Nonfiction Book Reviews

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For my honors class in college, a speaker came in and talked to the class about something you don’t normally hear about much: Slavery right here and now, in the year 2009.

Unfortunately, I missed class that day, so I didn’t get to hear him speak. As make-up work for missing the class, I was assigned a video to watch on this global pandemic. I have posted the video below for all of you to watch.

WARNING: This video will make you sick to your stomach, not so much because of the graphic pictures in the video (although there is a little of that) but because of the realization that all of this has been happening, and you have done nothing to stop it.  At just over 5 minutes, it is well worth your time to watch.

After watching that video, I wanted to know what I could do. I also wanted to find more information on the subject, since this was literally the first time I had heard about this. Slavery? Here in America? C’mon, what are you talking about? Slavery was abolished! President Lincoln? Emancipation Proclamation? Doesn’t any of that ring a bell?

Yeah, that was me. I was shocked and disturbed to the tips of my toes that this was still happening today. I went to Amazon to see if I could find a book with more information on modern-day human slavery, and I found Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade - and How We Can Fight It by David Batstone.  I just finished reading it today.  Batstone is the head of a website, Not For Sale Campaign, and now does tours around the United States speaking about human trafficking.

The book Not for Sale was an eye-opening look at all the forms of human slavery, from women being forced to serve as sex slaves in a brothel, to whole families being locked inside of a rice factory for years, to children being forced to fight as soldiers in rebel armies in Africa.  There doesn’t seem to be a corner of the world that is not affected in some shape or form by this.

The book did have some ADD tendencies to it, however.  The author would start out a chapter talking about sex slavery in Asian countries, and throughout the chapter would jump from the story of someone who was forced into slavery, to a person who is fighting it as an abolitionist however they can (by providing aid to those who escape, by helping people escape, by providing legal representation to those who escaped, etc), and then on to the general landscape of the problem - why it is thriving, what has made it hard to fight, etc.

Each new section within the chapter meant a jump to a new point of view on the problem, and he regularly jumped back and forth between the different point of views until wrapping up the chapter (usually) with the escape and freedom of the slave.

When I first started reading, I thought, “Who is this?  What is he talking about?  What happened to the person whose story he just left?”  After I read through several chapters and got more used to this writing style, it didn’t bother me as much, but I still cannot say it’s my favorite writing style, and I wish he had done it differently.

Despite this minor flaw, the book was still excellent.  If you want a broad overview of the worldwide problem of human trafficking, then this is the book for you.  If you are outraged by the video above and you want more information and you especially want to know what you can do to make a difference, then you need to read this book.  This is an excellent introduction into the world of slavery, and will help you better understand the global dynamics of it.

At the end of the book, he has a listing of the various agencies fighting this problem along with their websites so you can find a group nearby that you can join to help fight this.  Don’t think this problem exists in your backyard?  Check out Slavery Map, where you can search the globe and see where the various incidents have happened.  I had two in my state alone.

There are books that make you laugh, there are books that teach you stuff.  There are books that broaden your horizons.  But Not For Sale will change your life.  Buy it today.  After you’re done reading, pass it on to a friend or neighbor, and encourage them to continue passing it on when they’re done.  The more we know about this problem, the better we can fight it.  Knowledge is everything.

If you don’t see it, then you aren’t looking for it.
~ modern slavery in a nutshell

Havs

PS My hometown is going to get a visit from David Batstone and his entourage very soon.  If any of you who are reading this are from my hometown and want more information, call me or send me an email and I’ll gladly give you the info.  I’d love to post it here but for privacy reasons will not.

When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase is, by far, the most unusual book I have ever read.  It was recommended to me by Stephanie of Rocket Scientist as a good book to read if interested in multiple personalities.

I have to say, I haven’t ever read or watched anything about multiple personalities before, so I started this book with a clean slate.  Even so, this book blew me away.  I don’t even know where to start.  I guess the general outline of the book would be as good as any…

Truddi Chase was two years old when her mother left her father, and moved in with her stepfather.  This turned out to be a Very Bad Thing in Truddi’s life, because the stepfather was the biggest slimebag to ever walk the earth.  He raped Truddi, at age two.  The sexual abuse continued unabated until her teenage years, when her mother finally, finally, threw the guy out.

On top of that, Truddi was also subjected to emotional and physical abuse by both her mother and her stepfather.  Her mother knew what the stepfather was doing to her daughter, but instead of defending her daughter, she blamed the daughter for all of it, saying that she was a “dirty” person, and that it was all her fault that this was happening to her.  There were also step-siblings in the picture who were also being abused, although Truddi doesn’t focus on that very much.

There is much, much more to the emotional, sexual, and physical abuse than what I’m stating above, but it was hard enough to read the first time around - I don’t think I can bring myself to type it out.  The bottomline is, the overwhelming pain and degradation was so extreme, Truddi’s mind formed other personalities in order to deal with it all.

There are several things that are fairly common when someone has multiple personalities:

First, the core personality is the one that was present at birth, and that personality is still around and available.

Second, most counselors try to help the personalities reintegrate into one, so that there is only one person left inside of the body.

Neither of those statements are true in Truddi’s case.  When she was raped by her stepfather at age two, her core personality died, and her multiple personalities were born.  Two core personalities came into being: One that was the child personality, and one that eventually became the adult personality.  On top of those two came 90+ other personalities, all of them serving their own functions in support of Truddi.  Some personalities died, and only an echo of them was left.

Sound confusing?  Oh yeah.  This was a mind-bending book.  The multiple personalities called themselves as a whole “the Troops,” and it was the Troops who actually wrote the book.  If you look at the front cover, it says, “The Troops for Truddi Chase” as the author.

When the counselor talked to Truddi, he could see differences in her as he spoke to her, depending on which personality was controlling her.  She was tested, and there were measurable differences in speech pattern, brain wave activity, intelligence level, handwriting, posture, voice, etc, depending on the personality.  Even her eye color and cheekbone structure changed.

