Hello, GCNO readers! Each January I like to share what I’ve read during the past year. This year two good reader friends and I began meeting monthly not as a book club, but to suggest books to each other. There are some books on my list that I probably would not have read without their suggestion, but I enjoyed them all. Remarkably Bright Creatures is one of them.
My favorite book for 2024 is Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. You just have to read it. It’s available at the Jefferson public library. There are many memoirs listed under the non-fiction header. The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner is my favorite non-fiction, although it’s almost painful to read at times. You’ll find it in Bridges and on Libby through your local library.
Fiction
Dear Evan Hansen, The Novel, Val Emmich. Evan Hansen, a clinically depressed and anxious teen, finds himself the center of a school-wide movement after he assumes the role of the secret best friend of a classmate who commits suicide. The role is based on lies and it becomes increasingly complicated to keep the story going. The book is for young adults and explores grief, authenticity, and the struggle for belonging. (2018)
The Children’s Blizzard, Melanie Benjamin. January 12, 1888, began in South Dakota unseasonably warm, giving the immigrants claiming land as Homesteaders a chance to air out their heavy winter coats and to do outdoor chores. A blizzard struck quickly, dropping temperatures and delivering blinding snow within only a few minutes. Sister schoolteachers Gerda, age 18, and Raina, age 16, made different decisions about getting their students home; one became a heroine, the other a guilt-ridden outcast. The challenges Norwegian immigrants faced play a big role in the story. (2021) Note: I paired this with David Laskin’s book of the same title for the Jefferson public library adult winter reading program.
The Journey of Karoline Olsen, Ann Hanigan Kotz. Norwegian immigrants Kristoffer and Karoline Olsen face the travails of trying to build a life from very little except a small piece of Iowa prairie. Two threads are woven through the story – the challenge of eking out a living and that of staying married to a spouse you barely knew when you married. (2023)
The Orphan’s Tale, Pam Jenoff. Noa, age 16, lives as an outcast at a railroad station after bearing the son of a Nazi soldier. She impulsively takes an infant boy from a boxcar full of babies taken by the Nazis from their Jewish parents. The baby reminds her of her own son, who was taken from her at birth. Noa finds her way to a German circus, where she and the baby, Theo, are given refuge. However, she must become a trapeze aerialist to legitimize her position there. She is trained by Astrid, an accomplished aerialist from a disbanded Jewish circus, also “in hiding” in the circus. (2017)
The Good Divide, Kali VanBaale. Set on a Wisconsin dairy farm with two identical houses facing each other across a driveway, the story is of insecure Jean, who was raised by her alcoholic father. After moving from place to place every time he got behind on the farm rent, they settled in Chickering. There she met the Krenshaw family. She married solid, hardworking Jim Krenshaw, although she was always drawn to his flashier brother Tommy. She embraced farm life while keeping secrets about herself, particularly her addiction to self-harm, and her love for Tommy. The storytelling is heartbreakingly honest and filled with Jean’s struggle to be content with what she has rather than yearning for what she doesn’t have. (2016)
Plainsong, Kent Haruf. The story of pregnant teen Victoria, older bachelor brothers and farm partners Harold and Raymond, and school teacher Tom Guthrie and his sons Bobby and Ike forming a pseudo family. They’re plain people living in the plain town of Holt, CO. Haruf writes in a plain style, omitting quotation marks. (1999)
Around the Next Corner, Elizabeth Wrenn. A rather predictable story of Deena Munger, whose marriage is suffering from boredom and fatigue, until she decides to train a puppy that will become a leader dog for a blind person. The dog helps her reconnect with herself, her children, and finally her husband. (2006).
