Category Archives: family stories

True Crime, by Patricia Cornwell*****

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Legendary mystery writer Patricia Cornwell didn’t intend to write a memoir, but when someone decided to put her life’s story on television, she realized that if she didn’t write it, they’d make it up as they went. What began as a treatment for television writers to use as a guide morphed into a full-length book, and this is a perfect example of what an overachiever Cornwell has become.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Cornwell grew up in Miami, but moved with her mother to Montreat, North Carolina following her parents’ separation when she was five years old. It’s a miracle that anyone whose childhood was so riddled with trauma could grow up and pass for normal, let alone accomplish the things that she has done. First, her father had a breakdown, kidnapped her and her brothers, and then tried to hand them off—permanently—to his law partner. Her mother was a hot mess most of the time, and so there were periods when there was no food prepared, and she and her brothers made do by scrounging raw hamburger out of the freezer and eating it raw! Then there was the time her mom went into a fugue state and began systematically burning all of the children’s clothing—and there was no money to replace it with. Neglected children are often a lightning rod that attracts bad actors, and so the local security cop began molesting her—up until he was caught by her older brother, who put a stop to it. And the list goes on.

Nobody walks away from such experiences unscarred, but since Cornell—who was then Patsy Daniels—was a good kid, she internalized all of it, aided by a dreadful first grade teacher that told her that her constant talking in class was probably why her father had left! (As a teacher, this reviewer wants to find that person and have her license pulled, although she is probably gone from this earth by now.) Patsy gained control of her life—sort of—by developing eating disorders. She was hospitalized, but medical science actually didn’t know what to do about anorexia or bulimia, and after months in the institution with no improvement whatever, she gave up and went home. The problem vanished many years later when other aspects of her life changed.

Her love of writing and her feverish work ethic are what has made her such a success (along with great intelligence, though she doesn’t say as much.) She rode with cops and served as a volunteer in order to gain insights into that world; she went to Quantico and studied profiling; and of course, worked in the medical examiner’s office so that she could legitimately view autopsies, which are of course not open to the public. Anything she needed to learn, she found a way to do, leaving no stone unturned. She was aided and mentored by what seems to me an unlikely cast of friends and surrogate parents, including Senator Orin Hatch, Ruth and Billy Graham (mostly Ruth,) and President H.W. Bush.

The thing I appreciate about this memoir, apart from its outstanding prose and organization, is Cornwell’s willingness to disclose personal information. Sometimes, when someone is deeply private but finds herself writing a memoir anyway, she will stay on the surface and give up as little of herself as possible. Such memoirs are frustrating to read and for those that pay money for the privilege, a bit of a cheat. But once Cornwell decided to do this thing, she really did it right. And while, on the one hand, there’s a certain amount of namedropping and braggadocio, even that aspect of it is interesting; given everything she went through to arrive at the station she’s gained in life, one can hardly begrudge her.

For those that love her books, and also for those that simply enjoy a well written memoir, this book is highly recommended.

Wolvers, by Taylor Brown*****

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Taylor Brown has become one of my favorite authors. He creates believable characters and memorable plots, and his recurring themes have to do with championing the poor and dispossessed, and an urgent sense of environmentalism. My great thanks go to NetGalley, RB Media, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

Trace Temple hates wolves. His family has spiraled downward since losing its New Mexico ranch, a ranch that was in the family for generations, because of a massive legal penalty incurred by shooting an endangered wolf. It’s legal to kill a wolf that has preyed on one’s livestock, but the circumstances under which that can be done are very specific ones. Trace’s father thought he was shooting the wolf that had eaten his sheep, but he accidentally shot the wrong wolf, and it cost him and his family everything. The patriarch went to prison, and Trace’s mother developed an addiction that has become all consuming. So when some sketchy characters approach Trace and propose to hire him to shoot One-Eleven, the legendary alpha of a wolf pack that ranchers have long hated, he’s all in. But an experience that occurs while he’s on the hunt causes him to change his mind.

Once Trace is out of the running, the organization hires someone else, a man called Murdoch. Murdoch wants to kill the wolf, and he wouldn’t mind killing Trace, too.