Get this: Some of the personalities had allergies, so during allergy season, they couldn’t come out front and be in control, because then Truddie would have been miserable.  Oh, and when one personality was in control, Truddi tested positive for pregnancy.  As soon as another personality took over, the pregnancy disappeared.

It was a mind-blowing book.  I had absolutely no idea any of this existed.  And because the book was written by the Troops, you got to see all of this from their perspective - talking to each other, talking to the counselor, doing the day-to-day tasks required to live.

I think one of the hardest things to understand was how utterly difficult this was for the woman.  The Troops created a personality that knew nothing of any abuse, so she could be the front to the world.  This personality did not think by itself, or have any desires by itself - it only did what the other personalities directed it to, which isn’t something you (or this personality) find out until late in the book.  That part just made my head hurt.

After the book was released, Truddi went on tour - she appeared on Oprah and the Phil Donohue Show.  I tried to find clips online from those appearances, but came up empty handed.  I did find out that a reporter from the Washington Post searched for Truddi’s family, and from there, found out that all of the step-brothers and sisters supported Truddi’s story, and even said that Truddi didn’t reveal all in her book: They said that on top of sexual abuse from the stepfather, she also suffered from sexual abuse from the mother too.

That was never once even hinted at in Rabbit Howls, so I’m guessing Truddi’s personalities suppressed that information very, very deep.  On the other hand (not surprisingly) the stepfather denied everything.  Wow, who saw that coming?

I tried to find follow-up information on Truddi - where is she now, how is she doing, are all of the personalities still there, etc, but came up with zip.  It’s as if she fell off the face of the planet.  If anyone has any information on what happened to her after the finish of the book, I’d love to hear about it.

I don’t know how to rate this book.  As with everything to do with it, I’m at a loss.  So I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m not going to rate it.  I just don’t see how to attach a number to this book.

I will put this out there: Please, please, do not give this to your children or teenagers to read.  This is an extremely difficult book to read in terms of descriptions of different abuse that happened; if it were a movie, it would be rated X.  If language and sexuality bother you, absolutely do not pick this book up.

On the other hand, if you’re wanting to learn more about the multiple personality world, and are not easily offended, you’ll definitely want to read this.  As far as I know, this is the only multiple personality book written by the personalities themselves.  It is a rare glimpse into that world - not a pretty one, not an easy one, but one worth finding out about nonetheless.  It was hard enough for me to read this book - I cannot imagine living it.

Hava

PS If you’re interested in an in-depth look at When Rabbit Howls and multiple personality disorder in general, be sure to check out Trauma, Testimony, and Fictions of Truth: Narrative in When Rabbit Howls. It was an interesting (but long!) article that I thought did justice to the book.

Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant by Erin Prophet was the story of a cult that I had never heard of previous to picking this book up at the library.  I guess the Church Universal and Triumphant reached their heyday in 1990; I was just a child at that point, so I missed the whole thing entirely.

So here’s a brief synopsis for those who are likewise oblivious:

Elizabeth Clare Prophet (yes, her last name really was “Prophet” - she married a guy by the name of Mark Prophet) was the head of a New Age religion that incidentally, Mark Prophet started.  After his death, Elizabeth took over, and over time, the power quite simply went to her head.  She stopped talking as much about “decrees” and “energy” and moved on to prophesying that various catastrophes would hit the United States, everything from earthquakes to nuclear warheads.

Many religions have spent their time and energy in prophesying the end of the world - Elizabeth’s undoing came when she stated exactly when these catastrophes would happen, down to the very day they were to occur.

Her followers, sure that her words were divinely inspired, followed the call and moved with her to Montana, where they started building underground bunkers and storing up food to survive what had been prophesied to be a deployment of nuclear warheads, followed by a 7 year period of no ability to farm or grow food in any way.  Add in the destruction of all civilization (with only the righteous being spared, of course) and this was a true Armageddon scenario.

In an attempt to be one of the righteous (and prepared) ones to survive, the members of the church handed over their life savings and property to the church, quit their jobs, and moved to Montana to help build these bunkers.  Over a two-year period, the church spent roughly $20 million dollars in their quest to be ready for the end of the world, and caused environmental damage that took years to repair.

Well, the night came and went, and no nuclear bombs exploded.  Life continued on as it always did.  The cult survived, damaged, but still limping forward.

It sounds like an incredibly interesting book, right?  Except something about it just fell flat for me.  The book was labeled a “921″ in the Dewey Decimal system at the library, meaning that it was supposed to be either an autobiography or a biography, but it read more like a history of the Church Universal and Triumphant, with only a part of it being about Erin Prophet, the daughter.

Also, I think Erin was striving hard to be balanced and factual in her telling of the story, which I heartily applaud, but for some reason with this book, it only served to make the story removed from me, like I felt like I was reading everything through a thick glass wall.  I never felt like a part of the story, and I never really cheered on the protagonist or worried about what she was going to do next.

This distance is surprising - Erin certainly had a lot to be upset about.  Elizabeth ran her life with an iron fist.  She told Erin who to marry (worse yet, she told the husband-to-be when to propose and where to propose), she told Erin she couldn’t use birth control, and even went so far as to control when the newly married couple could have sex.  It was very disturbing.  The control that Elizabeth Prophet had over her daughter would be almost incomprehensible to the average American.  It seems like there would have been more anger on Erin’s part than she showed in the book.

So in the end, I have mixed feelings about the book.  I am glad to have learned more about cult culture, especially its history here in the US, but on the other hand, I think this is a book that I’ll easily forget about.  There are some books that stay with you long after you turn the last page (like Seabiscuit or Three Cups of Tea) but for me, this just won’t be one of them.

If you are intensely interested in cults in general, or the Church Universal and Triumphant in particular, than you’ll definitely want to check Prophet’s Daughter out.  I think you’ll find it fascinating.  But for the rest of us, I only give it a 3.75 out of 5 stars.

