Tag Archives: addiction

Everybody Says It’s Everything, by Xhenet Aliu**-***

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2.5 stars, rounded upwards.

Xhenet (pronounced similar to “Jeanette”) Aliu is the author of Brass, the award-winning debut novel that was one of my favorites of 2018. When I saw that she had a new book, Everybody Says It’s Everything, I was so excited that I bounced up and down in my desk chair. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review; sadly, I found this book disappointing. The sophomore slump is real, friends.

Our story centers—to the extent that it has a center—on adopted twins, Drita and Pete, who’ve been leading quintessential American lives. Drita was a star student, and is in the midst of graduate studies when she is called home to care for her mother; Pete—actually Petrit—has been in various sorts of trouble, and now his girlfriend and son have landed with Drita looking for help, since they aren’t getting any from Pete. The story takes us through their native Albanian roots and heritage, through the war in Kosovo, and through Pete’s discouragement, hardship, and addiction.

I have a hard time connecting with any of these characters. The dialogue drags, and the poignant qualities that I found in Brass are nowhere to be found. Both are sad stories, but the protagonist in Brass had my whole heart and my full attention, whereas these characters left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on one more group of depressed, underserved people, but also edging towards the door. I was just straight up bored, a word I rarely use in reviews. I continued all the way through because I was sure that it would turn brilliant any minute; it never did.

I look forward to seeing what this author writes next, because she has proven that she has the ability to connect with readers in general and me in particular, but I can’t recommend this book to you.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe****

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Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe, is a bold, inventive, and very funny novel about a young woman cut adrift in a difficult, expensive world. My thanks go to NetGalley and William Morrow for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Margo is the daughter of a Hooters waitress and a former pro wrestler, an absentee father with a family of his own; her mother had been his woman on the side. Consequently, Margo has always understood that she would have to hit the ground running when she grew up, and so she’s enrolled in a junior college. When the brief affair with her English professor leaves her pregnant, she has nobody reliable to advise her. The women she confides in urge her to terminate the pregnancy, and of course, the professor does, too; yet Margo likes the idea of becoming a mother, and it’s her fetus. Nobody can make her do anything. She decides to keep it.

Her mother is about to marry a man with money and conservative values, and she sees Margo as a loose cannon that just might upset the whole ship, so she tells her to terminate or be cut off.

Wow, Mom. Really?

Margo’s roommates hadn’t agreed to share an apartment with a baby. They need to sleep! They have to get up early!

Early on, I’m rolling my eyes. Part of me is thinking that Margo is about as dumb as they come; part of me is wondering why no author in this entire world is writing—or, more likely, why no major publishing house is publishing—novels in which a young woman chooses to have an abortion and take back her body and her life. But I’m overthinking, because soon, Margo—who after all, is just young, naïve, and rudderless—admits her error. She loves her little boy, but she had no idea he would be so expensive, or that motherhood would be so difficult. She tells her father, who re-enters her life as her mother steps away,

 “’I shouldn’t have had him,’ as though some rip cord had been pulled inside her. ‘I know that, okay? Everyone told me it would ruin my life and it did. They were right, and I was stupid, and I didn’t get it. Okay? But now I’m here.’ And her father, who strangely enough becomes the most reliable adult in her life, says, ‘Yes. Now we’re here.’”

Later, Margo will comment that nothing can make a person pro-choice like having a baby.

Margo has been waiting tables, but she can’t find child care, and when she brings the baby to work, she’s fired. And the truth is, she doesn’t like leaving her baby. Then one day, while looking at her naked self in a full length mirror, she observes that she has huge boobs for the first time in her life. Men would pay to see this. She opens an account on OnlyFans.

And so this controversial choice becomes the crux of the story. Some friends reject her, and her mother has really had it with her now. But there are a lot of meaty conversations that are thought provoking, and so, even though this old lady schoolteacher reviewer is mighty uncomfortable reading about an online sex worker’s film process, there are related questions that cannot be ignored. For example, Jinx—her father—advises her against it, saying that she shouldn’t get mixed up with these kinds of girls, and she asks him, “What are ‘those kinds of girls’?” And it’s true. A man can send his dick pix out into the world any number of times and places, and whereas many will consider these gross, or obscene, which they are, how many people will condemn the guy’s entire character, his moral fiber, for having done it? So the double standard is screaming to be recognized.