The story starts a bit slow, then gathers steam as it goes. The Gila wilderness where all of this takes place is resonantly depicted, and given that nearly everything that Brown has written to this point is set in the Appalachians or some other part of the American South, this is all the more impressive.  The dialogue pops! There aren’t many characters in this story, and the two-legged characters that get the most ink are males; it’s all the more amazing, then, that Brown’s respect for women shines through, and it does so naturally. By the last quarter of this story, nobody could have kept me from finishing it.

There’s some gore here; the story could not have been told authentically without it. Humans get hurt, and some get dead, and so do wolves; but none of the damage is superfluous or titillating. And I loved the ending.

Brown explains what’s real and what’s fictional at the end of the book, and he even includes a two page bibliography for those interested in the subject matter.

I was lucky enough to have both the digital and audio versions of this story, and it’s the first time I’ve listened to one of Brown’s books. Ramiz Monsef does an outstanding job as narrator, and for that reason, I recommend this format for those that like audio books. But whatever your preference is, this novel is highly recommended.

More Than Enough, by Anna Quindlen*****

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More Than Enough, the new novel by Anna Quindlen, packs a great deal of intimacy into a relatively short book. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. This book will be available to the public February 24, 2026.

The story arc here is not a traditional one in that there are several threads relating to the protagonist, and it’s hard to identify one as central. Instead, all of them are interwoven around a theme of knowing how to let go and move forward. Our protagonist, Polly Goodman, wants a baby desperately. She and her husband, a zoo veterinarian, have been trying for years. They’ve done blood tests, fertility treatments, and even in vitro procedures, but in the end, she comes away with an empty womb and no baby. The hardest thing is when she feeling vulnerable and someone is gentle with her: “I was one kind impulse from a kidnapping or a crying jag.”

In the midst of it all, she is momentarily distracted by the results of a gag gift given to her by her book club buddies. They present her with an ancestry kit, and the results are surprising. At the same time, she struggles with her parents. Her mother, a judge, is wedded to her career, and Polly has never been able to connect with her emotionally. Her father, whom she loves more than nearly anyone, suffers from dementia and lives in a facility. She visits him nearly every day.

And the best friend she has—one of the book club pals—has cancer, and it’s not going well.

All of these threads blend seamlessly within the narrative; Quindlen has such an engaging writing style that I’m not thinking about a central storyline because I feel as if I’m hearing from a friend. Usually I don’t enjoy reading stories about people that might be called upper middle class, because I cannot relate to them at all, but Quindlen magically bridges that gap.

I could go on, but I’m not sure I should, because I love this story enough that I want to tell you every single thing that happens, and that’s not a good idea. The one additional thing you should know, if you don’t already, is that Quindlen has a great heart for teachers and for teens, and so she portrays both in a way that is authentic and immediate. Again, I should not relate well to the private school where Polly teaches girls that come from well to do families, but Quindlen reminds me that all children have needs, and all children deserve not only an education, but an adult sensitive enough to understand them.

I hope Quindlen lives—and writes—forever, but when she goes, as we all must, she should be made the patron saint of high school teachers.

Highly recommended.

Evelyn in Transit, by David Guterson**

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Maybe we should call it the Harper Lee syndrome; you write one absolutely amazing novel. It becomes iconic, and then, nothing else ever works again. I hope that’s not what has happened to David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars. For whatever reason, his new book, Evelyn in Transit, is a complete wash for me.

My thanks go to W.W. Norton, RB Media, and NetGalley for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

We have two protagonists, Evelyn and Tsering. Evelyn is a curious and somewhat oppositional child in Indiana; Tsering is in Tibet. We see their separate stories in the beginning, but the transitions are abrupt and I cannot find any emotional connection with either of them. Ultimately, they are connected within the story when a group of lamas (people, not llamas) turn up on the now-grown Evelyn’s porch to tell her that her kindergartener is the reincarnation of the Dali lama that has recently died.

The promotional blurb tells us that the story is written in “a spare, precise style of extraordinary beauty, full of surprising humor and luminosity.” I’ll vouch for the “spare” part; I think of it as a “see Spot run” style, reminiscent of early grade school reading texts. The humor and luminosity, however, have eluded me.

 It might have helped to have more of an internal monologue, particularly for Evelyn; she did and said so many things that were surprising and inappropriate, and if I had a better handle on her motivation, she might have seemed more like a seeker and less like an antisocial outlier. Tsering was even worse.

