Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward ****

This summer we went down to the Gulf for vacation.  Our first stop was Biloxi, Mississippi.  We went directly to the tourism center, which is housed in a beautiful antebellum mansion right on the beach.  It was a gorgeous house & Puppy was especially impressed with the porches on both the first & second floors that had some nice ceiling fans.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that this building had only just opened last year.  The original house, which had stood there for many years, was completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.  Biloxi had painstakingly rebuilt it to look exactly like it had before.

As we drove along the main drag we noticed several blank spaces in between other homes & businesses.  It was then that the destruction that Katrina had unleashed on the gulf coast really hit home for me.  Being from the middle of the US & not having much experience of being around the ocean I never really could wrap my head around the images I saw of the post-Katrina apocalypse.  Being there made it much more real.

Salvage the Bones is about the days leading up to Katrina & it's immediate aftermath.  It's the story of Esch, a 14 year old girl living in poverty in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi.  Her mother died 6 years ago giving birth to her little brother.  She lives with her drunken father & her 3 brothers:  Randall, the oldest who takes care of everyone; Skeetah, who loves his pit bull China more than most people; & Junior, who's lived his life not knowing his mother & being raised by Esch & Randall.

The family lives in extreme poverty on a patch of land called The Pit just outside of town.  Never is there any reference in the book to there being a female that Esch calls friend.  It's just her & her brothers & their friends--that's the whole circle of her world.  She's in love with Randall's best friend, Manny, who uses her for her body & then never acknowledges her otherwise.  She discovers that she's pregnant just as Skeetah's dog China gives birth to her first litter of puppies, & from that moment on her story, China's story, & the story of Medea (she is reading Bulfinch's Mythology for school) all become intertwined as the book unfolds.

I'd never heard about this book before, even though it won the National Book Award a few years back.  I wonder if maybe it's because of the references to & descriptions of dog fighting, which has come more into the spotlight since Michael Vick was arrested for it.  It's such a horrible sport, but the way Ward describes the bizarre way in which these boys love their dogs, yet fight them so brutally, is mesmerizing.
 
Love & death.  The two eternal mysteries, told in a compelling & touching way by Jesmyn Ward.  Katrina the destroyer--it's the stuff of mythology.

Swimming in Mud

Over 3 months.  I can't say I haven't read anything, but what I've read has been rather light.  It's been hard.  I don't know why exactly, other than maybe I've been depressed. 

Funny how writing about what I've been reading & how I've been feeling go hand in hand.  Maybe because you have to be in a mental place, a good place, to read & analyze what you think of a book.  I haven't been clear of head to make the effort to figure out what I think of anything I read. 

Trying to figure out why I feel this way seemed complicated.  But once I started thinking about it, it was rather simple.  There has a been a firing spree at my job & it frightens & disturbs me.  I've worked at the same place for 15 years & in that time I've formed relationships with my fellow workers that transcended the normal acquaintanceship.  It has to do with Puppy's traumatic birth & first 5 months of life.  He was born at the hospital I work at & in that time period he was hospitalized there 11 more times.  During those stressful months when Dog & I didn't know if Puppy would live or die, the people I work with acted as a huge support to us.  They bought us dinner & brought it by our apartment.  They collected money on Christmas Eve & one of my coworkers blushingly brought a card by Puppy's hospital room with the unknown-to-us cash inside & just said, "Merry Christmas".  Over $100.00 spontaneously gathered in a matter of a couple hours.  When my ETO ran out, they donated their own to me.  It was a large check, one that helped us buy a house.  In short, they were another family to me.  A bizarre, dysfunctional family filled with some very odd people, but then again don't all families fit that description?

And now some of them are effectively dead to me.  I've never been one to have a lot of interaction outside of work with my co-workers.  There are always a couple that are closer to me, but most are just people that I truly enjoy talking to while doing my job.  So when I come to work after being off a day & find out that someone I've worked with the whole time I've been at this hospital has been summarily fired, even though they may have worked there for more than 30 years, it's like they're gone.  I didn't communicate with them outside of work, so it would be odd to contact them now.  But I so miss them.
And so I've been grieving.  And I've been scared.  There hasn't been a firing since May, but that might not mean anything.  I try not to take it personally or get too worked up about it, & I've been doing a pretty good job of that lately.  But a part of me has been hurt badly. 
So just in the past 2 weeks I've felt like the swimming has gotten easier.  I've started a book I have to think about deeply in order to grasp, so we shall see what happens.  If anybody is still out there, thanks for hanging on. 