Margo goes through a lot of grief, defending custody of her son when the skeevy professor resurfaces, as well as having to deal with housing crises and other problems. But the central issue lurking in the shadows is that of a young mother choosing sex work as a career.

I have to tell you quite frankly that I was way out of my comfort zone through much of this book. I am probably not part of its target audience, despite the fact that I was approached to cover it. Partway in, I considered not finishing it, but the quality of the writing is so strong that I kept going, and I’m glad I did.

The story is told from a third person omnipotent perspective, but it shifts in a surprising and funny way, and that’s all I will say about that, lest I ruin it. I wonder from time to time if we have an unreliable narrator, but this is more than that. This unusual point of view a brave choice, and I think she carries it off well.

There are a lot of worthwhile discussions that can spring from this novel; it’s fertile territory, if you’ll pardon the expression, for book clubs. It’s also being adapted for Apple TV. I recommend this book for any feminist that likes to laugh, and isn’t afraid to think outside the box.

After Annie, by Anna Quindlen*****

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After Annie tells the story of a family that is changed by the sudden death of the mother, a woman still in her thirties. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public Tuesday, February 27, 2024.

I’ve read a number of books by this author, and I have come to notice a pattern. I read the synopsis, like the sentence I used to begin this review. I see what it’s about and shrug. Doesn’t sound like it would be all that special, but hey, it’s Quindlen, and I have liked her work before, so let’s give it a shot. After all, in past novels, the topics also didn’t seem engaging at the outset. One novel is about a family being forced to relocate due to eminent domain; another has to do with parking spaces in New York City. There’s a memoir about grandparenting, and another about—I kid you not—her dog. Nothing here seems all that appealing.

Yet in some ways, it is the very ordinariness of her subjects that draws us in. So many of us have had to move when we didn’t want to, and so we fought it; or we became so angry with a neighbor’s thoughtlessness that we fantasized about terrible revenge; or we dealt with a death that came out of the blue, striking down someone that was perfectly healthy, or that seemed to be. If we haven’t done any of these things, chances are excellent that someone else we care about has. By tapping into every day experiences and crises of various sizes, Quindlen finds commonalities.

But perhaps the most important feature of her books, particularly her novels, is the way that she crafts characters that are so visceral we would know them if we saw them on the street. Young Ali, the daughter who’s just beginning middle school, yet suddenly finds herself burdened by all of the things her mother did for the family, from child care to meals to housework, is so real to me that I nearly climb inside of her skin, and when Annie’s best buddy tries to tell Bill, Annie’s husband, Ali’s dad, that this isn’t okay and he blows her off, I want to cry out. We can see that he’s behaving selfishly, whether he knows it or not, because he is so poleaxed with grief. It’s hard to prepare a meal when you can’t stop crying. Hell, Bill can hardly go into the kitchen, because that’s where she died.

Grief was like spring, maybe. You thought you were getting out from under it, and then it came roaring back. And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.

I began reading this story because I like the author, but it also serves as a grief book. I found this out when my sister died about halfway through. Unlike Annie, my sister was not in the prime of her life, nor was her death unexpected. She’d been horribly ill and in great pain for years on end. Her death was a relief, ending her pain, and ending the anguish of others that had been constantly seeing her that way, helpless to improve her life in any way. So I am not poleaxed like poor Bill. She didn’t leave behind a houseful of small children and a middle schooler trying to pick up all of the pieces. She didn’t have a six year old who would explain to everyone that his mommy wouldn’t be dead anymore once she came home from the hospital. But what I am saying is that I find this book more soothing than I would have guessed. If you or someone near to you is dealing with loss, After Annie may help you too.

Highly recommended.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

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“’Do you worry about becoming a cliché? ‘

“’How do you mean?’

“’Another death-obsessed Iranian man?’”

My thanks go to Doubleday and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review this singular debut novel. This book is for sale now.