Hava

PS Just to see what others thought of the book, I went and checked out the reviews on Amazon and was surprised by what I found on there. Either people loved it or they hated it, and almost all of the reviews seemed to be done by people who are either current or ex-members of this cult. The ex-members all seemed to love the book - the current members (not surprisingly) all seemed to hate it. So I’d take anything you read on there with a grain of salt.

I picked up Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand while doing check-in.  When I saw the book, I thought, “I’ve always wanted to read that book.  I wonder if I should take it home with me.”  Within seconds, I was pulling another copy of the book out of the book drop.

“Hmm…” I thought.  “Kinda weird two people would return the same book on the same day.”  And then I pulled out another copy.  And another.  All together, I pulled out seven copies of that book - I’m guessing that some local group got together and read it as a book of the month or something. ??? But I took it as a sign that I ought to get my rear in gear and read this book that was apparently so good, they just had to make it into a movie.

Now that I’ve read Seabiscuit, I understand why it became a Hollywood blockbuster.  This book is absolutely fantastic.  The writing is superb, the pictures are terrific (I read the “Special Illustrated Collector’s Edition” which I highly recommend - the pictures definitely added something special to the book) and the pacing impeccable.

By the end of the book, I felt like I knew Seabiscuit as well as an old friend.  And when he died (sorry if I ruined the ending there, but this story did take place in the ’30s) I cried.  I know that’s rather ridiculous (what was I expecting to have happen?) but it’s just that this horse had so much spirit, it was heart-breaking to finally say goodbye to him.

One thing that made this book so fantastic is that it wasn’t just about Seabiscuit.  It was also about the Great Depression, about horseracing, about what it takes to be a jockey, and especially about the people around Seabiscuit, who saw his true potential.  Seabiscuit was doomed to a life of obscurity, until these men saw something in him that no one else did.  I felt like I got to know the men who loved Seabiscuit, and came to love them too.

A couple of things to keep in mind: I don’t particularly count myself as a huge horse lover.  My grandfather had horses that I rode as a child, and they were quite simply some of the orneriest things you’d ever come across.  I got stepped on and thrown off more times than I care to count.  So yes, you can love this book even if you don’t love horses.

Secondly, I have never watched Seabiscuit the movie, so I did not pick up the book with preconceived notions.  Since I have never paid attention to the world of horse racing before, I knew almost nothing about Seabiscuit.

So if even someone like me (with little knowledge or understanding of horses, horse racing, or Seabiscuit in particular) could absolutely love and adore this book, it seems like pretty much anyone could.

Now I just need to watch the movie.  While I’m watching Seabiscuit, I also need to watch Marley and Me, another book that I’ve read and reviewed that’s been turned into a movie.   I really loved Marley the book, so I’m hoping I’ll love the movie just as much.

As for Seabiscuit: An American Legend I give it an easy 5 out of 5 stars.  Heck, I should probably give it a couple of extra stars just ’cause.  If you haven’t read Seabiscuit yet, you need to.  It is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

Hava

I had heard about The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls from SmallWorld Reads (another book blog), who highly recommended it.  It turns out that Glass Castle was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, and yet I had never heard of it until SmallWorld mentioned it.  Don’t ask me where I’ve been.

Now that I’ve finally read it, I can see why SmallWorld (and the rest of the world, incidentally) loved it so much.  This autobiography reminded me in some ways of Three Weeks with my Brother by Nicholas Sparks.  Both sets of parents had an “interesting” outlook on parenting (basically, let the kids do whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t actually kill anyone else) and they were both raised in extreme poverty.  But while Nicholas’ parents at least tried to feed and clothe their children, Jeannette’s parents didn’t always even do that.

This is an honest and open memoir - the some of the things that Jeannette went through as a child makes your heart hurt.  Her parents, at many points during her childhood, did not provide even the most basic of necessities - food, clothing, and at some points, shelter.  Yet unlike A Child Called It, where this is because the parent is trying to torture the child, in Glass Castle it is more simply because the parents are free-spirits, with a distinct lack of planning skills.  Oh, and the father is an alcoholic who drinks most of their money away.

At one point, a family member dies, leaving the parents with a house and quite a bit of money.  I was cheering for the family at this point - surely they would use this money to actually get ahead in life, right?  But even as I was cheering for them, I knew it wouldn’t happen.  The parents are beyond irresponsible, and sure enough, the money soon disappeared. The house fell into major disrepair, and they eventually left and moved back East, leaving the house empty behind them.

The most mind-boggling part of the book is that Jeannette clearly loves her parents.  Even though they leave her and her siblings nothing to eat at various times (forcing Jeannette to eat butter for dinner at one point) and even though their parenting style is far beyond neglectful, into the realm of outright child abuse, Jeannette seems to have been able to look back on her life and appreciate the good parts about her parents, and the things they tried to do for their children.

I think this is what makes this memoir so wonderful - it is not bitter or hateful in any way.  She loves her parents, warts and all.  It is a testament to the human spirit that she could endure something like this, and still look back on it all with love for her parents.

Despite this upbringing (or perhaps in some ways, because of it) Jeannette became quite successful in the news world, eventually becoming a columnist for MSNBC.com, until she decided to take a break and just write books for a while.  If you’re interested in more information about Glass Castle, then you’ll definitely want to check out this interview done with Jeannette Walls (warning: It’s long!) where she talks about her parents, the book, and the impact it’s had on her life.

Glass Castle was a terrific memoir - one of the best I’ve read.  I give it 4.75 out of 5 stars.  If you’re one of the few people left who haven’t read this book, go check it out.  You won’t regret it.

Hava

Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive by Emily Colas was just as the subtitle says: A compilation of random scenes from the life of a person afflicted with the obsessive compulsive disorder.  I was expecting more of a chronological story (I was born here, I started having problems with OCD at age 15, blah blah) and so the jumping from one time period to another, and from one story line to another, really threw me for a loop at first.

