Non-fiction

BOOK GROUP: The Man Who Touched His Own Heart

“Fascinating Journey…”

THE MAN WHO TOUCHED HIS OWN HEART
By Rob Dunn
(Little, Brown and Company – February 3, 2015)

[Kindle & Hardcover, 384 pages, $27.00 U.S. – buy for less on Amazon.com]

Did you know you’ve got about 2.5 billion heartbeats in a lifetime, barring any accidents or unusual events? That’s actually 1.5 billion heartbeats MORE than people could expect in the 1940s and before; bonus beats thanks to the success of modern public health and medicine.

The 2.5 billion beats is just one of the fascinating ideas and take-aways from The Man Who Touched His Own Heart by Rob Dunn, a professor and evolutionary biologist at North Carolina State University.

Disclosure: Midtown (Atlanta) Book Group at Barnes & Noble/Georgia Tech was fortunate to preview The Man Who Touched His Own Heart for February 2015 (Theme: Valentine’s/Hearts – of course!) and participate in the February launch of the book, with the author joining our group discussion via Skype. This review is based on the Advanced Reading Copy provided by the publisher, Little, Brown and Company.

The Man Who Touched His Own Heart is a fascinating non-fiction narrative journey through the history of the human heart and medicine. Author Rob Dunn has done a masterful job of balancing science & health issues with history & biography to offer a compelling read for a general audience, with something for everyone, both science-types and more literary-types (like myself). It is an ideal book group selection, as the subject matter and writing style will contribute to lively discussion.

The science-y, educational stuff (which, being honest, I normally tend to glaze over) is wrapped in interesting stories, colorful characters, surprising facts and sometimes-shocking information, thoroughly researched and footnoted, presented with an underlying sense of humor and, in places, irony:

“Not everything that seems like progress is progress. Not everything that can be done should be done.” – Rob Dunn, Chapter 13: The Beetle and the Cigarette

The Man Who Touched His Own Heart presents a broad spectrum of issues for consideration, including: medical motivation and ethics; the business of medicine; questionable marketing messages and “best practices”; to sticky issues of racism, sexism, discrimination and morality in the long, sometimes-sordid history of medical research.

From Galen (AD 129, patched up Gladiators, wrote a book!) to Da Vinci’s detailed studies of the heart and anatomy in the 1500s; from autopsies of the mummies of ancient Egyptians (with clear evidence of heart disease dating back thousands of years) to a German Nazi who won a Nobel Prize in 1956 for a daring experiment (on himself, before the war) and his contribution to the early development of the heart catheter; from “Heroes” like the rock star surgeons of the 1960s who were able to transplant human hearts (and before that, animal hearts, although sometimes in really horrible ways) to the “Zeroes” who spent decades researching less-sexy areas (i.e. fungi and development of statins – “industrial microbiology”) and never received the recognition they deserved (stolen by Big Pharma)…

The Man Who Touched His Own Heart is a rocket ship journey through the rapid development of science and cardiology since WWII, including pacemakers, bypass procedures, transplants and artificial hearts. It is an amazing history, one well-suited to anyone paying attention to those 2.5 billion beats in his/her own chest.

Happy Valentine’s Day 2015!
While we are talking about hearts in February, please check out my new ebook on Kindle — FREE thru February 14, 2015 —
101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes: Romantic Tips & Tricks to FIRE UP the Passion & Romance in Your Relationship! (Amazon Kindle – February 7, 2015). Download, Read, Enjoy & Review the first ebook in the new series: Rebel Housewife: Survival Guides (Surviving Happily After!).
More info on The Rebel Blog: 101 Sexy & Fun Love Notes.

[Further Disclosure: I have coordinated the Midtown Book Group at Barnes & Noble/Georgia Tech for eight years, and I am a professional book reviewer on www.RebelHousewife.com, for Amazon.com and other sources, for which I do not receive payment or compensation, other than a free book, on occasion, and affiliate links on www.RebelHousewife.com. Having disclosed the obvious perks & benefits of this situation (light sarcasm intended), I offer unbiased review, positives and negatives, although I do not typically review books I don’t enjoy or would be unable to recommend to my readers. Thank you for reading and supporting The Rebel Housewife!]