Our protagonist is Cyrus, an Iranian immigrant who comes to live in the U.S. as an infant. He is raised by his father, Ali; his mother’s plane was shot down shortly after Cyrus was born, an accident on the part of the U.S. military. His father dies suddenly while he is away at college, leaving him rootless. He spends a lot of time anguishing over death, wondering what is worth dying for. He doesn’t want to waste his “one good death.” Later, he points out that “If I died trying to kill a genocidal dictator tomorrow, the news wouldn’t say a leftist American made a measured and principled sacrifice for the good of his species. The news would say an Iranian terrorist attempted a state assassination. “

And you know that he’s right.

The thing that attracted me to this story is its difference from everything else that I have read. Persians almost never show up in American novels, and when they do, the Persian is the other, the bad or weird person, pretty much like the quote above suggests. So I was all in.

However, I have to say that the amount of angsty inner dialogue makes this a slooow read in places. There is also dialogue between Cyrus and friends, but most of it basically the same thing with a different format. I was primed for humor, since that’s how the book is being promoted, but didn’t find much of it.

The story wakes up a bit when Cyrus leaves Indiana for New York, but the writing remains inconsistent, and the transitions are sometimes a bit ragged.

The revelation about his mother, which occurs toward the end of the story, is startling, and I didn’t see it coming, but it also presents a credibility issue; I won’t go into details here, because it would be a spoiler. Still, apart from this one reservation, the ending is nicely rendered.

Akbar is an interesting writer, and I look forward to seeing what he writes next.

The Meth Lunches, by Kim Foster****

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Kim Foster and her husband, David, create a food pantry in front of their house—and later, inside it—during the pandemic. It begins with the employment of one hungry handyman who’s also an addict, and from there, it mushrooms. This is her memoir of that time, and also a philosophical treatise on poverty and hunger in the United States.

My thanks go to Net Galley, RB Media, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

When Foster’s family moves from New York to Las Vegas, one of the first thing she notices is the meth. It’s everywhere. Perhaps it is the milder weather; addicts in New York have to find a spot out of the weather during much of the year, but Vegas is in the desert, mild enough for the unhoused to sleep just about anywhere, warm enough that addicts don’t have to hide themselves away to get high.

The pandemic hits Vegas hard. So many people make their living from some aspect of the entertainment business, and for a while, it is a dead industry. And so, after hiring a man with an obvious dependency to do work on their property—work that he never completes—and hearing his story, the Fosters decide to convert the little free library in front of their home to a little free pantry. And from there, it mushrooms.

The pantry begins small, but Foster is a chef, and she can’t stand the notion of just putting out pre-packaged crap when she can cook food with fresh ingredients that will make others feel better. And as the book takes off, I momentarily regret taking this galley, because I generally hate stories that drop recipes into the middle of the plot. If I want cooking information, I’d rather go to a cookbook, or to a recipe website. And it was right there in the title, after all: The Meth Lunches. It’s pretty obvious from the get go that lunch is going to be juxtaposed with social issues.

But as the story continues, I don’t hate it after all. For one thing, this whole book is nonfiction. There’s no plot that is sidelined by a recipe. The whole point is that that Foster considers food, and the act of feeding others, to be a sort of therapy. She makes the point well.

Eventually, the scale of the operation becomes mind boggling. Multiple freezers to hold meat; trucks that deliver food. The pantry begins as an out-of-pocket gift from the Fosters to the down and out of Las Vegas, occasionally supplemented via Venmo from friends, when they are able to help. Inevitably, the pantry finds its way into the local media, and networks form with other food banks and nonprofits.

In between all of this, Foster develops relationships with some of the people that come by. She and her husband are foster parents—ironic, given their name, right? And we hear not only about what the children they house and love have experienced, but also about the children’s biological families. Because although it’s officially discouraged, Kim strongly feels that the children heal best if their biological parents are in their lives in whatever limited way is possible. So before we know it, she is deeply involved with some horribly dysfunctional adults as well. And it is the stories she tells about interacting with them and the children, two of whom she and David eventually adopt, that make this story so riveting.

At the outset, she intends for the pantry to be a resource for local families that have homes and kitchens, but whose finances have taken a huge hit due to the pandemic. The very poor already have resources, she reasons. But of course, the homeless find her, and she doesn’t turn them away.

And here is the rub, the only aspect of this book that I dislike. She tells us that one unhoused person in four is mentally ill, and she believes that this official figure is low, at least in Las Vegas. And then she talks about those with addiction issues.