So here’s the scoop: There were parts of the book that were funny.  I even laughed out loud in several places.  But overall, it was a difficult book for me to read, and I hesitated to review it, because there’s a very good chance that other people will react very, very differently than I did to it (much like what happened with Tweak.  Either you loved it or you really…well, didn’t.)

For me, Just Checking was frustrating to read, because her whole outlook on life was illogical.  She had an obsession with blood tainting her food, people poisoning her by chopping needles into tiny pieces and putting them into her food, with germs of any kind, etc.  (Side note: Not recommended dinner-time material.  She mentions garbage and blood and needles one too many times to read this while eating.)

She comes up with the wildest plots you could ever imagine, and all of them ended with her getting some dread disease in a very bizarre way.  The strange part was, she knew it was illogical.  She freely admitted it.  But she couldn’t control it.  I understand that OCD is a disease, but my logical brain just spent the book saying, “Just calm down, lady!” and “Breathe, you’ll be fine!”

I guess the point to my story is that I definitely do not have a future as a therapist.  I could just see myself looking the person in the eye and saying, “You’re just nuts.  You know that, right?”  But in the nicest way possible, because I hate ever making anyone mad.

More than that, I think this book bothers me because it is so light on actual human emotions.  Her husband leaves her for another woman; they get back together and then split up again multiple times; she cheats on him with an ex-boyfriend - lots of human drama here.  Yet I don’t ever really feel any of it.  A definite lack of character development (or plot development, for that matter).

So I guess I will recommend this book to people who find themselves in all of the following categories: Interested in psychology and OCD in particular; like having their stories thrown together in a random way; want a very quick and light read; and want a dash of humor in that reading.  But seriously, if you have a low tolerance level for crazy people who do things that make absolutely no sense to 97% of the world’s population, you aren’t going to like this book.  Sorry.

In the end, when I look at strictly how much I enjoyed this book, I have to give it 3 stars.  For anyone who fits the above categories, I’d probably nudge that up to a decent 4.25.

Take it for what it’s worth.  Anyone else out there read it?  What did you think?  Just wondering how far off base I am from everyone else…

Havs

Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren is a well-written biography of Jack Mandelbaum, a boy living just inside Poland’s borders at the beginning of World War II.  It is a young adult book - I would say the child reading it would need to be at least 9 or 10 - and even though it was written for that age group, it was so well-written, I still enjoyed it.

It starts out with Jack as a child in Poland, and the happy upbringing that he had.  Although his grandparents were Jewish, his parents were not devout, and so Jack considered himself Polish first, and Jewish as a far, far second.  When the war started, Jack was excited, like any 12-year-old boy would be, at the sight of soldiers matching and the naval ships readying to fight against Hitler.  He was sure that Poland would be able to beat Hitler in a week.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it happened, and things got progressively worse for Jack, his family, and the Jews in Poland in general.  He eventually ends up in the concentration camps, and he talked about the friends who helped him, the horrible jobs he was given, and the starvation that surrounded him.  Although there are obviously a lot of bad things happening to him and everyone around him, Jack was a naturally optimistic person, and the book never got really depressing (except a little at the end).

Overall, I enjoyed it - it tended to read a little simplistically, but then again, I wasn’t the intended age group for the book, so I can’t really complain.  If you are studying the Holocaust with your children, and you want a companion book for The Diary of Anne Frank, this would be the perfect complement: It is from the point of view of a boy, and it covers the concentration camps, so your children can get a more well-rounded view of what happened in that terrible atrocity.

I give Surviving Hitler 4.5 stars out of 5.

Havs

I picked up Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches for Teach for America by Donna Foote on a whim.  I had heard about Teach for America in passing a long time ago, but I would have been hard pressed to say anything more than it was some sort of organization that took people who weren’t teachers but did have a bachelors degree and put them into classrooms.

Other than that, I didn’t know a thing.

One of my tests of whether a book is well-written or not is whether someone who has no knowledge on the background of a subject can still sit down and enjoy the book.  Relentless Pursuit passed with flying colors.

Donna Foote takes the reader through the first year of teaching as a Teach for America student, giving the perspective and insights from a handful of teachers.  She also showed the point of view of several of the administrators of the schools, along with the founder of the Teach for America company, Wendy Kopp.  Because it was able to cover the situation from such a wide variety of angles, by the end, I felt like I had a great grasp on how the company works, as opposed to if I had simply read an autobiography of one of the teachers in the program.

Unfortunately, it’s greatest strength (variety of viewpoints) was also its greatest weakness: I tended to get confused about who each person was.  If I was going to read this book again, I’d do it with a scratch piece of paper and take notes about each person and their personalities.  That way, I could keep up with the book better.  But I tend to be one of those people who gets names mixed up very easily, so this may be a Hava-only problem.

Since I live in boring Idaho, where everything is relatively safe and steady, I think the most eye-opening part of the book was the description of the school and area that the teachers were teaching in: Locke High School, in Los Angeles, California.  The idea behind Teach for America is to take educated adults (with bachelor degrees), give them a summer of training on how to be a teacher, and then put them into the worst schools in America, in an attempt to improve that school.

The teachers sign a contract saying they’ll teach for two years, and then they are actually encouraged to leave and get into business, etc, as normal.  Teach for America has figured out that if educated businessmen and women were out in the corporate field with an in-depth and personal insight on our failing schools, then they would be a better position to help those failing schools get better.

So Teach for America has a two-pronged approach: Send the teachers in to help the schools in the short-term, and then send those teachers out into the business world to help educate everyone else as to what needs to be done.

Rather ingenious, I have to say.

So when the teachers get sent to the “worst schools in America,” we’re talking some really scary places.  Locke High School is in the middle of the Crips and Blood gang territory, along with quite a few other gangs, meaning that just trying to walk to school can be extremely dangerous.  As Foote pointed out in one section, the kids are not stuffing their backpacks full of books to take to school, but rather clothing, so they can change clothes as they walk through different gang areas.  That keeps them from getting killed for wearing the wrong color of t-shirt.