BOOK GROUP REVIEWS: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“Fascinating Science – Tragic Biography”

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
by Rebecca Skloot
(Broadway Paperbacks/Random House, 2010)

[Trade Paperback, 381 pages, $16.00 U.S. – buy for less on Amazon.com]

Midtown Atlanta Book Group Rating: ★★★★☆
Non-Fiction: Science/Biography
August 2012 Selection

“Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. More than twenty years later, her children found out. Their lives would never be the same.”

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was one of our book group’s best books and discussions in six years of reading together, which says a lot, because we’ve read 72 really great books! [Take a look: Books We Have Read. See?!]

Although some readers are hesitant to jump in because of the science — HeLa cells, really?! — scientists and non-scientists alike enjoyed The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The success of the book (and the forthcoming movie from Oprah Winfrey) is due in large part to the author’s deftly balanced approach to a remarkable story, offering a unique and fascinating blend of technical writing in layman’s terms and tragic human interest with the family history. Rebecca Skloot manages to fulfill the expectations of both groups, leading to great discussion and debate about informed consent and the evolution of ethics and procedure in medical science and research; scientific advances v. privacy and rights of the individual, family and heirs; and contribution v. compensation.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor, black woman with five children, living in Baltimore in the 1940s. In 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital removed cancer cells from Henrietta’s cervix, without her knowledge or consent, which was not at all unusual at the time. Henrietta died from the cancer several months later, but those cancer cells didn’t die. Henrietta’s unwitting contribution to science was to provide the first successful surviving human cell line that, when divided and multiplied, billions of times over, became the basis for many advances in medical science, based on research, study, trials and use of the so-designated HeLa cells.

The tragedy at the heart of this story is that for twenty years, Henrietta’s husband and children did not know about her surviving cells, or the multibillion-dollar they facilitated. The family mourned the loss of wife and mother. One of the daughters had been institutionalized in a mental hospital, where she died at age 15. The other children were farmed out to relatives, abused and neglected. They grew to adulthood in abject poverty. Even after they learned about their mother’s contribution to science, the family never had access to basic care, education or health insurance, much less the medical advances or medications their mother’s cells helped create.

Interest in HeLa, and the tragic story behind the cells, led young writer Rebecca Skloot to begin researching Henrietta’s biography. Although the family was initially resistant and suspicious of her interest, Skloot connected with Henrietta’s only surviving daughter, Deborah, in 2000. Together, they went through the history, interviewed doctors, researchers and family members, and traveled into the past to piece together the science of HeLa and the biography of Henrietta Lacks. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was published, to instant critical acclaim, in 2010.

The Midtown Atlanta Book Group at Barnes & Noble/Georgia Tech LOVED The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with a group rating of 4 out of 5 Stars.

Next Month:
ATLANTA’S PONCE DE LEON AVENUE: A HISTORY
by Sharon Foster Jones
[Our Local Author Event at Barnes & Noble/Georgia Tech in September!]

MOVIES: GAME CHANGE on HBO

Recently, at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, HBOFilms, in partnership with The Atlanta Press Club and XFINITY, hosted the Atlanta premiere of the movie GAME CHANGE. The screening was followed by a reception and discussion with writer and co-executive producer, Danny Strong.

GAME CHANGE, based on the best-selling book, stars Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, Ed Harris as John McCain and Woody Harrelson as McCain’s Senior Campaign Strategist, Steve Schmidt. The movie is a fascinating inside view of the 2008 McCain/Palin campaign. Much like the movie TITANIC — spoiler alert! — we all know the ending going in, but that does not detract from the gripping intensity of GAME CHANGE, as we follow the singular story of an unknown political maverick thrust into the national spotlight of a presidential campaign.

