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Alice Cary

NonfictionNatureMemoir

Better Living Through Birding

Review by Alice Cary

Christian Cooper has been bird-watching in Central Park for decades, but a spring migratory excursion took a dramatic turn on May 25, 2020, when a woman refused his request to leash her wandering dog, per park regulations. He was hoping to spy a ground-dwelling bird called a mourning warbler and knew that her unleashed pet would make his quest impossible. After she refused and Cooper began filming with his phone, Amy Cooper—a white woman of no relation—announced that she was about to call the police, adding, “I’m going to tell them that there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Her blatant use of “weaponized racism” went viral. As Cooper aptly sums up the incident in Better Living Through Birding, “Fourteen words, captured amid sixty-nine seconds of video, that would alter the trajectory of two lives.” This encounter happened on the same day George Floyd was murdered. 

A year later, Cooper was invited to attend a birding festival in Alabama. As he walked across Selma’s infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge, he reflected on the day that bridge became a bloodbath in 1965 and on the travails his ancestors must have endured. “In that context, my incident in Central Park is just an asterisk,” he writes. “More than a year later, it remains exceedingly strange for me—the notoriety, that I’d even be mentioned in the annals of the nation’s racial strife.” 

Throughout his wide-ranging memoir, Cooper is a thoughtful, enthusiastic narrator. Growing up as a Black kid on Long Island, New York, in the 1970s, “I was rarer than an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in the very white world of birding,” he writes. “As I simultaneously struggled with being queer, birds took me away from my woes suffocating in the closet.” Cooper gradually came out to family and friends, beginning while studying at Harvard in the 1980s. He went on to become one of Marvel’s first openly gay writers and editors—aside from birds, his other passions include superhero comics and sci-fi and fantasy—and introduced the first gay male Star Trek character in the Starfleet Academy series. In entertaining prose, Cooper reminisces about his life, writing especially poignantly about his often-difficult relationship with his father.

Tying these multifaceted strands together is no easy feat, but Cooper does it well. He peppers the text with helpful tips for beginning birders while recounting vivid excursions through Nepal, the Galapagos, Australia and, of course, his beloved Central Park. Generous soul that he is, Cooper writes that outrage shouldn’t be focused on Amy Cooper. Instead, he concludes, “Focusing on her is a distraction and lets too many people off the hook from the hard, ongoing examination of themselves and their own racial biases. . . . If you’re looking for Amy Cooper to yell at, look in the mirror.”

In thoughtful prose, birder Christian Cooper reminisces about his life before and after the day a white woman threatened to call the police on him in Central Park.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Bring up baby with 4 beautiful picture books

Feature by Alice Cary

This Is the First Book I Will Read to You

Start off on the proverbial right foot with This Is the First Book I Will Read to You, in which a father celebrates the joys of reading with his newborn child. “I’ll be nervous,” he admits, “to share this moment that only you and I will be a part of.” As the father speaks, he gets the child ready for bed, walking through a house filled with loving family photographs. “You might not want to listen at first,” he continues. “But then we’ll find our way together.” Author Francesco Sedita’s sedate, pitch-perfect prose conveys the father’s jitters, but it’s dad’s quiet determination that rules the day.

Magenta Fox’s sweet digital illustrations are bathed in soft pinks and blues. As parent and child walk into the nursery and begin to read, Fox depicts the imaginative transformation that follows as wallpaper with a forest motif becomes an actual forest. Suddenly, father and baby are right there in a wooded clearing as an inquisitive squirrel looks on. It’s the perfect visual representation of the transportive power of books. As they keep reading, the pair ascend a hill, reach the sea and gaze up at the moon. “We have stories to discover and magical places to visit, you and I,” the father shares. “But tonight, this is the first book I’ll read to you.”

Sedita and Fox offer a gentle tribute to the strength of the parental bond and to all of the adventures, hopes and dreams that lie ahead.

★ The World and Everything in It

Kevin Henkes is widely known for his charming mouse characters, led by spunky Lilly of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, as well as numerous children’s novels, including the Newbery Honor books Olive’s Ocean and The Year of Billy Miller. However, Henkes’ less rambunctious picture books, such as Old Bear, Waiting and The World and Everything in It are treasures that shouldn’t be missed. They sparkle like little gems as they impart a deep sense of understanding and appreciation of our world.