I had access to both the audio and digital review copies; the reader did a competent job, but couldn’t save the narrative. I don’t think anyone could have. I can’t recommend it.

The Old Fire, by Elisa Shua Dusapin***

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Elisa Shua Dusapin is the author of The Old Fire. My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

The promotional materials describe this brief work of literary fiction as the author’s “most personal and moving novel yet.” If that is truly the case, I don’t think I want to read her earlier work. It’s not a terrible novel necessarily, but given the hype, I am a little surprised. Someone else praised it as “subtle,” and I can vouch for its subtlety; but for me, it is a story in which I keep waiting for something to happen, and in the end, I’m still waiting.

In broad contours, it is a story in which our protagonist, Agathe, must return to the tiny hamlet in France in which she was raised following the death of her father. Her sister Vera is still there, but they haven’t seen one another in a long time. Her mother is alive, but the parents split up when she and Vera were children, and they don’t see her. She and Vera must deal with the estate, hence the title.

As Agathe returns to the house where she was raised, there are all sorts of issues hovering in the background. She is pregnant, deciding what to do about it; her sister Vera, who is mute due to some physical but unexplained cause, resents her for moving to New York when they were both still fairly young; Agathe has a partner back in New York that wants a commitment, but she holds him at arm’s length. She used to have a crush on a neighbor in their French village; does she still?

As the book ends, none of these things is addressed much. Agathe and Vera sort through their father’s effects and make decisions, not always agreeing; there’s a great deal of inner monologue; and when Agathe leaves to return to New York, nothing much has changed or been decided about anything. And I am left with questions and more questions. What’s with Vera’s mutism? Why don’t they and their mother talk? Agathe comes to France, and not even a phone call…? What does Agathe even think of the man back in New York that’s waiting for her?

I’m inclined to recommend this book to insomniacs as a sure cure, but it’s probably not that simple. I note that it was a huge hit in France, and has been translated into dozens of languages, yet most English-speaking readers seem as underwhelmed as I am, and so I have a hunch that my lack of enthusiasm may be cultural. But I can only report my own impressions, and my impressions say that this book is a snooze fest.

My Documents, by Kevin Nguyen***-****

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3.5 stars, rounded upwards.

My Documents is the sophomore novel of author Kevin Nguyen. This story reimagines the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, asking instead, what if it was happening now, and what if those imprisoned were of Vietnamese descent?

My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book is available to the public now.

Our protagonists are four young people, all of whom are cousins with the same last name as the author. Ursula is an ambitious journalist living in Manhattan; Jen attends New York University, partly because she hopes to connect more often with Ursula. Alvin is an engineering intern at Google; Duncan is still in high school. When the internment comes, Ursula and Alvin are spared, but Jen and Duncan are forced into a concentration camp.

This book is imaginative, and I liked the characters. We see how the internment affects those that are imprisoned, but also how their internment affects Ursula and Alvin on the outside; ultimately, of course, the family’s dynamics are altered forever.

The humor that is highlighted in the synopsis failed to materialize for me. There was the odd chuckle or two, but no more than I would expect to find in any novel.  This is pretty common. However, I found myself feeling a bit cheated at the end, because there was so much more that could have been done here. I felt as if a real statement could have been made, but the opportunity was squandered.

Nevertheless, I see Nguyen as a promising author, and one whose work I will continue to follow.

The True Happiness Company, by Veena Dinavahi****-*****

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4.5 stars, rounded upwards. Veena Dinavahi’s experience as a member of a cult called The True Happiness Company is so outrageous that if it were written about as fiction, it would be universally panned as ridiculous and unbelievable. But it isn’t fiction; it’s what happened to her. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book is available to the public now.

Veena’s parents are immigrants from India who gave everything that they had in order to provide their children with the best opportunities possible. Between their sacrifices and Veena’s high I.Q., she was admitted to a coveted, highly competitive school that also had a horrifyingly high rate of suicides and suicide attempts due to the intense pressure under which its students labored. When Veena became suicidal, her parents turned to professionals for guidance, but one of the so-called professionals they consulted, the most persuasive and charismatic of them all, was a charlatan. With their life savings neatly stashed in his own bank account, this man, who claimed to be a psychologist but was not, diagnosed Veena as having a borderline personality; once she accepted the diagnosis, “Bob” used it to undermine her instincts of self-protection and what seemed to her to be common sense. She couldn’t be trusted to decide anything for herself, because she was crazy. And thus was this young woman brought under the spell of an insidious conman and sexual predator, one who also used her parents’ unfamiliarity with American culture to gain their acceptance of the things to which their daughter was subjected.