GAME CHANGE follows the campaign from the surprising choice of Sarah Palin as vice presidential running mate to immediate challenges of her candidacy; from super-size ego to stunning ignorance; through the nation’s economic collapse in the last months of the campaign; to Palin’s self-implosion, near-breakdown and remarkable resurgence as an enduring national political figure.

The movie allows a sympathetic, yet realistic, perspective of Sarah Palin, John McCain and the failed presidential campaign. Julianne Moore gives a brilliant performance, transforming completely into Sarah Palin — the wardrobe, the hair, the accent and mannerisms. Ed Harris offers a memorable John McCain. Woody Harrelson anchors the movie, in one of his best performances, as the hard-edged, incredulous political operative trying to salvage the McCain campaign.

The triumph of GAME CHANGE is that it is not a political movie, not a dry documentary or any sort of campaign promotion. GAME CHANGE is a unique glimpse of the process of politics and campaigning in the United States in the Media Age, highlighting moments of humanity and absurdity — a thoroughly enjoyable movie, whatever your political persuasion.

GAME CHANGE premieres on HBO EAST Saturday, March 10th at 9pm ET and ON DEMAND starting March 12, 2012. More info online: HBO: GAME CHANGE

BOOKS: 7-Day Menu Planner for DUMMIES

“New-NEW Culinary Classic…NOT Just For Dummies!”

7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES
by Susan Nicholson, RD/LD
(Wiley, 2010)

[Paperback, 342 pages, $19.99 U.S. – buy for less on Amazon.com]

Being a woman “of a certain age” and married for 20+ years, I have been cooking for a long time. I admit, I am far from gourmet: I don’t specialty shop; I don’t watch the TV cooking shows or reality shows starring angry chefs and their desperate-to-please minions; glossy gourmet food and recipe magazines make me nervous.

I do have skills. I have one small shelf of cookbooks in my kitchen. I can cover the basics, having more or less successfully fed and nourished a healthy family of five for some time now. Culled from a 25-year-old, well-worn copy of the cooking classic: BETTY CROCKER’S COOKBOOK (1987), family magazines and, in more recent years, recipe searches on AllRecipes.com for the iPhone and iPad, I have compiled my very own cookbook: a mish-mash of photocopies, hand-written classics and typed recipes, all carefully preserved in plastic page protectors and haphazardly “filed” in a white, plastic-coated (easy wipe!), 3-ring binder.

However, having said all of that:

Even with my vast and very practical culinary knowledge and experience, I love, Love, LOVE Susan Nicholson’s 7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES. An instant new-NEW classic, this book should be a treasured kitchen bible for every man, woman or young adult trying to prepare and serve nutritious, delicious, affordable and do-able meals for a family, couple or even healthy meals for one.

Susan Nicholson is a registered dietitian and creator of the 7-Day Menu Planner newspaper column, featured in major newspapers and in online syndication, too. She is a culinary professional and a talented writer with a lot of experience and a great sense of humor, which makes 7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies more than just another cookbook.

7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies gives you a year’s worth of weekly dinner idea and recipes that “take about 30 minutes to prepare, contain an average of 30 percent calories from fat, and use common ingredients to save time and money.” It is a well-organized and simple roadmap for menu planning, offering great recipes, practical instruction and tips, and a very consistent weekly plan of coordinated dinners: Family Night; Kid’s Night (not just for children!); Express Meal; Budget Night; Heat and Eat; Meatless Night; and Easy Entertaining. I love the fact that the week’s meals are coordinated to use ingredients in common and a central philosophy of reduce, re-use, recycle and re-format throughout the week’s plan. (Trust me, not repetitious, you will not get bored!)