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett. The Covid pandemic has brought Lara and Joe’s three college-aged daughters home to the family’s cherry orchard. The daughters use their time to probe the mother’s short career as an actor and her romance with a flashy Hollywood star that began when they performed in a summer stock theatre production of Our Town. The story of the past romance and present marital and family relationships are expertly woven together. An excellent read. (2023)
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt. A quirky story of a giant Pacific octopus Marcellus, on display in an aquarium, who makes friends with Tova, the lonely widow night cleaning woman. Marcellus leads Tova to find a grandson she didn’t know she had, the son of her own son who died the night before his high school graduation. An involved story with many separate threads until Van Pelt ties them together in the last few chapters. A great summertime read. (2022)
Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger. The story’s narrator Frank tells of the summer of 1961, when he was 13 years old and living in a small town in Minnesota where his father was the Methodist minister. The summer begins with the death of a special needs child on the railroad trestle, followed by the death of a transient soon after. Three more deaths follow, including the murder of Frank’s 18-year-old sister. The story tells of the role of faith, wisdom and acceptance in coming into adult life. Another excellent read from Krueger, with the same attention to how characters interact with the setting that he demonstrated in This Tender Land. (2013)
Uncommon Type: Some stories, Tom Hanks. A collection of 17 short stories by Tom Hanks, better known as an actor. The first and last stories use the same characters. The other stories include characters ranging from a Bulgarian who fled from Communists in Europe to New York City, to a young man on his 19th birthday learning his father was having an affair with a woman not his mother. The stories demonstrate a depth of understanding of human emotions, fears and loyalties that Hanks demonstrates in his acting. The stories are loosely tied together with a reference to a typewriter in each one, hence the title of the collection. A very enjoyable read. (2017)
Into the Free, Julie Cantrell. Millie struggles to understand and trust genuine relationships, including a relationship with God, as she grows up seeing her father, a rodeo bull rider, beat her mother. Her father is killed by a bull the first (only) time Millie sees him perform. Her drug-addicted mother dies soon after, leaving Millie, an orphan at age 14, to figure things out on her own. Cantrell creates the setting – rural Mississippi, 1936 – 1942 – very well, and the rather involved story line is easy to follow. (2012)
Above the Waterfall, Ron Rash. Set in the mountains of North Carolina, the story tells of Sheriff Les, just one week away from retirement, his efforts to deal with the damage crystal meth is wreaking on his county and the people who live there, and his relationship with Becky Shytle, a solitary woman who was deeply scarred when she witnessed a school shooting as a girl. During his last week he must solve a crime that involves people he has known all his life, including old Gerald, who Becky has come to care for like a father. The story is interspersed with very poetic descriptions of the surrounding nature. (2015)
Okoboji, Peter Davidson. Handsome beach boy movie star Alex wants a break from his chaotic life, so he throws a dart at a map and hits Okoboji, Iowa. He disguises himself and sets off for Okoboji, where he quickly falls for the one woman who doesn’t flirt with him. He is under a deadline to get her to love him before he must return to California. The story is silly and predictable, and the author works so hard to make the setting realistic for Okoboji that it slows the pace. The 35-cents I paid for the book at a bargain shop may have been too much. (2005)
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton. In a book that has become a classic for our time, Hinton tells her own story of growing up as a “greaser”, looked down on by the more advantaged “Socs”. With the action of the story coming from a fight between Socs and Greasers during which Johnny, best friend of narrator Pony Boy, kills a Soc, the heart and meat of the story is the relationships between Pony Boy, his brothers, the other Greasers, and their world. I first read this story in my eighth grade English class in 1971. I picked it up to read this time as Greene County eighth graders were reading it in their English class. I enjoyed the book more as an adult than as a teen. (1967)
The River We Remember, William Kent Krueger. Another whodunit novel, similar to Krueger’s “Ordinary Grace” in setting and plot. Krueger explores bigotry against Native Americans and Japanese immigrants in the 1960s as Noah Bluestone is charged with the murder of a man most people in Black Earth County thought probably deserved to be dead. Sheriff Brody Dern, the central character in the book, works to either prove or disprove Bluestone as the murderer. (2023)
Exit Signs, David H. Reinarz. A collection of 13 short stories, all featuring characters named for Iowa towns. Reinarz’s voice is easy to read, although a few of the stories are difficult to follow. (2019)
James, Percival Everett. A retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Fin through the eyes of Jim, James, the runaway slave who travels with Huck. James can read and write, and speaks two different languages – the Negro dialect of English used by slaves, and the upper caste English used by the well-educated. The story is very direct with passages about the punishment/torture of slaves while James points out that enslaved people have the same emotions as free people. An interesting read. (2024)
None of This Is True, Lisa Jewell. A dark, suspenseful story of two women who meet by chance on their shared birthday – Alix, a successful podcaster ready to start a new project, and Josie, who asks Alix to feature her in a podcast about women breaking from their own mold to start a new life. Alix agrees to feature Josie, and as Josie shares her version of her life, Alix must figure out who abuses whom and what of everything Josie tells her is truth. A total page turner. (2023)
Non-fiction
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, Kate Clifford Larson. Rosemary, the third of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children, was born in 1918. Her mother noticed developmental differences by the time she was a toddler, but she went to school with her siblings and repeated early grades. The book details the Kennedys’ efforts to keep her mental retardation secret, to the point of her father having a lobotomy done on her at the age of 21. The lobotomy left Rosemary unable to walk or talk; she was totally dependent on others until she died at age 86. The book also tells of the Kennedys’ support for programs and legislation to support services, research and accommodations for intellectually and physically challenged individuals. (2015)
Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, Nina Totenberg. In 1971, Nina Totenberg, a journalist for The National Observer, called Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then director of the Women’s Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, for information about the brief Bader Ginsburg had written for the Supreme Court’s landmark case Reed v. Reed, the case that settled that equal protection of the law could not be denied on the basis of sex. That was the start of a friendship that continued until Bader Ginsburg’s death in 2020. Totenberg shares stories of their careers and their friendship, interweaving stories of her friendships with Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer, the three who are known as the “founding mothers of National Public Radio.” (2022)
The Children’s Blizzard, David Laskin. A deadly blizzard swept across the northern Great Plains Jan. 12, 1888, with fine blowing snow preventing all visibility and temperatures as low as -40 degrees. The storm developed very quickly during a school day, and teachers were forced to decide whether to send children home or keep them overnight in the small, drafty one-room schools. An estimated 235 persons were killed in the storm, freezing to death after being caught out on the prairie. Many of the victims were children trying to get home. Laskin tells the story with much back story of some of those killed and a lot of atmospheric and meteorological detail. (2004) Note: I paired this with Melanie Benjamin’s book of the same title for the Jefferson public library adult winter reading program.