But what she never gets around to discussing at all—unless she does it so briefly that I miss it—is the unhoused people that are not chemically dependent on anything, whose mental health is stable, but who don’t have a permanent residence because they straight-up ran out of money. To hear her tell it, you’d think they don’t exist, and you know that’s not so. So many American families live from paycheck to paycheck, even when the economy is said to be booming. And I feel that she has left these people without faces or voices. And that, in turn, perpetuates a stereotype, the one that suggests that everyone that is homeless is there because they’re either crazy or junkies or both. I use the offensive terms intentionally, because that’s how the stereotype works. 

And the stereotype in turn begets a lie, the insinuation that nobody has to be unhoused. Don’t use drugs. Get mental health care. Get over yourself. And whereas I can see that Foster doesn’t intend to promote such thinking, and in fact takes a hard line over poverty existing at all in such a wealthy nation, when she doesn’t give space to the many, many individuals and families that are out there because the wage earner was laid off, or because they were just squeaking by but then the rent increased, it does distort her overall picture. I don’t come away from this book thinking that most of the homeless are not using meth or any other dangerous, life-altering street drugs, even though it’s true.

Nevertheless, this is a poignant, stirring tale that won’t be told by anyone else, because it can’t be, and bearing in mind the caveats above, I recommend it to you, both as audio and print.

Elvis and Me, by Priscilla Presley****

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Priscilla Presley is the ex-wife of the king of Rock and Roll. I was a teenager when he died, and neither I nor most of my peers were fans; in the event his name did come up, we’d invariably ask, “Wait. Do you mean young hot Elvis, or old pudgy Elvis?” But I do love a good memoir, and those written by or about musicians are high on my list. My thanks go to Net Galley and Macmillan Audio for the review copy. This audio version of the author’s 1985 memoir is for sale now.

The relationship between Priscilla and Elvis took place in a completely different time, with completely different sexual mores and assumptions. That said, this was still a truly messed up pairing. Today, Elvis would probably be considered a predator, but within the context of the American South in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was regarded as a romantic, and women threw themselves at his feet. A quick online peek at old film and television clippings says it all.

Priscilla grew up in a strict but loving household. Her stepfather, the only father she knew, since her own died when she was an infant, was a military man, and so the family moved often. It was while they were stationed in Germany that one of Elvis’s employees saw Priscilla and invited her to meet with Elvis, who was doing his own tour of duty.

I have to feel for the bind her parents were in. On the one hand, she was just fourteen years old, and Presley was twenty-four, a grown man. On the other hand, if they refused to let her go, she would never have forgiven them; this was an invitation that literally millions of girls yearned for. Seeking a happy medium, her stepdad set boundaries: they were to be chaperoned, never alone together, and he wanted her home at a certain time. He groused about the fact that someone other than Elvis would be transporting her, but the reason was a legitimate one: Elvis could not drive himself anywhere without the car being mobbed. It was genuinely unsafe.

Rather than being the single event that the family anticipated, Elvis made their visits regular ones; when her parents balked, Elvis spoke to them personally, turning all of his charismatic charm on them, and telling them everything they wanted to hear. Most of it was untrue, of course, but the one thing he adhered to was not having sexual intercourse. During this time period, the Madonna-Whore dichotomy was alive and well, and any girl or woman known to have sex outside of marriage was likely to be ostracized by former friends and in some cases, family. It’s hard to imagine now, but at that time, no birth control pill had been invented, and a pregnancy outside of marriage was likely to ruin a young woman’s entire life.

Priscilla reads this memoir to us herself, and that makes it much more fun to hear. As we age our faces and our bodies change a lot, but our speaking voices change very little. Remembering some of the silly moments from that time, the author lets out a brief, girlish giggle, and it’s almost impossible to believe that she is now a grandmother.

Priscilla acknowledges that this was a monstrously unequal relationship. Elvis dictated whom she could talk to, what she wore, and sometimes even what room in the house she was supposed to be in. At one point, when he is going to be touring for months on end and she will be left at home with his grandmother, she goes out and gets a job. She’s so proud of herself. He makes her quit immediately. When he phones from the road, she had by God better be there. Priscilla compares this to Pygmalion. He has all the power, and she is in his thrall before she has even had a chance to grow up.