If only that was an exaggeration…

As you can imagine, if you’re worried every day about whether you’re going to live or die, and trying to survive gang wars, actually learning anything in class would be at the bottom of your to-do list.  Staying alive is a lot more pressing.  So here you have a group of teachers who are idealistic, and wanting to teach the students so they can get out of Los Angeles and actually make something of themselves, but how do the teachers reach the students who have better things (like living) on their minds?

It definitely made for an incredibly interesting book.

It didn’t end with a happily-ever-after conclusion - some of the teachers quit part way through the year, incredibly disillusioned and simply ready to go home.  Some of them quit at the end of the year and went to other similar organizations like Green Dot, to see if they could make a difference there instead.  Locke High School got embroiled in a political battle, and the whole school basically ground to a halt for the next year as people were fighting over who was going to control the school.

No, it did not end happily ever after, but I think that’s the reality of dealing with real life, instead of Hollywood.  Life is messy, and Teach for America is not immune from that.

If you’re interested in the program, you must read this book.  If you want to have an inside look at one of the most troubled schools in America, Locke High School, then you don’t want to miss this book.  If you’re interested in school reform, or the state of education today, this book would be an excellent way to gain some basics on the ground.  And if you’re interested, even a little, in being a teacher, this book (despite its depressing nature) will make you say, “I can do this, and I need to do this!”  It manages to be inspiring even as it is depressing you.

Overall, I have to give Relentless Pursuit 4.5 out of 5 stars.  It made me want to be a teacher myself, although I think I would pass on Locke High School.

Hava

I had to read His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy by Susan Ray Schmidt after I found out that it was written a sister wife of the author of Shattered Dreams (in other words, they were both married to the same man, Verlan LeBaron.)  Irene Spencer had had a lot to say about Susan in her book (mainly, that she was Verlan’s favorite wife, and why was she always being treated so special?) and I wanted to see it from Susan’s perspective.

I’m glad I did - it was definitely one of the better written polygamy books.  I enjoyed it a lot more than Irene’s book, simply because Susan didn’t spend half of the book complaining about how she wasn’t “getting any,” like Irene did.  Susan was definitely unhappy with Verlan most of the time, but she didn’t wallow in it, and I was grateful for that.

I also felt like this book was a lot more exciting and gave a better understanding of that time period when it came to polygamy, because Susan talks quite a bit about her brother-in-law, Ervil LeBaron, a famous polygamist that had his own brother killed, along with some of his wives, children, and other people he thought deserved to die.   Irene said in her book that she specifically didn’t talk about Ervil because she didn’t want him to overwhelm her story, but because of that, I felt as if a large chunk of important information was left out.  Susan’s story was much more complete.

But not only was it more complete, but Susan’s writing style was better.  When she was a child, the writing was more simplistic, and the reasoning she did was more simplistic too.  As she grows up, the book becomes more in-depth, and you can see her change and mature before your eyes.  I felt that really added to the book.

If you’re interested in a follow-up after finishing His Favorite Wife, you’ll want to check out this website, where Susan does a question and answer session with readers.  Make sure to read the comments too - she and her daughter write out responses there also.  It was very interesting to see that Susan and Irene are good friends even to this day - I would think that would be very difficult, but I guess they’ve had years to get past all of the baggage that would have come with this lifestyle.

Tangent: While researching on the internet, I found out that Susan is living in the same city I am, here in Idaho.  What an incredibly small world this is!!  I wonder if she has ever come down to the library and I’ve met her and simply didn’t know it…I’ll have to keep my eyes open for her.

Well, out of the four polygamy books that I’ve read (Shattered Dreams, Stolen Innocence, Escape, and now His Favorite Wife) the tally is two Christians, one (maybe) Mormon (still not sure about that one), and one atheist.  As I’ve read these books, I’ve wondered what the majority of ex-FLDS believers become - if they do tend to go towards Christianity or another religion (or none at all).  I’m sure that no formal study has ever been done, so I guess I’ll just have to keep wondering…

Anyway, if you’re interested in polygamy in the 1960’s and 70’s, then you’ll definitely want to pick His Favorite Wife up.  It gives an eye-opening insight to what it is truly like to be a polygamist wife (and there is pretty much nothing good about it).  If you’re wanting an up-to-date picture of polygamy and what’s happening now, you’ll want to check out Stolen Innocence instead.

I give His Favorite Wife 4.25 out of 5 stars.  I’ll be keeping my eyes open for Susan around town!

Havs

I’m not sure how to describe 1 Dead in the Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose. It was very depressing, yet at times made me laugh and gave me hope for this world.

I guess I could start with the easy stuff: The author is a columnist at The Times-Picayune, the local newspaper for New Orleans. The book is a compilation of his daily columns, starting after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

Some of the columns were darkly funny, some of the columns were just plain dark.  Some of them gave you a renewed confidence in mankind, others made you question how people that horrid could have lived for so long.

I can say one thing for sure: This was an eye-opener of a book.  I have never been to New Orleans, and so I witnessed the destruction on TV with horrified detachment, much as most of America did.  A few months after it happened it faded from view and I forgot about it, to be honest.  I didn’t want to, and I didn’t mean to, but life does have a habit of going on.

1 Dead in the Attic was a needed reminder that although I may have moved on, life in New Orleans didn’t, at least not in the same way.  Many people suffered through bouts of depression; some people committed suicide because of it.  I’ve never lived through anything like Hurricane Katrina, and I had never thought about what would be happening a year after the storm hit, or two years, or three.  If I had, I would have realized on an intellectual level that people would be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but I never got that far.

I’m feeling rather guilty now for my negligence, but that can’t be blamed on Rose.  He doesn’t set out to make the readers depressed.  It’s just how I reacted.

Lest you think the whole book is depressing, let me share one of the funnier columns with you.  Although Rose stayed in New Orleans after Katrina, the rest of his family went to Maryland and stayed for several months, so he would travel back and forth between the two cities regularly.  Here is a column about one such trip:

[B]efore each journey, I check with my kids by phone to see what they need from our house in New Orleans.