7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies makes planning and preparing meals less of a chore and more fun: simple, easy, quick, healthy and delicious. Whether you are an old pro in the kitchen or a culinary “noob” (as my kids say), make room on your cookbook shelf for a new classic:

7-DAY MENU PLANNER FOR DUMMIES
★★★★★

BOOKS: STONES INTO SCHOOLS

“Extraordinary, Remarkable AND Amazing…”

STONES INTO SCHOOLS:

Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

by Greg Mortenson
(Viking Adult, 2009)

[Hardcover, 448 pages, $26.95 U.S. – buy for less on Amazon.com!]

Greg Mortenson’s follow-up to the bestselling THREE CUPS OF TEA is extraordinary, remarkable and amazing; all in one, and so much more: fascinating history, culture, philosophy, education, tragedy, adventure and geography.

Three Cups of Tea left an indelible impression: Through the third person narrative, we learned how and why an unsuccessful, near-fatal attempt to climb K2 launched an unemployed, down and out nurse on his life’s work, to build schools for girls in Pakistan.

In Stones Into Schools, the adventure continues, this time in Mortenson’s own voice and direct perspective. It is a powerful first-person narrative on the compelling necessities and nearly insurmountable adversities of expanding his school-building mission into the most remote and nearly inaccessible regions of war-torn Afghanistan.

Mortenson’s extraordinary mission and accomplishments are amazing: in 16 years, he has built more than 130 schools and countless smaller community development and support projects (women’s centers, infrastructure, water systems, etc.). What started as a one-man operation has gradually expanded, with the support of his nonprofit organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI) and “…a tiny crew of completely ‘unqualified’ aid-workers – a rag-tag band of local taxi drivers, porters, and former soldiers and insurgents – led by a former mountain-climbing nurse from America.”

They way Mortenson and his “Dirty Dozen” (as he calls them) go about the work is even more remarkable, having recognized that cultural change cannot come about by command and decree, but only by building relationships, understanding history and tradition and respecting cultural differences. Taking time to ask and listen to what people need and how to support them to build their own schools, using donated land and local labor and resources fosters a community sense of ownership and commitment.

Although Mortenson is careful to point out CAI is not affiliated with or supported in any way by the U.S. Government, the U.S. military has adapted many of his principles and philosophies while attempting to stabilize and re-build Afghanistan.

THREE CUPS OF TEA is now required reading in some parts of the military and in many high school and university programs.
STONES INTO SCHOOLS should be, too.

Greg Mortenson’s mission and his books offer proof that small things can make a huge difference; faith in the human spirit and the power of literacy and education; and hope that peace can be fostered in the Middle East and every remote corner of the world, one small, yet resounding step at a time.

For more information and inspiration, visit:
www.StonesIntoSchools.com
Central Asia Institute (CAI)

Help Greg Mortenson promote girls’ education, literacy and peace: one penny, one pencil, one child, one book, and three cups of tea at a time:
www.StonesIntoSchools.com/how-to-help/

BOOKS: Dominick Dunne

In honor of Dominick Dunne’s passing today. He was a class act.
Rebel Review Re-Print from Friday, July 16, 2004

REBEL REVIEW – BOOKS: Guilty Pleasures

by Sherri Caldwell, www.RebelHousewife.com

I could barely put my book down to write the review this week–it’s that good!

I am a long-time Dominick Dunne fan, from way back when he was writing thinly-veiled “fiction” about fascinating people, lavish lifestyles and intriguing situations–pure, unadulterated “guilty pleasure” found between the soft covers of mass-market paperback novels, perfect for the beach or travel.

I crossed the line (fiction to non-fiction) several years ago, when he did, with Another City, Not My Own: A Novel in the form of a Memoir, which is actually about the O.J. Simpson Trial in Los Angeles. Believe me, I am over the whole O.J. thing too, and while all the intimate detail, inside gossip and background about the murders and the trial is interesting, what makes this book absolutely riveting–hands-down one of the best books I’ve ever read–is the subtext, the story behind-the-story, a barely-there “fiction” about the writer following the trial and his background, insights and experiences. Except for the surprising and haunting twist at the end of the book, that writer is Dominick Dunne.