We Belong to the Land, Elias Chacour. A memoir by Abuna (Father) Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Melkite priest who works toward achieving peace and reconciliation as a parish priest in a small city in Israel. He clearly explains the impact of the establishment of the country or Israel on the Palestinians who had claimed the ground as their homeland for thousands of years. His compelling and personal writing style make this a “must read” for anyone who wants a better understanding of Middle East conflicts. (1990)
Oath and Honor: A memoir and a warning, Liz Cheney. Cheney was one of only two Republicans to serve on the Congressional Select Committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In the book, she provides detail of the event, the investigation, and what her leadership cost her politically. She also gives a stark warning of the potential danger of electing a president who has already once violated his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. A must read and a call to action for all who care about the future of democracy in this country. (2023)
Deep Midwest: Midwestern Explorations, Robert Leonard. A collection of poems and short essays written by anthropologist, radio news man, and writer of a regular Substack column, “Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture”. Each poem and essay share a tasty nugget of life in the Midwest, particularly Iowa. A real treasure, and a great book to have handy on sleepless nights. (2019)
The Secret Rescue: An untold story of American nurses and medics behind Nazi lines, Cate Lineberry. A very detailed account of a 30-person crew of Army nurses and medics on a mission to evacuate wounded soldiers from Italy as part of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron. Their plane crashed in Albania, where partisans fought each other and the Germans. The entire crew, with the exception of three nurses who because separated early on, ultimately walked more than 600 miles through and around wooded, mountainous terrain during the winter, on their way to the Albanian coast to be rescued. The three nurses spent part of the time in hiding, and were driven part of the way to the coast. Very thoroughly researched. (2013)
The Sound of Gravel, Ruth Wariner. Wariner tells the story of her childhood in a polygamist colony in northern Mexico. Her mother is the second wife of Lane, who takes a third and then a fourth wife. Ruth’s mother had seven children that lived to adulthood, two who died in childhood, and one who was institutionalized due to mental illness. As the oldest daughter, Ruth is called on to raise the children, even as a child herself. She tells of living with no electricity or modern plumbing, and then with electricity installed incorrectly in their adobe living space, causing her mother and a brother to die from electrocution. She tells of Lane sexually abusing her for years, and her mother’s unwillingness to do anything about it. Ruth’s story is compelling but difficult to grapple with emotionally. (2015)
Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond. A detailed explanation of the complexities of poverty and the ways our laws and governmental programs make it difficult to move from poverty to financial security. The book is accompanied by 76 pages of notes and sources for readers who want to verify Desmond’s claims. A rigorous, thought-provoking read. (2023)
The Yellow Envelope: One gift, three rules, and a life-changing journey around the world, Kim Dinan. In their early 30s and 10 years into their marriage, the author persuades her husband to leave their jobs, sell virtually everything they own, and set off to travel the world. Shortly before their departure, an older coworker of Kim gives them an envelope containing $1,000, with a request to give it away during their travels. Kim and Brian start in Ecuador and go to Peru, then to Germany, India, Nepal, Indonesia, and Viet Nam, traveling “on the cheap” and lodging in the least expensive accommodations available. During their year of travel they deal with marital uncertainty and self-discovery, and also learn to give unself-consciously. I would have preferred more travel story than 30-something angst; younger readers might enjoy it more than I. (2017)
Wild, Cheryl Strayed. Strayed was 26 years old when she hiked 1,100 miles alone on the Pacific Crest Trail through parts of California and all of Oregon. Her life had no direction as she used heroin and casual sex to deal with her mother’s death. She hoped, and did, find that direction by undertaking a risky and demanding challenge most people would advise against. A compelling read, although I couldn’t relate to Strayed’s various coping mechanisms. (2013)