I have read two other Elvis biographies, and as dreadful as all of this sounds, the other authors were less gentle. In fact, this is part of Priscilla’s stated reason for deciding to tell her own story.

There are advantages to reading this particular biography. The official version of events is often what is published, but Priscilla is positioned to know the real story, more often than not. For example: when Elvis is drafted, the official story is that, although stars of his caliber are often offered soft assignments that involve singing to the troops, or making inspirational training films, Elvis insisted on doing the same job as every other American man.  On the other hand, Priscilla states that this is all his manager’s doing, because it will make Elvis appear noble. Enough new songs were taped in advance for there to be regular new releases on the radio throughout his tour of duty; toward the end, Elvis feigns illness because he’d prefer to be in the hospital being swarmed by nurses than marching around and getting dirty.

Her memory of Elvis, despite everything he put her through, is mostly a tender one. The spiral that led to his death, his issues with mental health, back before much was known, coupled with the immense number of strong prescription drugs he used to wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night—or to NOT go to sleep at all, and just stay up, night after night—set him up for relationships with unscrupulous characters, and nobody could rein him in, because he was the King.

Recommended to those that like vintage rock music or well-written memoirs of famous musicians.

Violeta, by Isabel Allende*****

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Violeta is an epic tale that spans, along with its protagonist, a century-long period that begins during the Spanish Flu and ends with our modern day pandemic. Technically, then, it is part of the growing body of pandemic literature, but as is always true for Allende’s novels, it is so much more.

I received a review copy, courtesy of Net Galley and Random House Ballantine, but had I not, I’d have found a way to read this glorious story anyway. It’s available to the public now.

Violeta is born to wealth and privilege, the only daughter in a large family. Schooled at home by a nanny, sequestered in a mansion with servants to do her bidding, she is unaware that her luxurious standard of living comes at a tremendous cost to others. Then the market drops, and her father, who has overextended himself with unwise investments, is ruined. Most of her brothers are already grown and gone, but one brother, Jose Antonio, had remained at home, groomed by their father to take over the business one day. “He was the model son, and he was sick of it.” After their father’s abrupt departure, Jose Antonio finds himself responsible for the family; with the local populace in a state of near insurrection, the only thing left to do is to take his family—including Violeta—and leave town. They remove themselves to a distant farm owned by poor but generous friends, and they learn to make do as they’ve never done before.

We follow Violeta through her early marriage to a German immigrant who was “so bland and boring that he inspired instant trust,” and then through a long, tempestuous relationship with a handsome thug named Julian, who makes his fortune in dark, horrible ways involving illegal substances, the CIA, and the Mafia. And here, Allende’s startling sense of humor is in full brilliant flower, as she describes his retrieval of ill gotten funds from the septic tank of their Florida home:

He pulled a filthy bag from the hole, dragged it to the kitchen and poured the contents out on the floor; rolls of wet bills covered in poop. Gagging, I saw that Julian planned to clean the money in our washing machine. “No! Don’t even think about it!” I shouted hysterically. He must’ve understood that I was willing to draw blood to stop him, because I’d instinctively grabbed the largest knife in the kitchen. “Okay, Violeta, calm down,” he begged, frightened for the first time in his life. He made a call, and a short while later we had two mafia goons at our disposal. We went to a laundromat and the gangsters paid everyone to leave. Then the men stood guard as Julian washed the poop-covered bills. After that he had to dry them and pack them in a bag. He brought me along because he had no idea how to operate the machines. “Now I understand what money laundering is…”

As with all or most of Allende’s protagonists, Violeta becomes a strong woman that can stand on her own, and who picks and chooses the men she wants to be with. She is beautiful, intelligent, and ends up with piles of her own money that she has earned in an ethical manner. And here is my one, very small issue with this book; just once I would like to see an Allende main character that doesn’t get rich, but is fine anyway.

I am late in reviewing this book, but it’s important not to try to rush through a story such as this one, because the literary alchemy Allende creates is the sort that must be appreciated at one’s leisure. Her novels are not page turners; they don’t try to be. Instead, Violeta is the sort of book you take with you on a spa date, or to your very own bathtub with bubbles, candles, and your favorite beverage.