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry ****

I think pretty much everyone who speaks English knows the saying, "Better late than never!"  I feel that lately it's become the best description of everything I do.  Not sure why I've gotten into this mode, but I can't seem to get anything much done in a reasonable amount of time.  I hope the above saying is true, because I'm awfully late in reviewing this book!

I think that same old adage could be used in conjunction with this book.  Is it better to find something important out eventually?  Better to know it in the end than to have never known it at all?

Roseanne McNulty is an ancient woman living in a mental health institution in County Sligo, Ireland.  No one is quite sure when she became a patient there, but the head psychiatrist is in charge of determining which patients are able to go back into society as the old building is being torn down.  Roseanne, unbeknownst to anyone else, is quietly writing down her memories & hiding them under the floorboards of her room.  Meanwhile, the psychiatrist is finding out her "official" history.  Those two differing accounts of an abused life intersect & diverge & we're left with a truth that is frightening & noble. 

One of the main themes of the book is the way that the Catholic church was able to rewrite peoples' lives at will, to either raise them up or cast them down.  Being cast down due to nothing more than being beautiful, being raised up despite committing injustices against others.

I liked Roseanne's character for a selfish reason--in many ways, she did nothing remarkable in her life.  She simply loved & survived.  I find this very refreshing because I think most of us are living rather unremarkable lives ourselves.  And in this book Sebastian Barry makes that a beautiful poetry.  She didn't single-handedly defeat the Catholic church.  She didn't do anything extraordinary.  But then again, she did.  She didn't give up.
Roseanne's story is unearthed very late, but you could definitely argue that it was better then never.  As the psychiatrist follows a very old trail, you begin to realize that those bread crumbs left behind to guide us back to where we came from are still worth following.  They might not form a straight line, but enough may still be there to find the way.
A beautiful & lyrical book.  I highly recommend this to others.

Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur ****

Imagine, if you will, that you're 11 years old.  Not too hard, most of us have been there!  But now imagine that almost all your stability has been taken from you.  And also that you feel you're somehow to blame.

Love, Aubrey is about that situation.  Aubrey's family took a mini-vacation for a weekend & on the drive home though pouring rain a car wreck killed half the family--Dad & little sister Savannah.  Mom & Aubrey try to continue living without them, but Aubrey's mother can't stand living in the same home without them & seeing Aubrey & not the others.  She abandons her.  And Aubrey is on her own.

This is a heart-wrenching book that really delves into the horrible mess that remains after a family tragedy.  From leaving her home & moving many miles away to live with her grandma, to starting over at a new school & trying to make new friends, all while having to deal with the gaping hole of loss in her life, the story of Aubrey's first year without her family is filled with much sorrow but also hope.

I especially liked the way the relationship with her mother is explored.  How do you forgive & trust someone again after they leave you?  How can a mother do that to her child?  How do they have a relationship again?  Also the relationship between Aubrey's mother & grandmother is addressed.  Her grandmother's anger & frustration at her own daughter for abandoning her granddaughter in her hour of need.

A sad book overall, Love, Aubrey is written so kids can grasp some of what it's like to live with tragic loss.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins ***

I'm always game for an after-the-apocalypse book about the future.  Two of my favorites for adults are by Margaret Atwood (Oryx & Crake and The Handmaid's Tale), & then there seems to be a plethora of books for kids about the ominous future (The Missing series & The Shadow Children, both by Margaret Peterson Haddix for example).  So I was pretty excited about reading The Hunger Games anyway, but add to that a friend at work loaning me her copy & the movie coming out soon & I was ready to jump in!

My first impressions of the book were good.  The background of the main character, Katniss Everdeen, is very full & helps the reader feel like they've really gotten to know her.  And the whole concept of taking children as tribute reminds me a great deal of Greek mythology, the legend of Theseus to be exact.  It was going in a great direction, as far as I was concerned!

But then the games began.  And man, I gotta say it's very frightening & gory!  Yes, I've read scary books before, but I've never read one this graphic that was meant for kids between the ages of 12-17.  The terror that the characters are in is horrible, plus the fact that these kids are killing each other!  These characters are between the ages of 12-18 & they're in some cases slaughtering each other with abandon!  Wow!  It was enough to give me the heebie-jeebies when I went for a run today at the park--there was no one else there & the wind was blowing & I kept expecting some starving deranged teen to come running out of the woods with a spear or just a big rock & do me in!