I didn’t realize until I read Another City that Dominick Dunne is the father of Dominique Dunne, the actress who played the older sister in the first Poltergeist movie, and who, in real life, was brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend stalker in 1982. Since that time, Dominick Dunne has become famous for writing man-on-the-scene essays and opinions on justice and injustice, high-profile crime and trial reporting for Vanity Fair Magazine. Mr. Dunne is gutsy: You always know exactly where he stands regarding guilt or innocence, which shows admirable courage for a writer–to actually have an opinion and put it out there.

JUSTICE: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments is a compilation of his Vanity Fair articles–more O.J., but also fascinating anecdotes and opinion on nearly every high-profile crime over the last twenty years, including his daughter’s murder, Claus von Bulow, Martha Moxley, the Menendez Brothers and the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. I can’t put it down–in fact, I’m going back to it right now!

The Rebel Housewife: Dominick Dunne Recommendations:
*** Order from The Rebel Housewife Stop & Shop:
— Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments
— Another City, Not My Own: A Novel in the…

Rebel Housewife Guilty Pleasures paperback selections (fiction):
— People Like Us
— An Inconvenient Woman
— The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

BOOKS: BAD MOTHER by Ayelet Waldman

“I LOVE this woman…”

BAD MOTHER:
A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities,
and Occasional Moments of Grace
by Ayelet Waldman
(Doubleday, 2009)

[Hardcover, 208 pages, $24.95 U.S. – on sale at Amazon.com!]

I can’t help myself: I love this woman. It would be creepy to want to BE Ayelet Waldman — which I don’t — but I’m totally considering the move from Atlanta to Berkeley just to be closer. Maybe I could be her new best friend: a kindred spirit, a like-minded woman, a fellow Bad Mother.

I wrote a long, gushing review about Ayelet Waldman more than three years ago, for her wonderful novel: LOVE & OTHER IMPOSSIBLE PURSUITS.

At the time, she was bruised and battered from public response and backlash (whiplash) to an essay she had written for a “Modern Love” collection, in which she “confessed” to loving her husband more than her children — which is totally understandable, and the way it should be, if you think about it (since those kids are eventually going to leave you, if you do everything RIGHT, and, hopefully, the husband isn’t!). The essay was blown out of proportion — way, way, way out of proportion.

BAD MOTHER: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace is, in no small way, Waldman’s response to her critics: “As a kind of f&%k you to the insane Urban-Baby type moms who, after my New York Times piece on loving my husband more than my kids, sent me letters saying my children should be taken away from me and/or my husband would leave me for another woman.”
[Not a chance, if you read his comments in my previous review.]

In Bad Mother, Waldman tackles the hubby-love issue and so much more in 18 essays covering the storms and controversies of her very personal and very public life. She’s a ballsy redhead and a heck of a writer: clear, intelligent, funny, realistic, self-deprecating and above-all, honest.

In some ways, as a wife and mother, she explains me better than I can myself (see pages 37* & 50**, in particular) — I read those parts out loud to my husband, and he got it, too.

For the record, from an interview with Ayelet Waldman on Writing BAD MOTHER:

“What is your definition of a good mother?
“A Good Mother remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses and inadequacies onto her children, is an active and beloved community volunteer. She remembers to make play dates, her children’s clothes fit, she does art projects with them and enjoys all their games. And she is never too tired for sex.”

“Okay, so what do you consider a responsible, attainable ideal of a modern mother?
“One who loves her kids and does her level best not to damage them in any permanent way. A good mother doesn’t let herself be overcome by guilt when she screws up.”

Waldman is a Mom, just like me and any reality-based, modern-day mother who reads this book: Doing the best she can under often-difficult circumstances and usually with outrageous, super-human expectations. Turns out, the BAD MOTHER is a very Good Mother, after all.