Isaac’s Storm: A man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history, Erik Larson. An action-packed, highly descriptive story of a hurricane that struck Galveston, TX, Sept. 6, 1900, killing more than 8,000 people. Central to the story is Isaac Cline, chief meteorologist in Galveston for the fledgling National Weather Service. The story explains how the residents were taken totally by surprise, although many weather observers had watched the growing storm for several days before it struck Galveston. (1999)
13 Ways to Kill Your Community, Doug Griffiths and Kelly Clemmer. When Griffiths was first elected to the Legislative Assembly in Alberta, Canada, he set out to learn everything he could about rural development as a way to better serve his constituents. He shares – without jargon – what he learned from visiting most of the 422 communities in Alberta. His conclusions are very applicable to Iowa, as Alberta is primarily agricultural, like Iowa. An excellent read for anyone who wants to understand the issues involved in keeping rural communities vibrant and viable. (2010)
Making Piece: A memoir of love, loss, and pie, Beth M. Howard. Beth Howard was not yet 40 when she became a widow. A native Iowan, her memoir tells of her lifelong relationship with pie. She lived on the west coast and in Germany as an adult, always finding satisfaction in making pie, and after years of searching for emotional healing after her husband died, she returned to Iowa. After judging pie at the Iowa State Fair, she took a road trip to see her childhood home in Ottumwa, and ended up living in the American Gothic house in Eldon. Howard’s story in an honest recounting of her self-recrimination and self-centeredness. An interesting story with enough descriptions of making a good pie crust that even I was able to make a flaky crust, having given up on that decades ago. (2012)
Before and After Zachariah: A true story about a family and a different kind of courage, Fern Kupfer. Kupfer’s second child, Zachariah, was born with severe brain damage that made it extremely unlikely he would develop skills beyond those of an infant. Kupfer writes honestly of the sadness, frustration, and family stress of dealing with Zachariah’s needs, and the decision she and her husband Joe made to place him in a residential facility when he was 2 years old. (1982)
Home Made: A story of grief, groceries, showing up – and what we make when we make dinner, Liz Hauck. Hauck’s father worked as CFO for a non-profit in Boston, Community Caring, for more than 30 years until his death from cancer at age 58. After his death, Liz undertook a project she and her father had talked about – to cook meals with the young men who live in a Caring Community house for court-involved youth. Over the three years of the project she learned to accept the residents on their terms, she gained insight into the challenges of growing up poor and close to drugs, and she grieved her father. (2021)
You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy stories about racism, Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar. Late night comedy writer Amber Ruffin tells stories her sister Lacey, who remained in their hometown of Omaha, has shared with her of the many and varying ways racism is still demonstrated in the Midwest. The treatment of the stories is humorous, but the underlying truth is that racism is alive and thriving in more ways than most White people know. (2021)
Code Name: Lise, The true story of the woman who became WWII’s most highly decorated spy, Larry Loftis. Loftis tells in great detail of the work of Odette Sansom, code name Lise, as a French-born British spy in France during World War II. Early in her time in France she and Peter Churchill, the head of the circuit in which they operate, fall in love. Both are captured an imprisoned in German-occupied France and then in Germany for about 18 months until the end of the war. Odette’s cunning in convincing the Nazis that Peter was a nephew of Winston Churchill is a large part of why they weren’t executed. The story is detailed and has many characters, making it a challenge to follow. I referred often to the list of characters in the front of the book. (2019)
All I Could Be: My story as a woman warrior in Iraq, Miyoko Hikiji. Hikiji served three years in the Army in order to obtain GI college benefits. She then enlisted for five years in the Iowa National Guard and attended Iowa State University as a journalism major. With only three days remaining in that 5-year commitment her unit, the 2133rd Transportation Company, was called to active duty. Spc. Hikiji served 375 days in Iraq. Her memoir chronicles the challenges of military duty, the personal relationships she formed, and the heightened alert and occasional boredom her unit experienced. I purchased the book when Hikiji spoke here Sept. 11, 2014; I finally read it 10 years later. (2013)
