journey that doesn’t shy away from his mistakes and political battles with school officials.

Reading his frustrations, I am reminded that sometimes in the garden, when a plant isn’t doing well, the solution is to move it to another spot where the light and moisture are more suited. Ritz had to make several moves to find a place where he wouldn’t feel stifled by school politics and other bureaucratic problems.

You don’t have to be a gardener to appreciate the changes he has wrought in the last decade-plus. This is a story to remind us we can all make a difference. Reading it, you may recall teachers who affected your lives as well.

Ritz still bases from the Bronx but travels the world lecturing and sharing his vision. From planting seeds in a single classroom he is now changing the world. We could all do well to learn from his example.

The Butterfly Garden #bookreview #fiction

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What a sweet title! One would expect a lovely story about a group of women sipping tea in a butterfly garden. Yet this butterfly garden is unlike any other. This garden is created by a serial killer who decorates his young, lovely victims with butterfly tattoos.

I’m not even sure why I bought The Butterfly Garden. I always read the descriptions and it’s unlike me to purchase something so grisly and disturbing. But I’m glad I did.

Author Dot Hutchison begins the story in a police station where a young woman called Maya is being questioned. Maya is a tough young woman who isn’t exactly forthcoming at the beginning, so there is some question as to whether she is somehow complicit in a series of gruesome murders performed by a man known only as The Gardener. Drip by drip, word by word, she tells the story of the Garden and the young women in it: women The Gardener kidnapped, tattooed, killed, and preserved because butterflies have a short life span.

The Gardener has a lot of contradictions. He can be charming, loving even. In fact, everything he does is out of love, even when he’s at his most twisted and brutal.

The interplay between Maya and the detectives, Hanoverian and Eddison, helps bring the story to life. Through the telling of the story, we learn more about these detectives and what motivates them to continue working in a field that can be exhausting, frustrating, and draining. Since The Butterfly Garden is the first in a series, one presumes we will continue to follow the detectives in future books.

This type of story normally isn’t my cup of tea, but I have to say I liked it very much. Maya emerged from her cocoon, as it were, as the story unfolds, and I found myself aching for the lost years (and lives) of these fictional characters.

Legacy of Hunger #bookreview #historicalfiction

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Legacy of Hunger by Christy Nicholas is set in Ireland during its famine, and combines history with fantasy…a wonderful combination when it comes to stories set in the Celtic countries. It is the first book in a three-book series.

Valentia is an independent young woman who travels to Ireland in search of her family and a brooch she has only seen drawings of. Perils await as she travels overseas and visits her ancestral home. I don’t want to say more about this because I don’t want to include any spoilers.

Nicholas paints a moody picture of Ireland in its dire straits. Valentia, daughter of a civic-minded mother, immerses herself in the politics of the time and does her best to support those who struggled wherever she could. As she faces challenges both at sea and in Ireland, she matures in a natural, organic way.

Though there’s plenty of drama to be had, Nicholas is not graphic or over the top in her descriptions, and I like her approach. Though I like the Outlander books, for example, they are sometimes more graphic and gratuitous than I would like. Also, the fantasy element is subtle and gradual, and Nicholas includes some interesting details of Irish folklore. As a student of Irish history and folklore myself, I appreciated some of the details she included, and she did so in a way that didn’t disrupt the story itself.

A few elements near the end feel as if they are wrapped up a bit too quickly, but this is a minor detail. I am eager to continue reading the rest of the series.

On a personal note, Legacy of Hunger appealed to me because of my own work on Factory Girl, my WIP that combines historical fiction with fantasy. LoH is set in Ireland, while Factory Girl is set in Scotland, and we are both drawing from similar sources. Since I don’t normally delve into fantasy realms in my work, it’s an uncomfortable area for me, and Legacy of Hunger had the effect of giving me “permission” to continue with my revisions and to explore a path I hadn’t expected to travel.

 

America’s First Daughter #bookreview #historicalfiction

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America’s First Daughter (Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie) is written from the point of view of Martha Jefferson Randolph, the only child of Thomas Jefferson to survive beyond young adulthood. Patsy, as she was called in her family, grew up fast and became her father’s fiercest protector. Through her eyes, we see the human side of Thomas Jefferson: though larger than life to the public, he grieved deeply after the death of his wife. He could be a loving father, but also an indifferent one. He continued public service after the Revolution with a great deal of reluctance, preferring his life as a Virginia farmer, but putting his own needs aside for the greater good.

The book is a novel, but the authors took great pains to research Patsy’s life, and the fictionalization was done with careful thought. For example, in the book Patsy’s first and only true love is William Short, an aide to her father. There is no definitive evidence she carried the torch for Short, but the authors found enough evidence of the possibility to make it an important part of the book.

I struggled to like Patsy, but I understood how her world was vastly different from mine. She disapproved of her father’s relationship with Sally Hemings but helped cover it up (again, possibly fictionalized). Her deepest concern was for her father’s legacy, and that led her at times to some unsavory behavior. I also struggled with the prevailing notion that appearances were important, which led to Jefferson’s substantial overspending to maintain Monticello for endless guests, leaving the family in constant debt.

Yet I found Patsy compelling, and Sally Hemings, who remains mysterious and reserved, emerges as a powerful character. The authors do not attempt to justify Jefferson’s hypocrisy as a champion of freedom who maintained a stable of slaves. What we would see now as rape and child molestation was, at the time, a fairly normal occurrence. One hopes we have made some progress!

It’s exciting to read and understand more about the women of this time period. America’s First Daughter is a great story of what it might have been like to be the daughter of such a famous man, yet to know the hardship and difficulty of being a woman in this time period.