I think Suzanne Collins did an excellent job of invoking the terror, horror, & overall desperation that a kid would feel in those circumstances.  Obviously it worked on me!  But I just knew that everything would be wrapped up in the end & there would be some kind of answer to all this...

But there wasn't.  It just left me hanging.  And I know this is a series of books & she wants to leave me hanging so I'll read the next one, but I was annoyed.  Because this was more like a first part of a novel rather than book one of a trilogy to me.

Between the graphic violence & the sudden ending, I gave this book just 3 stars. 
But that's not gonna stop me from reading the next one.

Runaway Twin by Peg Kehret ****

I think it has to be hard for authors writing books for kids in the 4-6th grade, especially if they want to make them realistic.  Let's face it, it's hard to be real without being scary.  All you have to do is turn on the news in the evening, or better yet watch one of the at least 25 crime dramas on tv to see how frightening the world can be. 

I think Peg Kehret has done a good job in this book of being real without going overboard.  I haven't read any of her other books, but she seems to be a specialist in this.  Scary stuff that won't keep kids from being able to sleep at night.

Sunny Skyland is an orphan who's been bumped around from foster family to foster family ever since she was 3 & her mom & grandma died in a car wreck.  It's 10 years later & when she finds a bag of money in the woods near her current foster home in Nebraska she decides to do what she's dreamed of all her life--find her twin sister, Starr.  With just her brains, the money, & a stray dog she finds on the way, Sunny makes her way to Washington state, to the town she lived in before her life changed forever.  Will she find Starr?  And what happens if she does?

This book is well written & it also has a realistic ending.  Some of the adventures she encounters are a little far fetched, but the way Peg Kehret describes them makes you more than willing to believe.  Coming face-to-face with a tornado in the middle of nowhere with no shelter doesn't sound like a good recipe for survival, but the descriptions are wonderful & the matter-of-fact way the author uses them makes you really think this is what a 13 year old girl like Sunny would say.

The media is full of so many stories of separated twins who found each other when they were older & happened to have lived similar lives.  But when two paths diverge you never know where they'll end up.  I don't want to give anything away, but I found the need for acceptance of life the way that it is at the end of the book refreshing.  It has a happy ending, the kind that will stick with you.

The Airplane Boys Among the Clouds by John Luther Langworthy ****

So I was browsing through http://www.gutenberg.org/ the other night & while looking at the listings of kids series books this one caught my eye.  More accurately, this one caught my husband's eye.  He likes planes & he likes history, & seeing a book written for kids back in 1912 about planes pretty much was a melding of the two.  He begged me to read this one next & review it on here, so now here we go! 

First off, this was fun to read.  It starts with the full title: The Airplane Boys Among the Clouds; or, Young Aviators in a Wreck.  I think I know what might happen to our two intrepid heroes, Frank & Andy Bird!  But wait!  They don't just fly their new-fangled fancy biplane up to the top of Old Thunder Top & give the eagles that nest there a nasty scare--they also deal with two mysterious men who've come to town.  Oh yeah, & there's an escaped convict too who takes pot-shots at them while they fly above him.  One of my favorite lines is when the police chief tells Frank Bird (remember, Frank's only about 17):

"He might try to steal your new biplane I've heard them talking about; or even burn down your whole outfit.  Better get a gun, & keep watch.  He's fair game, you know, if so be you catch him prowling around after dark.  An escaped convict hasn't any rights in the eye of the law."

Alrighty then, Chief!  I'll just shoot to kill then!  Wow!  Those were the good ol' days!  Lucky for the convict, Jules Garrone, that Frank decided to spring a trap on him instead.  And the Bird boys (including their friends Larry, Elephant, & I'm sorry to say Stuttering Nat) were quite upstanding lads to boot.  After they caught the dastardly devil this is what ensued:

"Frank had meanwhile tied his ankles as well, & helped drag him further into the shop.  When the man started to using language that was offensive, he warned him plainly that if he kept that up any longer they would find some means of gagging him."

Take that, you rotten scoundrel! 

Even with my limited knowledge of aviation it amused me to hear the references to guy wires & the smart little Kincaid engine that the boys had put on the biplane they'd built.  Also the fact they needed a good push sometimes to take off.  The wheels were referred to as bicycle wheels, & the Wright Brothers were referenced also--as contemporaries! 

So all in all, I'm glad Dog suggested this book.  If you'd like to download it yourself for free just click this link.  I don't think it's read too much anymore, but I can sense the amazed love that many a young boy 100 years ago would have had for this body of work.