Highly recommended to feminist readers that enjoy top quality literary fiction.

Chevy in the Hole, by Kelsey Ronan***-****

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3.5 stars, rounded up. Chevy in the Hole is Kelsey Ronan’s debut novel. I love strong working class fiction, and the title and book cover spoke to me. But while it shows a good deal of promise, it’s also a cautionary example of how, in trying to do too much, one can do too little. My thanks go to Net Galley and Henry Holt for the review copies. This book is for sale today.

The protagonists are Gus Molloy, who is Caucasian, and Monae Livingston, who is Black. The book opens as Gus is being revived with Narcan on the floor of a dirty restroom in Detroit. We follow him as he meets Monae, a student working at a farm outside of Flint. Their stories are told alternately with bits and pieces of the lives of their predecessors.  

The story is promoted as a love letter to Flint, and a tribute to the resilience of its people; it’s a story of “love and betrayal, race and family.” And we do surely see all of those things, but as soon as one aspect or another is touched on, I wink and poof, it’s gone. Gus and Monae are both sympathetic characters, and I can’t help pulling for them, but I suspect the author could have developed them more fully had we not spent so much time and detail on fragments of their parents, grandparents and so on.

If the author’s purpose is to use these characters from the past to showcase the various struggles through which Flint has gone—sit-down strikes, Civil Rights marches, and now, this horrifying industrial sludge that has polluted the town’s drinking water—it could have been done in a paragraph or two, or through some other device than shifting the point of view. The frequent changes of character and time period make it confusing as heck, particularly while listening to the audio version; that’s a shame, because Janina Edwards is a warm, convincing reader.

But we frequently shift from one protagonist to the other, even after they are married, and all of these people from the past have to be sorted by both time period, and by which protagonist they are related to.  A story like this should flow. As it is, it’s work listening to it, and had I not been granted a digital review copy as well to refer to, I might have given up.

My other frustration is that both the labor history and the Civil Rights issues—with Black people shut out of company housing in the past, and the issues with cop violence as well as the pollution that is visited most within the Black community—are huge. The pollution problem is immense, and ties back into both of the other issues. This book could be a powerhouse, a call for change to reward to the plucky souls that have stuck with this place through hell and high, toxic water. Instead they present almost like postcards; oh, look at this! Now look at that! Okay, never mind, let’s go on back to the present.

That being said, the author’s mission is an ambitious one, and her word smithery is of high caliber. I look forward to seeing what else she publishes.

If you choose to read this book, I recommend using the printed word, whether digitally or as a physical copy.

Three Girls From Bronzeville, by Dawn Turner****

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Dawn Turner is an award-winning journalist who grew up in Bronzeville, the historic home of the Black Community in the south end of Chicago. My thanks go to Simon and Schuster and Edelweiss for the invitation to read and review; I also extend my apology for missing the date of publication. This well written memoir is for sale now.

Turner looks back at her life through the lens of sisterhood. The two other girls mentioned in the title are her younger sister, Kim, and her best friend, Debra, whom she meets in elementary school. She takes us through the benchmarks of her life in a narrative that is both intimate and conversational, but that also features a keen depth of analysis, as she examines their experiences with regard to race, gender, social class, and of course, a few random, intangible but significant aspects of their experiences.

I enjoyed this book. There’s some terrific humor—for example, as a child, Dawn ascertains that a trip to the hospital is the equivalent of a death sentence, and when she needs a tonsillectomy, she gives away her most prized possessions, explaining that she is “going home to be with the Lord.”

And…about that. The humor is terrific, but the Lord dominates this story in a way that makes me uncomfortable, with passages that go far beyond the brief and the pithy. It’s her story, and she should tell it the way she chooses, but the almost constant religious references make this more of a Christian memoir than one for general audiences. It has a lot of nice moments and is told by a skillful scribe, but at the same time, I’m not sure I’d read another memoir of hers, should she choose to write it, because I find these frequent references tiresome. I have to wonder if the story would be any less authentic if this aspect were included with a gentler hand.