AYELET WALDMAN is the author of Daughter’s Keeper and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (the latter of which is being made into a feature film starring Natalie Portman). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, New York, Elle, Vogue and other publications. She and her husband, the novelist Michael Chabon, live in Berkeley, California with their four children.

* page 37:
“I wasn’t prepared for how ill suited and poorly trained I was for the job of full-time mother. I was not accustomed to performing poorly…I had not, before I became a mother, had much truck with failure.”

** page 50:
“…I had left my job and was staying home full-time. I was bored and depressed, and had lost the sense of self that had kept me company over the last thirty years. I wasn’t who I had once been, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be who I was. Because I felt lost, I also felt ugly. Or at least unattractive…Becoming a parent had not changed Michael’s sense of himself, it had not destroyed his confidence, it had not made him feel lost. He definitely developed a new conception of his role in the world, but not one that was negative.”

BOOKS: Simon Says – A True Story…

The B List — Books I Like

Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns, and Murder
by Kathryn Eastburn
(Da Capo Press, 2007)

Hardcover, 294 pgs, $25.00 U.S.

What it’s about: “On a frigid New Year’s Eve 2000, just twenty months after the Columbine massacre, fifteen-year-old Tony Dutcher and his grandparents were brutally murdered at their mountain hideaway outside of Colorado Springs. All roads seemed to lead to one young man, Isaac Grimes, a schoolmate of Tony’s. But as investigators scrambled for answers, they began to uncover a plot more sinister than any parent could imagine — a plan that involved automatic weapons, careful cover-ups, and a surprising naivete that belied the gruesome murders…”

What I liked: I really, really liked this book. In spite of the horrifying subject, chilling for any parent, especially the parent of a teenager, I could not put it down. This is True Crime at its objective, journalistic, yes, sensationalistic best. Horrifying, yet gripping. Kathryn Eastburn did a masterful job with this story; meticulous in detail and interviews with all involved: the boys, family, friends, detectives, investigators, lawyers. She conveyed the hearts and minds of everyone involved, before, during and after the brutal slaughter. She leaves a lasting impression on scale with Truman Capote, Dominick Dunne and John Grisham (The Innocent Man).

Why I didn’t LOVE it: I couldn’t, with my usual full high-energy and enthusiasm, love, Love, LOVE this book. It was awful, nightmare-inducing, at the very thought, much less the full-schematic, step-by-step autopsy, of average kids turned into inhuman killers through peer pressure, manipulation and mind control — and the charismatic sociopath who orchestrated it all was just a teenager, himself. It took me a long time to write this review, from the notes I took as I read it, and I could only put it on The B List — Books I Like.

You might like Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns, and Murder, if you liked:
The Innocent Man by John Grisham
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote*

* Da Capo Press, the publisher of Simon Says, has a Truman Capote-related title coming out in paperback in October, that looks very interesting in their catalog: Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story. We’ll be talking more about this title in October.

BOOKS: Mothering Mother

“Profoundly touching and thought-provoking…”

MOTHERING MOTHER:

A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir
by Carol O’Dell
(Kunati, 2007)

Hardcover; 192 pgs; $19.95 U.S.

“The term “sandwich generation” is ridiculously inadequate to describe those of us caught between raising our own children and caring for an elderly parent. I’ve got a better one: the ‘vice-grip generation’.” (page 31)

“Mother is at this final stage during which we all reduce to our own cosmic juice and revert back to some pretty potent pulp. She is no longer interested in betterment, learning or growing. She is tart, almost bitter, and that makes it hard to want to spend time with her. She doesn’t seem to have the ability or inclination to be nice. It’s all about her now, and it doesn’t matter whether I have a hangnail or a tumor; it wouldn’t register.” (page 27)

Wow, this was a tough one. There comes a time, in nearly everyone’s life, when we have to face aging, mortality and responsibility head-on, as our parents get older. I didn’t think about it much, until recently, and now I think about it a lot.