Henkes begins with a simple idea. “There are big things and little things in the world,” he writes. On the page opposite this text, we see an illustration of a large tree trunk with a small green sprout beside it. In subsequent pages, he explores this idea systematically through spot illustrations of “little animals,” “tiny flowers” and “pebbles.” There’s even an empty space captioned “things so small you can’t see them.” Henkes next turns to big things, such as the sun, moon and sea.

After that, he helps young readers begin to grasp where they fit in among all these big and small things. For instance, he notes that “the sea is big, but you can hold some of it in your hands.” And just like that, this talented literary magician seamlessly moves from straightforward statements of fact to a series of sentences that capture sublime wonders. “Most of the things are in-between,” he explains. “Like you. And me. And just about anything you can think of.”

Henkes’ illustrations are tightly focused, economical and free of distractions—just right for the very young. He closes by repeating “Everything is in the world,” and the phrase feels like a benediction that reminds readers of the endless delights, both big and small, awaiting them.

★ The Moon Remembers

Stories about the moon are a staple for the very young, from perennial favorites like Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s Goodnight Moon and Eric Carle’s Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me to new classics such as Jane Yolen and John Schoenherr’s Owl Moon and Floyd Cooper’s Max and the Tag-Along Moon. E.B. Goodale’s exceptional The Moon Remembers deserves a place among them.

The book’s endpapers show the black-and-white phases of a friendly-faced moon, adding a nice touch of reality to this anthropomorphic fantasy. As a round, almost full, smiling moon gazes lovingly down on a nude roly-poly brown-skinned baby, we read that “when a baby is born, the moon is there. The moon remembers.” In fact, the moon remembers all babies, including your parents, and not just human babies: It shines its light down on baby crickets, rabbits, owls, flowers and trees. In a spread sure to find great favor, we learn that “even every DINOSAUR was a baby once!”

Goodale’s spare text offers comfort and reassurance as it describes how the moon “remembers where you came from . . . even when you’ve forgotten.” Her artwork is fittingly suffused with the soft glow of moonlight, which appears especially luminous in spreads that depict a dark green forest filled with ferns and undergrowth. Against this moody, arboreal backdrop, pops of pink, purple, white and yellow wildflowers feel perfectly placed. And of course the moon is omnipresent, whether it’s gleaming in the sky or reflected in a stream.

The Moon Remembers pays quiet but powerful homage to families and the promise of new life. After all, the moon remembers “every life . . . every sweet moment. And the moon will remember you, perfect you, as you go and wherever you grow.”

Awake, Asleep

Awake, Asleep chronicles a day in the lives of three young children in clever rhymes, following three families in the same neighborhood from dawn until bedtime. We meet a single-parent family, a multigenerational family with same-sex parents and a family who will soon welcome a new baby as we enjoy the beauty of an ordinary day that’s filled with rhythms—including ups and downs—that all families share.

Author Kyle Lukoff won a 2022 Newbery Honor (along with a number of other awards) for his middle grade novel Too Bright to See. Here he employs far fewer words but with just as much impact, creating strings of short noun phrases to describe the ongoing action of the day. In an early spread, for instance, we read, “A yawn, a peep, a stretch, awake!” as we watch a cat, a child and their parent wake up and get out of bed. Later, Lukoff neatly summarizes a child’s evening meltdown over putting away a train set with “a take, a pry, a scream, a cry.” The book’s genius is that because the scenes and situations are so readily identifiable, readers need no additional explanation.

Nadia Alam’s illustrations present a series of curated moments depicting, for example, a father and child putting on their pink sneakers together in the morning, and later, another child helping an older relative who uses a cane stand up from a park bench. Alam showcases myriad emotions along with the love that pours over these children no matter their mood. Young readers will identify with all of these inquisitive, happy, grumpy and, finally, sleepy faces. The book concludes with a bedtime story (“A hold, a keep, a voice, a book.”), which makes Awake, Asleep feel like a loving review of the day gone by as well as a comforting way to prepare for all the many days to come.