Of course, they need everything, they tell me.  Every toy, every article of clothing, every piece of furniture, everything that hangs on the walls, every piece of building material down to the studs.

“Itemize,” I urge them.

“Barbies,” they tell me.

“I can do that,” I tell them.

And so my chore began one afternoon, as I crouched and crawled into their secret places in our house - small, dark spaces I have never been in, places that are not hospitable to people larger than, say, a dorm refrigerator.

In the process, I discovered that there has been a population of approximately fifty Barbies living under my roof.  I did not know this.

An absurd number, I was thinking, but then I remembered that I used to collect empty egg cartons when I was a kid and I probably had a couple hundred - a closet full of them - before my mother brought the hammer down on that curious little hobby of mine.

Truth is, I don’t recall even the barest notion of why I collected egg cartons nor what I did with them.   I just did.  So who am I to tell my kids they have too many Barbies?

Let them be, I say.  I mean, I turned out okay, right?

Don’t answer that.

~Page 81 - 82 of 1 Dead in the Attic by Chris Rose

He is extremely easy to read; I’ve had good luck with newspaper writers in the past, and this book was no exception.  He is a talented writer.  He is frank and direct, and everything is so real that you feel as if you too lived through the destruction that Hurricane Katrina wrought upon New Orleans.

My only critique of the book was that the columns were not in chronological order, nor could I see that there was any rhyme or reason to how they were published.  It was disconcerting to see that we had jumped back in time three months for no apparent reason.  I eventually stopped paying attention to the dates of the columns so it would stop bothering me, an easy fix.

Overall, I give 1 Dead in the Attic 4.75 out of 5 stars.  And my thanks to Mr. Rose for publishing it.  I needed to read this book.

Havs

I have to confess: I’ve never read a single Nicholas Sparks book. I own the movie The Notebook, and only found out by pure chance a couple of weeks ago that it was based on a Nicholas Sparks book. I had no clue. I check out a lot of Nicholas Sparks books to patrons, and quite frankly, all of the titles just run together in my mind. I had never paid attention to the fact that one of them was named The Notebook. A keen eye for details, I have not.

So why did I read Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks? Well, I was wandering about Barnes and Noble with my husband, and for once, I was waiting for him to finish reading a book before we could go. (Needless to say, it’s usually the other way around). I wandered over to the biography section, and there was Three Weeks With My Brother. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized that Nicholas Sparks had written anything but fiction. I picked the book up and started reading.

And just loved it. I was laughing (quietly, of course - heaven forbid I get kicked out of B&N!) just a few pages in. He has an excellent writing style, which after I thought about it, realized it only made sense. The guy makes his living by writing. If his writing style left something to be desired, I rather think he wouldn’t be on the New York Times Bestseller list regularly.

I can’t testify myself that his fiction writing style is fantastic, but I can his memoir writing style. His parents were unique in their child-raising techniques, to say the least. The following is a little long, but I think captures the childhood of Nicholas and his older brother, Micah, quite well:

On the first day of kindergarten, Mom walked with Micah to the bus stop; from there forward, he walked by himself. Within a week, he told my mom that some older girls, 7th grade or thereabouts but huge to a kindergartener, had cornered him in the junkyard and taken his milk money. Then they threatened him; they said that if he didn’t bring them a nickel every day, they were going to hurt him.

“They said they’re going to beat me up bad,” Micah cried.

There are a number of ways a parent could handle such a situation. My mom could have started walking him to school regularly, for instance, or walked with him one day, confronted the girls, and threatened to call the police if another incident occurred…Not my mom. Instead, after Micah told his story, she rose from the table and…when she returned, she was carrying an old Roy Rogers lunchbox; rusty and dented, it had been her younger brother’s years before.

“We’ll put your lunch in this tomorrow, instead of a brown bag,” she said, and if they try to take your money, just wind up and hit ‘em with it. Like this…”

Cocking her arm like a lion tamer, she began swinging the lunchbox in wide arcs, demonstrating while my brother sat at the table watching.

The next day, my six-year-old brother marched off to school with his hand-me-down lunchbox. And just as they’d threatened, the girls surrounded him when he wouldn’t give them his nickel. When the first one charged, he did exactly as my mom had told him.

In our bedroom that night, Micah related to me what happened.

“I swung with everything I had,” he said.

“Weren’t you scared?”

With his lips pressed together, he nodded. “But I kept swinging and hitting them until they ran away crying.”

The girls, I might add, never bothered him again.
~Page 25 - 26 of Three Weeks With My Brother

Yup, the mother actually showed her son (a kindergartener) how to beat up a group of 7th graders, and more amazingly still, he succeeded.  The parents were big fans of the Tough Love School of Parenting.

They were…relaxed, I guess is the kindest way to put it, in their parenting style. They gave their kids BB guns, which Nicholas (they called him Nicky as a child) and Micah used with wild abandon until the sheriff came and took them away. To console the children, the parents then gave them a bow and arrow set, with real arrows. None of the wussy plastic shafts and bunted tips for them. The kids played with that until (you guessed it) the sheriff came and took that away too. They came a little too close to killing other people one too many times.

So where does the three weeks part come in? Well, in 2002, Nicholas and Micah embark on a trip around in the world, which lasts for three weeks. It’s quite an adventure, and Nicholas always starts the chapter out in present time, and then jumps back in history to their childhood. It is their autobiography, not just a story about those three weeks in 2002. And I do mean “their” - really, it’s an autobiography of the whole Sparks family, with the emphasis on Nicholas and Micah.

I cried hard and laughed a lot too - it is one of the best autobiographies that I have ever read. Even if you’ve never read a lick of Sparks’ writing and have no interest in learning more about him (hmmm…sounds familiar) if you like autobiographies, you’ll love this book. Heck, if you just love a good story, you’ll love this book.