My father died many years ago, so I will never have the responsibility, or the opportunity, to care for my father in old age. Long before his death, he and my mother divorced, and she has been alone ever since, working and raising three children on her own. When my grandparents needed help, she was at a place in her life, newly-retired with children grown and gone, where she could help. She went to live with them in their home in California (from Seattle) to take care of her father, who died of lung cancer, and then settle her mother in a retirement home. By then, my grandmother was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. It was a very difficult time for my mother. It is a daunting and most often thankless task to care for an aging parent.

Almost two decades later, my mother is in her early seventies, and the time is coming, I’m not sure how rapidly, when she will need help, when she won’t be able to be as alone and independent as she has always preferred. It is not an easy thing to talk about, to ask questions, to have any idea of what might happen, when, or what we’ll do when the time comes.

Carol O’ Dell’s solution was to bring her 89-year-old adoptive mother, suffering from Parkinson’s and heart disease, into her home and try to settle her and care for her, at the same time trying to balance her own life and responsibilities to her husband and their two teenage daughters, not to mention her own self and sanity.

Mothering Mother is O’Dell’s “humorous and heartbreaking memoir” in journal format through the last three years of her mother’s life. This is not a fun or easy book to read. These are things we don’t want to think about, but eventually have to, and it helps to have a guidebook, the benefit of someone else’s experience and hard-won wisdom. It is the writer’s gift to face challenges head-on; to write through the darkness for survival and sanity; and to share the adventure.

O’Dell is a naturally skilled and talented writer, with the ability to document her mother’s decline and her own emotions and turmoil in brutal honesty, with often shocking detail, and yet, there is humor here, even at the worst moments, and love overall. Mothering Mother is profoundly touching and thought-provoking.

“If you are considering home care for an infirm or elderly dependent, Mothering Mother is a not-to-be-missed memoir and helpful “how-to.” [I would say “how-to-survive.”]

BOOKS: OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER

“Powerful…”

OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER:

My Family’s Journey through Vietnam to Hell and Back
by Jedwin Smith
(John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005)

Sometimes a book comes along that is so powerful, and has such a personal impact, for whatever reason, it can be difficult to explain and describe such a book. It took me less than 24 hours to read OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER, yet more than a year to write the review, which is long overdue and perfectly appropriate for Father’s Day (a great gift book for Dad).

As I told the author, Jedwin Smith, last year:
“I almost don’t have the words to tell you how extraordinary it is…since I’m never at a loss for words, that’s pretty extraordinary in itself…”
and “I have never cried so much reading a book.”

OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER is a deeply personal memoir of the Vietnam War and the impact on one family, told for the brother who died in that war by the older brother who survived. Decades later, his own life in turmoil from unresolved grief and guilt, Jedwin Smith traveled to Vietnam with the Marines who were with his brother when he died, to find out what happened in March 1968, for closure and resolution for three generations of a family torn apart and broken by loss.

It’s an amazing story, relevant to tens, even hundreds of thousands of people who were touched by the Vietnam War — those who served (like my father), those who loved them (like my mother), and future generations — the children and grandchildren who might not even have known them (like me), but live with the legacy. (There’s that powerful, personal impact.)

As the men who served in Vietnam get older — and yet it seems as if the memories remain painfully fresh for so many of the veterans — OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER is an incredible tribute to their lives and their experiences, the sacrifices they and their families made on behalf of our country. It is also highly relevant to new generations in 2006, with so many of our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER is an engrossing memoir, and more than that, through intimate, first-person, fast-paced writing, it becomes a gripping military adventure story all on its own. It also serves as a fascinating glimpse into military culture and life as a Marine that might help us understand the mind of military men and women in combat — how mistakes and atrocities might occur, in light of current controversy and scandal concerning our Marines serving in Iraq.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jedwin Smith is a journalist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of the acclaimed FATAL TREASURE: Greed and Death, Emeralds and Gold, and the Obsessive Search for the Legendary Ghost Galleon Atocha.