It’s never too early to begin raising the next generation of readers. Whether you’re off to a baby shower or building a library for your own little bundle of joy, these four picture books are perfect choices.
FictionFamily Drama

This round’s on Keane

Interview by Alice Cary

Mary Beth Keane grew up around bars. “Most of my uncles owned bars or worked in them,” she says. Which is why, when the world entered COVID-19 lockdown, Keane found herself yearning for the indoor camaraderie of a really packed bar. But besides socializing with her husband and two sons, the best she could do was drive around Pearl River, New York—the town where she grew up and now lives—hoping to spot a friend to chat with from afar. 

To compensate, Keane immersed herself in writing The Half Moon, named for the townie bar at the novel’s center. The wonderfully unpretentious, gifted writer explains this by phone from Bozeman, Montana, where she’s researching her next novel. (Its Western setting will herald a marked change from her beloved 2019 novel, Ask Again, Yes, and The Half Moon, both of which are set in Gillam, a fictionalized version of Pearl River.)

Read our starred review of The Half Moon.

In the novel, Malcolm Gephardt has worked at the Half Moon for years, and now he finally owns the place, with dreams to update and transform it. Unfortunately, creditors are at his heels, his marriage is on the rocks, and in the midst of a blizzard, a patron goes missing—setting the stage for plenty of riveting internal and external drama.

“This is a COVID book,” Keane says, “even though it doesn’t seem that way.” The pandemic is never mentioned, and there are no masks in sight. But Keane poured her loneliness and isolation right into Malcolm’s character, and the winter storm that paralyzes the town for a week or so accentuates the fact that a number of her characters feel trapped in their lives.

When asked about the impetus for The Half Moon, Keane explains that, at age 45, she’s starting to see couples get divorced and then, 18 months or so later, share Facebook posts showing “a whole new set of people and a new life,” she says. “I was thinking about to what degree we can change our lives once we reach a certain point. . . . I’m a very working-class child, and I grew up in a very Catholic community, and I don’t know whether it’s just me and the way I was raised, [but] I literally do not know how to do that.”

Not that she wants to, she adds quickly. “I’m very happy with my life. But part of being a writer is observing and watching other people, and I guess I just like thinking about things that I can’t imagine.” A friend of Keane’s recently commented that her books “are an argument for staying together, over and over,” which surprised the author. “Although it’s so obvious when I think about it now,” she says.

In The Half Moon, however, the odds of an intact marriage seem low. Malcolm’s wife, Jess, a lawyer, has been dreaming of having a child, but after years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, she has moved into the arms of someone else. Keane writes that Jess is weighed down by “Hormones. Grief. Boredom. The growing sense that life was passing her by and if she didn’t do something she’d leave nothing behind to prove she was even there.” Jess and Malcolm have had bitter disagreements over the financing of the bar, which she recognizes is his “baby,” his lifelong dream. 

“Every bartender in my family already thinks this book is about them.”

In crafting Jess and Malcolm’s rocky marriage, Keane had no idea what would happen between the couple, and she reported to her editors that she had “tried every [outcome] you could possibly suggest,” including some wildly dramatic ones. Such is the “jigsaw” style of Keane’s creative process. “It seems like a piecemeal, haphazard way to write, but that’s the way I do it,” she says.

In a 2019 essay for the New York Times, she describes growing up without books and how her earliest literary influence as a kid in the late 1980s was the Reader’s Digest column “Drama in Real Life.” In a way, Keane says, her upbringing was freeing, especially when it came to choosing books at the library. “Boy, did I learn a lot from those Danielle Steel books,” she says, laughing. She wrote her first stories on the back of paper plates, then read them aloud to her mom. Her first clue that she might have a talent came after writing a fourth-grade essay about a baked potato. Later, at age 13, she wrote a short story for a school literary magazine about a girl whose sister had committed suicide; it was so convincing that her mother began getting condolences from friends who said they didn’t realize that she had an older child.