I’m giving it a rare 5 out of 5 stars. Thanks for the amazing book, Nicky. I just might have to read one of your fiction books someday…

Havs

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer has more than a heck of a subtitle.  It contains an amazing story about a girl forced into marriage at a stunning 14 years of age, and to a 19-year-old first cousin to boot.

I have read three polygamy autobiographies now: Shattered Dreams, Escape, and Stolen Innocence.  Out of those three, I enjoyed Stolen Innocence the most.  As I said in my review of Escape, Carolyn Jessop seemed to be very bitter towards the FLDS Church and everything that had happened to her.  I didn’t get that vibe from this book - instead, Elissa seemed to concentrate on showing how much she loved her family, and the fact that what she was doing was for her family.  She carries a picture of her two younger sisters in her wallet with her at all times, so she can remember that she’s fighting to give her sisters freedom from the FLDS cult and everything that comes along with it.

Elissa’s story is markedly different from Carolyn Jessop’s or Irene Spencer’s.  She is the first wife of her husband, Allen Steed, and he never takes on another wife, so she doesn’t deal with “sister wives” and everything that comes along with that.

She also gets pregnant four times in two years, but loses three to miscarriages and one as a stillbirth, so when she leaves the sect, she doesn’t worry about trying to sneak any children out with her.  At the time, she thought that God was mad at her, which was why he kept killing her babies (this is a common teaching in the FLDS Church - if you lose a baby, it’s because you’ve done something wrong and God is cursing you for it).

She found out after she got out and had prenatal care for her next pregnancy, that she had Rh-negative blood, something easily fixed by modern medicine, but otherwise fatal for the babies.  She has had two children since then with no problems.

It’s amazing what modern medicine and simply having access to information can do.

Another big difference in the books is the poverty that the other two women suffered - Elissa Wall doesn’t focus on any of that.  Her parents go through periods of prosperity and then periods of difficulties, but overall, her family was much better off than many polygamous families are.  Her father has specialized skills, and the jobs he was able to do were high-paying.  This made for a big difference in Elissa’s quality of life.

Last but definitely not least is how her family got into polygamy to begin with.  In the other books, the families had been in the FLDS Church for generations.  The Walls, on the other hand, grew up LDS.  Elissa’s father and his first wife, Audrey, were practicing Mormons when Audrey’s parents joined the FLDS Church.  Hoping to disprove the FLDS Church and find flaws in it, they started studying the religion.  They ended up joining the FLDS Church instead.

It’s not terribly common for people to convert to the FLDS Church, so for a long time, they were looked upon as outsiders.  Along with that was the fact that Audrey wasn’t born and raised with the idea that polygamy was the correct way of life, and so for her, when her husband married Elissa’s mother, Sharon Steed, and then later on was given a third wife, it was very difficult for her to handle.  This made for a tense family life.

The children, however, were raised in a fairly relaxed environment because of the background of the parents, so they often did things that other families in the religion did not: Attend concerts, football games, play musical instruments, ride ATV vehicles, listen to classical music, and more.  I think that this more open environment was a big help to Elissa when she finally did get out of the church.

What makes her story the most remarkable, of course, is the fact that it was Elissa’s story that helped put Warren Jeffs behind bars.  He was prosecuted for being an accomplice in rape - her rape.  She was forced to marry her cousin, and then when she went to Warren and complained that she was being forced to do things she didn’t want to do (she literally didn’t know the word “rape” at that point) he told her that she had to submit to everything her husband wanted her to do, no questions asked.

It is because of Elissa’s brave actions that Warren Jeffs is now behind bars.  She chronicles the trial and everything that led up to it, which in itself was fascinating.  She ends the book with the raid of the YFZ (Youth For Zion) Ranch down in Texas, making this book the most up-to-date and applicable to the headlines in the newspapers, out of any of the polygamy books.

This was an absolutely captivating and stunning story.  If you’re only going to read one book on polygamy, make it this one.  I give it 4.75 out of 5 stars.

Hava

PS I have His Favorite Wife by Susan Schmidt on my list to read.  I’ll have to read and review that one sometime, so I can get a well-rounded view of the polygamy world.  Each book has been so different from the others, I really feel like I’ve learned something new with each book that I read on the subject.

I’m excited to kick off Fun Fridays with Titanic: Discover the Luxury of This Famous Ship by Simon Adams (it’s a part of the Eyewitness Books series).

I’ll admit it: I watched the 1997 movie, Titanic, in the theaters, and cried the whole second half of the movie.  I loved the story line, but it was just too depressing to ever watch again.  11 years later, I own the movie (won it in a contest) but have never watched it.  I just can’t stand the thought of bawling like that for another 3 hours.

But since an Eyewitness Book is not likely to reduce me to tears, I decided to take the chance and check out Titanic.  I haven’t read an Eyewitness Book since I was a kid, so it was fun to browse through the book like I used to as a child.

I was surprised at how in-depth the information was that was included - it had a lot of text amongst all the pictures, and it wasn’t easy text that a young child would easily be able to read by himself or herself either.  The targeted age group for the Eyewitness Books is 9 - 12 years of age, and they mean it.

But for whatever reason, I was expecting huge pictures and very little text, so I was pleasantly surprised by all that the book had to offer.

My only critique was the fact that the pictures had a lot of boats in them, which have a lot of rigging and other thin, long lines crisscrossing everywhere.  Eyewitness Books use long, thin lines to point to various parts of a picture, which meant it got interesting trying to figure out which line went where.  One set of lines was a little darker than the other, but that was the only difference.

They really should have picked a whole different color, like dark red for one and black for the other, or something to help differentiate between the two sets.