Before she knew it, Veena was married to a young man she didn’t know very well, but who was also susceptible to the charms of this snake oil salesman. She married him because the doctor said to; once this was done, Bob became the third element in their marriage. Both of them spoke to him in person or by phone daily, or even multiple times a day. He resolved every dispute, and he forbade them to resolve anything without involving him first. It is a miracle that Veena was able to find the support and resolve she needed in order to extricate herself and her children from the dungeon of despair he created.

I am quite late with this review; the book came out in May, but it is a harsh read, and I took my time with it. Were it fiction, Veena could have inserted moments of levity or joy to relieve the horror, but it isn’t, and there were none. I would have liked for her to break up some of the roughest bits by flashing forward to bits of her life as it is now, but then, it’s not my story to tell. I’m just glad she and her children are safe, and that she can rebuild her life.

Those that enjoy true crime will be interested in this memoir. Highly recommended to those that have interest in cult stories, and that will willingly endure a rough read.

In the Time of Five Pumpkins, by Alexander McCall Smith*****

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In the Time of Five Pumpkins is the 26th installment of the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries by Alexander McCall Smith. This is hands down my favorite cozy series, and it may very well be my favorite series, period. Precious Ramotswe is our chief protagonist and owner of the business, and her easy-going manner with others and her capacity to smooth over a difficult situation are a breath of fresh air. Of course, Precious is fictional, but she feels real to me. I feel as if I have known her for decades, which in the literary sense, I have. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

As with all of my best loved, long-running mystery series, the joy of reading is only partly to do with the mystery. In fact, I almost think Smith could forget to include a mystery and I might take a good long while to notice; I enjoy greeting the continuing characters that I haven’t seen in some time. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who is married to Precious and runs a garage in the same building where Precious has her office; Mma Potokwane, Precious’s “traditionally built” best friend, who runs an orphanage and always has fruitcake ready when Precious visits; Charlie, the formerly bumbling mechanic who is shaping up nicely as a part time detective trainee; and of course, Mma Makutsi:

Employees who leave it to their employers to promote them may have a long time to wait, but this was not the fate of Mma Makutsi. She had somehow managed to promote herself, first to the role of senior secretary, then without discussing the matter with Mma Ramotswe, to assistant detective, associate detective, associate director, co-director and so on, to the position she had most recently chosen for herself—executive president for development. This was a novel description and had rather puzzled Mma Ramotswe.

Passages such as this one leave me gasping! How many of us, in a similar situation, would allow someone that we had hired to give herself such exalted titles? It’s both bizarre and preposterous. But there’s never a question of salary; no matter what she calls herself, Mma Makutsi makes the same money as before, and no one here is making very much.

The stories usually have more than one thread, and so it is with this one. A woman arrives from the States to meet someone that turned up in her ancestry search, and the agency is hired to help her find them. At the same time, another case involving marital problems, though not the usual sort, is presented. And a third thread has to do with a shady character that has befriended Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Before all is said and done, Charlie has a “Clovis Anderson moment,” which has been a long time coming, and J.L.B. Matekoni saves his creepy new friend from a “government crocodile.”

This is a series that never gets old, and perhaps because the excitement is ramped up just a tick in this one—not too much, we do want to keep it cozy, after all—it may be my favorite so far. Highly recommended to all that love the genre.

Words for My Friends: A Political History of Tupac Shakur***-****

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3.75 stars, rounded up.

Tupac Shakur lived for just 25 years, but he left an outsized legacy. Author Dean Van Nguyen has published a “political history,” a biography of sorts focusing on Tupac’s political ideology and the foundation on which it was formed. My thanks go to NetGalley and Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Van Nguyen begins his narrative with an overview of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s.  This is an area I’ve studied fairly closely, and so there was no new information in it for me, but I could see its value in a community college Black Studies or general history course. Once we’re past that, we enter into Tupac’s family background, and from there forward, his personal and political upbringings are intertwined. His parents were members of the Black Panthers, a militant, armed group of rebels seeking to force equity for Black people in the U.S. from a government that was long on promises and short on substance. There is a tremendous amount of the book given to the history of the Panthers, and most of what is recounted occurs either before Tupac was born, or while he was an infant.