“I knew [early on] that it didn’t have to be true; it just had to be good,” Keane says. “So I always leaned toward fiction. I felt in my gut that I was better at writing than I was at other things.” As she grew older, her childhood reading habits allowed her to remain free from the burden experienced by many writers who try to measure up to certain literary reputations. “I really don’t care what everyone thinks is good or not. I just read for myself. And I think that is a gift that not every writer has.” 

“As soon as I open a book and someone’s in therapy or playing tennis, I just don’t care.”

While Keane was at Barnard College, novelist Mary Gordon told her, “You have a subject.” At the time, however, Keane had no clue what it was. “Suddenly,” she says, “I was with people who’d been all over the world, and they had read everything. They were writing about things like anorexia, bulimia, sex—things that just seemed beyond me. But what was interesting to me then, and I think still is, is work and what people do for a living.”

Keane is the daughter of two Irish immigrants; her mother had various jobs, and her father was a “sandhog,” a New York City tunnel worker. For Ask Again, Yes, Keane interviewed members of the New York Police Department to collect accurate details for her police officer characters, but with The Half Moon, she simply turned to family, gleaning insider bar knowledge about things like jukebox earnings, free swag from breweries, beverage distribution and state liquor licensing authorities. Her cousins tended to be more helpful than her uncles. “Irish people, they clam right up if they think you’re asking too many questions, especially since I’m a writer,” Keane says. With a laugh, she adds, “Every bartender in my family already thinks this book is about them.”

The novel’s fictional bar takes its name from the ship that English explorer Henry Hudson sailed on his 1609 voyage to discover a Northwest Passage; a variety of places and products in the Hudson Valley share the Half Moon name. The moniker is apt, since readers will wonder whether Malcolm and Jess’ marriage is waxing or waning. “I also like that the name isn’t overtly Irish,” Keane admits. “It sort of bothers me when everyone describes [my work] as ‘Irish people’ and ‘an Irish novel.’”

Book jacket image for The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane

The hallmark of a classic Keane character isn’t their background or heritage, but rather their inability to articulate what’s bothering them. “I’m more familiar with and more sympathetic to people who would sooner either tamp it way down and pretend it’s not there—or throw a beer bottle against a wall,” she says. Malcolm, for instance, can charm customers with his gift of gab for hours, but at home, he’s not so much of a talker. In fact, one of his truest, most memorable forms of self-expression comes when he throws a cup of coffee at someone’s car. “These are my people, I guess,” Keane says. “As soon as I open a book and someone’s in therapy or playing tennis, I just don’t care.”

Keane has spent a lifetime observing people in fiction and real life, and in both cases, she likes to keep things simple. “We’re just a disaster from beginning to end,” she says with a laugh. “Nobody gets any smarter. It’s just that kids look up to us. But I want to say all the time, ‘I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing, but I’m going to drag you along with me, and we’re going to do our best. You know, try to be kind to the people you love. And that’s about it.’”

Photo of Mary Beth Keane by Martin Hickey

When the world entered COVID-19 lockdown, author Mary Beth Keane (Ask Again, Yes) found herself yearning for the indoor camaraderie of a really packed bar. To compensate, she immersed herself in writing The Half Moon, named for the townie bar at the story’s center.
Nonfiction

The near-death experiences of Barbara Butcher

Interview by Alice Cary

“I’ve gone places and seen things that most people don’t,” Barbara Butcher says. That’s a mighty understatement, given that she spent 22 years working as a death investigator for New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. As she gazes at the panoramic view from the windows of her high-rise apartment in Brooklyn, she muses, “I can look at any given building and say, ‘Oh, that was the guy that had the drug overdose’ or, ‘There’s the guy who got stabbed.’” But despite such horrors, she loved the job. “If you’re going to investigate death, New York City is the place to do it,” she says.

Butcher began as a medicolegal death investigator, eventually becoming director of the Forensic Science Training Program, logging countless hours at death scenes all over the city while “getting some justice for people and getting some answers for families,” she says. Butcher chronicles all of this heartbreak, drama, intrigue—and occasional humor—in her spellbinding memoir, What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator.

Read our starred review of ‘What the Dead Know’ by Barbara Butcher.