There are lots of meaty issues, thought provoking and common to the experience of a great many people. At one point, for example, she gives a speech at school, and although it is exhilarating and more than successful, Debra passes her a note asking why she sounds white when she speaks to an audience. Later, as an adult, Dawn and her husband confront other choices. Is it better to get a house in a low crime area that is mostly Caucasian, or should one stay in the Black community, even if there are fewer opportunities for their child there? Then the same issue arises regarding school choice. There are many other thought-provoking situations, but I’ll leave you to find these on your own.

This is a powerful memoir written by an accomplished wordsmith. For those that can read it with Jesus riding shotgun, this book is recommended.

When These Mountains Burn, by David Joy*****

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David Joy writes some of the best Grit Lit published in the U.S. of A, and if you haven’t read him yet, it’s time to get started. This soaring, wrenching tale of addiction, community dysfunction, and miserable unrelenting poverty delivers some hard truths about the distribution of wealth in this country, and about the uneven way that justice plays out. Lucky me, I read it free and early; my thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the review copy. It’s for sale today.

Ray Mathis is a big man with a big burden. His wife, Doris, has been dead for three years, but his grief hasn’t ebbed. A stoic man, he goes in and out of every day carrying out necessary tasks, but he feels as if his arm is missing, all the time. His companionship comes solely from his old hunting beagle, Tommy Two-Ton. His only child is Ricky, and although Ricky is in his forties, Ray still thinks of him as “the boy.” When the boy comes home, Ray is suffused with a sense of dread. Ricky is a hardcore addict, and all those stories you were told in junior high health class are true: a junkie has no loyalties and no shame great enough to override his need for the substance he’s come to crave. When he sees that Ricky is home for a visit, Ray’s first instinct is to check his few valuables that haven’t been stolen and pawned yet to see if they’ve vanished.

Is this all too familiar to some of you? Because it hit close to home for me.

Not long after he arrives, Ricky is gone again, and that’s not unusual; but later he gets a phone call from someone he doesn’t know. The caller says that Ricky has failed to meet a payment and will die if Ray doesn’t pay up. Because Ricky has no shame, he has told them exactly how much is in his father’s savings account. And though he understands that it’s only going to postpone the inevitable, Ray pays up, but he tells the men that collect that he will be back for them if they ever sell to his son again. And when Ricky is back on opiates before he has even recovered from the savage beating administered by the dealer’s goons, Ray tells him, “I’ve thrown you ropes till my arms is give out, and I ain’t got no more to throw.”                 `               “            

Meanwhile, our second protagonist, Denny Rattler, a Cherokee burglar, is arrested and offered treatment for his own addiction, but he declines. It turns out that the very purest heroin is sold on the Cherokee Reservation, and so jurisdictional issues complicate law enforcement. Still worse, there are dirty cops right on the other side of the state line. Denny finds himself in the middle of it all.

One of the nastiest villains in literature is Walter Freeman, who goes by “Watty.” “I ain’t calling you that,” Ray tells him. “That’s the stupidest fucking name I ever heard.” Ray confronts Watty after his son’s death to deliver some “backwoods justice,” but Watty is entirely unmoved. He doesn’t even remember Ricky. He leaves the individual users to the minions beneath him. He tells the bereaved father, “Your son is small potatoes. They’re all small potatoes. It’s too much of a headache, dealing with junkies.”

It’s forest fire season in the Appalachian Mountains, and as the conflict between Ray and Watty, between Watty and local law enforcement, and among the addicts, law enforcement and Watty build, a conflagration begins on the reservation, encompassing the “Outlet Mall,” where drugs are sold.  The entire ordeal rises to a fever pitch that leaves me sitting forward, as if the outcome is just beyond my physical reach. At one point I am sure everyone will die, and I tell myself I’ll be okay as long as nothing happens to Tommy Two-Ton.

What Joy does with the conclusion is tremendously satisfying. When I reviewed his last book, I felt as if he had wimped out on the ending, but this time it’s rock solid. It isn’t predictable, yet there are no new people or facts introduced at the last minute to prevent us from foreseeing the outcome, either.

In fact, this may be his best book yet.

I’ll offer a final word about genre. This book is billed as Crime Fiction, and that’s not how I see it. I consider this novel to be gritty Southern Fiction at its finest. The fact that it happens to involve crime as an integral part of the story is almost beside the point. But call it what you will, this book is one of the year’s best, and you should get it and read it.