But honestly, that’s a small critique of an otherwise well-done book.  Of course, I have to include an interesting tidbit that I hadn’t heard before, so here’s a quotation from the book:

On the night of April 24, 1912, a young Scottish girl, Jessie, was being comforted as she lay dying.  In her delirious state, Jessie had a vision of a ship sinking in the Atlantic.  She saw many people drowning and “someone called Wally playing a fiddle.”  Within hours of her death, the Titanic slowly sank as Wally Hartley and the rest of the band continued to play. ~Page 23 of Titanic

That sent shivers up my spine when I read it.  Uncanny…

Overall, I give Titanic 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Well done, and a great way to kick off Fun Fridays!  Make sure to check out next week’s post on A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money.

Hava

Well, if I ever had any thoughts of using drugs, they’re gone now. Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff has completely cured me of any desire to use any sort of drug, up to and including sleeping pills.

A lot of personal memoirs seem to follow the same basic structure: Poor me, look at my childhood, I had such a hard life.  The End.  It seems like there are so many autobiographies out there that don’t have anything more to offer than that. (Example.  And yeah, this one too.)

And perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading so many autobiographies, one right after another, but whatever the reason, that’s something that has started to get on my nerves.  After all, a tough childhood is something that I would say a fair majority of America has lived through.  Show me how you changed, and grew to be a better person, or something.

Well, Tweak broke all of the “autobiography rules” by:

A) Talking about what a great childhood he had - he really loved his dad and it shows.  There were some difficult things that happened, like his parents getting a nasty divorce and putting him in the middle of it, but overall, it was much better than say, Richard Pelzer’s childhood.  He also doesn’t dwell on the negatives all that much.

B) Nic Sheff has a lot to offer his readers, other than a long story of boo-hoo-is-me, by writing one of the most gritty and realistic views of drug use I think you’ll ever find in print.  If you’re worried about your teenagers using drugs, hand them this book.  If you want to use drugs after reading this book, there’s something really wrong going on.

In Tweak, Nic chronicles almost two years of his life, starting out with Day One, and proceeding from there.  Each day reads like a journal entry - he writes entirely in the present, and by the end, you feel as if you had in fact lived two years of his life.

And what a terrible two years it is.  Day One is found with him starting a bender, where he spends weeks getting high and doing some massive drugs.  He cleans up at one point, and spends over a year clean and sober, which was really good to see, after reading about so much crap.  But then he goes off the deep end again.  *sigh*

This book is rated a solid R, perhaps even something higher than that, because of several huge things:

1) Nic’s mouth (he uses swear words as adjectives regularly);

2) Massive drug use (obviously);

3) And a whole lot of sexual stuff.  Nic does things he’s not proud of, how about that?  I don’t think they’ll nominate him as Man of the Year anytime soon.

There were some really good passages, such as when Nic is talking to his friend/co-drug dealer, and saying that he wants to clean up and get off the drugs:

I tell him I’m thinking about getting clean again.  He tells me it’s a waste of time.
“What is life for, if not for living?”
“Is this living?”
“We’re so free.”
“Sort of.”

And at the beginning of the book, he did think like his drug dealing friend: Using drugs, to him, was freedom.  He didn’t want to listen to anyone else, he wanted to do what he wanted to do, and that was drugs.

Over the course of the book, he starts to realize that using drugs actually takes away your freedom, because you are constantly lying, stealing, and/or prostituting yourself for another hit.  You would sell your mother for a “fat bag” of crack (as he called it - I learned all sorts of drug slang in this book that I’d never heard before and didn’t particularly want to hear, but oh well).  By the end, he’s come to the realization that the only way to be truly free was to be drug free.

This book was raw, dark, and disturbing.  And yet it gave me a small measure of hope that someone who had been so horribly destroyed by drugs could eventually fight his way free of the addiction.

I give Tweak 3.75 out of 5 stars, and add a STRONG parental warning to the book.

Side note: Apparently, the father has written a memoir covering his son’s life, but from his point of view as the dad.  I don’t think I’ll read it, just because Tweak was so depressing/disturbing, but I did think that was interesting.

Hava

Escape by Carolyn Jessop was a very difficult and depressing book for me.  I picked it up because of course, polygamy has been all over the news lately - even Oprah did a show on polygamy where she invited polygamists to come onto her show and share their side of the story.  There’s also been a plethora of polygamy books released - Shattered Dreams (which I already did a review of), His Favorite Wife, and a brand-new one called Stolen Innocence.

I’ve only read the two books, so I can only compare between them, but I have to say: Carolyn Jessop’s Escape had a very different take on polygamy than Shattered Dreams, although I supposed that’s to be expected.   The author of Shattered Dreams (Irene Spencer) is quite a bit older than Carolyn and her story took place before Warren Jeffs came in and took over, so her version of the sect was much more tame and normal than what happened to Carolyn.  And then of course you’ve also got two very different personalities.  All polygamists don’t think the same, just like all Catholics don’t have the same temperaments.   Some people may feel like if they’ve read one book on a subject, they’ve read them all, but in this case, that’s definitely not true.

I enjoyed reading Escape more - it starts out with a bang, on the night that Carolyn flees with her children and goes to Utah.  It’s fast paced and your heart starts racing just from reading.  Will she get out in time?  Is she going to get caught?  You can feel the tension rolling off Carolyn in waves.  Unlike Shattered that suffered from a real lack of editorial insight, Escape has great pacing and a good timeline to it.

My only real qualm with Escape was along the same lines as the problem I had with Not Without My Daughter - Carolyn has a real bitterness to her attitude and writing.  I didn’t expect her to be all smiles and sunshine about it, but even when something good or funny was happening, I still got this feeling that there is pure anger in her towards the polygamy cult and the experience itself.  I walked away with the gut feeling that Carolyn is going to be healing from this experience for a very long time, as opposed to Irene who I felt healed and forgave faster and easier.

And perhaps I’m way off, who knows, but that was the vibe I got from the books.

Overall, it was a supremely depressing but needed look at the polygamist life.  The Great Escape for Carolyn happened in 2003, so it isn’t as if this is an outdated book and things like this simply aren’t happening anymore.  Instead, she gives a fairly current snapshop into the lives of polygamists - I don’t think I’ll ever see a news story on polygamy quite the same again.

I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Hava