Butcher’s job, she explains, was not to solve murders but to investigate all of the circumstances surrounding deaths. While forensic pathologists determined the cause and manner of each death, Butcher scoured bodies and their surroundings for clues, such as signs of violence or disease. Having worked on “perhaps 5,500 cases,” she decided it was finally time to write about them during COVID-19 lockdown. “I remember all of them,” she says, including “naturals,” murders, accidents and suicides—which she says she always found disturbing. A particularly wrenching story involved an older Jewish woman who jumped off of her apartment’s roof, leaving no note or clues about her last act. “This woman had survived a concentration camp, the loss of home and country,” Butcher writes. “What could make her want to kill herself after all these years?” Throughout the book, Butcher’s descriptions are vivid yet respectful, reflecting the dizzying array of human experience.

What Butcher most loved about the job was getting to witness exactly how people lived. “Once someone’s dead, they can no longer hide anything from you,” she says. “So, being a nosy person, I get to go in there, investigate how they died and look at how they lived—go through their possessions for identification, medications, things like that.” She found herself in every kind of setting, from multimillion-dollar penthouses with priceless artwork to apartment bedrooms crammed with multiple bunk beds and hammocks strung between them. She has climbed into railroad tunnels to access caves where people had set up housekeeping. She has ventured to the Whitehouse Hotel, which was a “flophouse” with hundreds of cubicles that she recalls as “pieces of plywood with chicken wire on top, and that’s where people lived and died—literally a warehouse for humans.” Both during our call and in her book, she repeatedly bristles at the long-standing discrepancy in investigative resources. There will be few resources dedicated to, say, “a young Black woman who is a sex worker found murdered in the back alley of the Javits Center,” she says, while a “white girl from a wealthy family and murdered on Park Avenue will be on every headline and police blotter until it’s solved.” She adds, “I don’t think anyone should be lost to history, and perhaps that’s why I picked the cases that I did.”

“Every day is a disaster waiting to happen. Every little footstep outside my door is a potential serial killer.”

Once Butcher began working on her book, she found that writing about cases was decidedly easier than writing about herself. To deal with the many troubling situations that she encountered, she developed a steely detachment, which worked well for her career but caused repeated problems in her personal life. “I don’t do vulnerable,” she says. “That’s not my thing.” At her editor’s insistence, however, she added more intimate details into her manuscript, revealing, for instance, that she experienced depression and suicidal thoughts as teenager. Butcher also describes how her childhood love of science led her to become a physician assistant and then a hospital administrator, but she lost that position after she began to drink heavily. Her life was decidedly off the rails when she turned to Alcoholics Anonymous, whose career counseling service suggested that she should become either a poultry veterinarian, of all things, or a coroner. She scheduled an informational interview with Dr. Charles Hirsch, the legendary NYC Chief Medical Examiner, who hired her on the spot. “Alcoholism had landed me my dream job!” she writes.

“I’ve noticed these things in my life,” Butcher says, “where something bad happens, but out of it, ultimately, I’m steered in a better direction.” In fact, she even came to believe that her experiences with alcoholism helped hone her investigative skills. “We’re always hiding everything,” she says, referring to people with substance abuse disorders, “and so we know what’s hidden.”

Dr. Hirsch soon became a beloved mentor. “He was like a father, a brother, a friend. Just so much about him was so good,” Butcher says. His guidance was essential, especially since Butcher was only the second woman to take on her role in Manhattan, the first having left after only a month. She worked hard, as she writes, to fit in as “one of the girls who is one of the boys.” Over the years, Butcher was ribbed for showing up at death scenes in Talbots suits, but she prided herself on looking professional and found that it helped move investigations along. There were jokes, too, about her name, but she calls her surname “a great gift from my dad,” who was a policeman. She loved arriving at scenes and saying, “Butcher from the Medical Examiner. What d’you got?” and still chuckles about the time when an intern named Slaughter tagged along.

“When you’re surrounded by death and evil and murder and horror and tragedy, you accept it as the norm.”