Here’s my takeaway: I have often been curious about the Panthers, whose struggle I knew in broad strokes, but few specifics, and so this is interesting to me. But the book’s title has led me to believe that this book is primarily about Tupac, and we are at around the 40% before he even comes into the narrative. This is my sole complaint about this work, but it’s a significant one. Had the title been clearer that this is really a history of Tupac and the Black Panthers, I probably would have still read it, but because of the way it’s promoted, I feel frustrated when the 20% mark goes on by, then the 30% mark, and apart from a brief reference or two, Tupac isn’t even in it. In fact, we learn more about his mother than we do about him.

Once we do get to the meat of the matter, this is riveting material. What a gifted man he was, and yet he was still coming of age when he died. He loved reading classical literature, and he attended a fine arts high school where he was better able to develop his interests and talents, playing in Shakespearean productions; but as is often the case for children in low-income households, about the time he put down roots and made connections, his mother had to give up their lodgings, and that meant moving to a new town and a new school.

 This happens again and again. Single motherhood is hard anyway, but once you bring crack into it, the game’s all but over. And (here I suppress a primal scream,) because his father isn’t there and his mother is struggling, Tupac believes he must take care of his mother and long, long before he is old enough to bear such a burden. Teachers everywhere have seen that kid. He might be Black, Caucasian, or any other ethnic and racial background; he might be a she, for that matter. But children that take the responsibility that belongs to the head of the household are under a whole lot of stress, and the fracture lines often don’t show in their teens. They look as if they’re handling the job like an adult, often being praised by those in authority for their organization and focus. But—ask a social worker here—when they hit their twenties, that’s when they start falling apart. Because kids cannot be adults. When they are forced into the role, it will break them, sooner or later. And it seems clear to me that this is part of what led to Tupac’s early demise.

There’s a lot of interesting material packed into the relatively small part of the book that he occupies. We learn about the other famous performers he meets and befriends, first in school, then professionally, and about the political ideas he explores, serving for a while as a member and organizer of the local chapter of the Communist Party’s youth group. His willingness to dive deep into ethical and political ideas is reflected in his music, and to my knowledge, there is no other rapper that has included respect for women, along with an overtly pro-choice message, in their recordings. But just as his star begins to rise in earnest, he is killed.

Those considering reading this book should either be ready to read extensively about peripheral issues and events that don’t directly include Tupac, or should be ready to get the book with the intention of skipping a lot of material. As for me, I’m glad I read it.

I’ll Be Right Here, by Amy Bloom***

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I’ve been a reader of Amy Bloom’s novels for decades, and so when I see a new one is coming out, I leap, usually without even checking out the synopsis. Just the author’s name is enough to get me moving. This time was a little different. I began reading, but had trouble engaging, and my mind wandered. I decided to get the audio from the library, once the publication date had come and gone, and that was how I eventually finished it.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

We start out in Europe during World War II. Gazala emigrates from Paris to New York, and becomes friends with a pair of sisters; later Samir, Gazala’s brother, joins her. Now here’s where it gets icky, (to use a highly literary term.) Gazala and Samir become a couple. They don’t tell people they meet that they are related, so they are accepted. Their friends also become involved in—to be charitable—unconventional relationships. In looking back at the synopsis, it’s all right there: “the lawlessness of love.” Hoo boy. It definitely is.

So, after forcing myself to finish listening to this thing, I nearly give it two stars, but the nugget that saves it for me is the concept that occurs when they are grieving a loved one, the notion of a “dead people’s party.” I love thinking about this! I have already started imagining my own such party, having lost too many people I cherished, when my sister dies. Her death is not altogether unexpected, as she was a great deal older than I am and has been in ill health for many years, but it still packs a punch. The thought of my sister’s dead people’s party—complete fantasy, as far as I am concerned, but who cares? Is what has helped me through a dark time.

So Bloom gets an extra star.

Nevertheless, I don’t recommend this thing unless the reader has carefully read the synopsis and is still interested. Yikes! I’ll probably read Bloom again, but this time I’ll be more careful before I commit.