The authors’ notes at the end of the book are compelling and add a great deal to the text. I don’t often pay a lot of attention to these, but in this case it’s worth your while to learn more about fact vs. fiction and their own challenges with Patsy and her father. In the end, I highly recommend this book. It will take you a while to get through, but it’s worth it.

Vertical: Passion and Pinot on the Oregon Wine Trail

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If you loved the novel Sideways by Rex Pickett or saw the movie of the same name, you know the story of Miles, a frustrated novelist, and his devil-may-care buddy Jack. In Sideways, Miles and Jack go on a road trip to explore the California Wine Country. Jack’s about to get married and wants a wild week before he hangs up his bachelor shoes. Miles, down and out two years after a divorce, just wants to drink wine and play golf. Jack manages to create chaos wherever he goes. The strength of Sideways is this friendship between opposites. Sideways is one of my favorite movies and stays true to the book.

Vertical: Passion and Pinot on the Oregon Wine Trail brings back Miles and Jack for another road trip, this time to Oregon. Miles has found success as a novelist and is riding a wave of fame after a successful movie version. He’s getting paid big bucks to talk at wine conventions, and women are throwing themselves at him. Yes, he and Maya have broken up — something that made me not want to read this book. However, Pickett handles the situation well, and Maya makes a few appearances in Vertical. I ended up forgiving Pickett for this and agreeing with him that it’s the right move for both characters.

With all the free wine, Miles is also making a fool of himself and becoming a caricature. He’s all too aware that he’s not working on his next book. Those of us who write and get distracted from our work can relate!

Jack’s marriage has fallen apart, and so has his acting career, and he’s now bumming money from Miles. Miles gets the idea they should go on the road together — Miles has speaking commitments in Oregon. He wants to pick up his mother, who has been living in assisted living post-stroke, and take her to Wisconsin after the Oregon gigs to live with her sister.

As with the first book/movie, all the characters manage to get into some hilarious scrapes. Jack is as outrageous as ever. Underneath the mayhem, though, this is a more serious book. All of the characters except for Mom’s nurse are descending deeper and farther into alcoholism, and there are a number of cringeworthy moments courtesy of Miles’ favorite grape, Pinot.

This is really a story about a mother and son whose relationship has never been close. Near the end of her life, she and Miles are really just getting to know each other. There’s a sense Miles might finally grow up — though we don’t know that for sure (there’s a third book, so I’m withholding judgment). There is a lot of heartbreak along with the humor.

If I were conducting a novel-writing class, I could find a lot wrong with this story. It could be better edited and in particular, Pickett’s overuse of clunky adverbs is a distraction (hypochondriacally, as an example). However, he’s a good storyteller, with an ability to create empathy for characters who by all rights, we shouldn’t like very much. I spent many years around alcoholics, so this is no small accomplishment. And readers who aren’t writers, who don’t know all the “rules” of writing a novel, most likely won’t care. I still wanted to turn the page.

If you like wine, or if you like Miles and Jack as I do, you’ll enjoy this book. Flawed as it is, there’s a lot to love about it.

NOTE: This book is a rerelease. It’s been revised and updated, and some of its original fans are not happy with the changes. Since I didn’t read that version, I cannot comment. I was provided a copy of this book in return for a fair review.

 

Nadine Galinsky Feldman is the author of What She Knew and The Foreign Language of Friends, as well as the nonfiction When a Grandchild Dies: What to Do, What to Say, How to Cope.

When Breath Becomes Air #bookreview #memoir

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Yes, this is primarily a blog about fiction, but every now and then I gravitate toward memoir. This one is short, sweet, and too lovely not to share.

I knew this would be a tough read. As a neurosurgery resident, Paul Kalanithi was looking forward to graduating when he learned he had lung cancer. It’s not a spoiler alert to tell you he died from the disease.

What is astounding — miraculous, in my opinion — was his ability to write this book while in the process of dying. When Breath Becomes Air is a short book that is padded somewhat with a foreword by Abraham Verghese and an Epilogue by Kalanithi’s widow, Lucy. It seems to stop, largely because life stopped…this is not a flaw, but an achingly poignant end to a valiant effort.

Kalanithi writes about his path to becoming a doctor, something he never thought he would do, and shares honest stories of the joys and challenges of the difficult specialty of neurosurgery. As he navigates his way through diagnosis and treatment without any real knowledge of the time he has left, he examines his life closely to make the choices he feels are best for the remainder of his days, months, or years.

Born with a philosopher’s heart and soul, Kalanithi finds a way to live fully, and this book is a powerful affirmation of how we can live when we understand the finite nature of life.

When Breath Becomes Air is a meaningful book for anyone who may have to face difficult choices. It’s also a wonderful book for anyone in the medical profession who may feel tempted to lose sight of the humanity of their patients. Kalanithi, who continued to operate during part of his illness, finds himself learning how different life looks from the patient’s point of view.

Though this is a sad book, it is really a book about the fullness of life and about what we give to every moment. Kalanithi’s book is a brilliant legacy for a brilliant man who is gone too soon.

NOTE: I wrote this review before the sad and untimely death of author Brian Doyle. Doyle spoke frequently at the Chuckanut Writers Conference, and I had the great fortune to sit in the audience as he enthralled us, coaxed us, made us laugh, and shared his heart. He was another man who lived with fullness and generosity. He will be greatly missed.

 

Nadine Galinsky Feldman is the author of What She Knew and The Foreign Language of Friends, as well as the nonfiction When a Grandchild Dies: What to Do, What to Say, How to Cope.