This sense of humor also comes through in Butcher’s writing. What the Dead Know contains numerous one-liners such as, “You learn to think outside the box when the box contains a dead person.” Explaining the need for such dark humor, she says, “You have to deflect the pain and the sadness.”

Butcher was suddenly forced out of her job in 2015 when Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York and made his own appointments. “I miss it every single day,” she says. “I crave it. I long for it. It got to the point where I was thinking, ‘Well, if things go really, really bad, they’ll have to take me back—like during a nuclear attack or something.” She laughs at her desperation but adds, “Yeah, I miss that job. It was absolutely fantastic. Having said that, I will also say that it ruined me emotionally.”

Over the years, Butcher began to see calamity lurking at every turn. “The PTSD is god-awful,” she admits. “Years of therapy have mitigated it somewhat, but the thoughts are still there. Every day is a disaster waiting to happen. Every little footstep outside my door is a potential serial killer. When you’re surrounded by death and evil and murder and horror and tragedy, you accept it as the norm.” As for her own death, she speculates, “I’m fairly certain that I’ll be hit in the head by a stray bullet while trying to save a child from a river crossing. . . . It will be something dramatic, I’m quite certain.”

“If you have an amazingly cool job that you really love and enjoy, and you get to do a little good in the world—well, that’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

Butcher sank into a deep depression after leaving the Medical Examiner’s Office, eventually requiring hospitalization and electroshock therapy, which she recounts in her book. “Ultimately, creativity is what saved me,” she says. “I took some piano lessons. I took dance lessons. I did things that were creative and fun and the opposite of death. I think that is part of why I wrote this book now. It’s a way to create something that may take me out of this feeling of being so totally bereft.”

Meanwhile, Butcher has two more books in the works. The first is a novel based on a story from her investigative life. “I have a theory of what really happened, so I have to fictionalize it,” she says. The other is a nonfiction exploration of the sorry state of death investigation in the United States. Butcher says she abhors the fact that about 60% of the country is served by elected coroners (as opposed to medical examiners), some of whom have no higher qualification than a high school degree. “That is why it is often easy to get away with murder,” she says, “if you are clever enough to make it look natural.”

“I think almost everyone is interested in death on some level,” Butcher says, “because it’s going to happen to everyone. Some might imagine that I have some insight into it, but I don’t, of course.” Regardless, she’s extremely proud of the work she’s done throughout her career. “If you have an amazingly cool job that you really love and enjoy, and you get to do a little good in the world—well, that’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

Headshot of Barbara Butcher by Anthony Robert Grasso.

The New York City death investigator shares what it was like to have a career that both saved and ruined her life.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Conjure Island

Review by Alice Cary

Following her award-winning debut novel, Root Magic, Eden Royce returns with another magical, atmospheric South Carolina-set story that explores Gullah culture. While her first book focused on a twin brother and sister learning rootwork from their uncle in the 1960s, Conjure Island centers on 11-year-old Del Baker, a strong-minded girl who feels lost when her caretaker grandmother is hospitalized. Del and Gramma are frequently on the move—this time, from Massachusetts to Delaware—and all the changes have taken their toll. Even before Gramma became ill, Del felt “disconnected from everything around her, like she was drifting in an ocean without any land in sight.”

Del knows next to nothing about her mom, who died in childbirth, and her father is deployed abroad in the Air Force. So when Gramma is hospitalized, Del is sent to spend a month on an island off the coast of South Carolina with her great-grandmother, Nana Rose, whom Del has never heard of before. Nana Rose is the head of the Vesey Conservatory for the Wonder Arts, “the only school left in South Carolina teaching the traditional ways of Southern conjure.” As Nana Rose explains, “Our people have been practicing it in this part of the world for over four hundred years.”

Gobsmacked by her family’s magical connections, Del suddenly finds herself immersed in a Harry Potter-esque world where each student is assigned a magical broom, teachers called “sorcells” give conjuring lessons, spirits roam the halls and a talking alligator helps with transportation. Luckily, Del finds a kindred spirit in her roommate, Eva, and the two explore the challenges of new situations and what it means to be a friend. 

The parallels to Harry Potter are never overdone, as Royce does an excellent job of painting a a unique picture of her own lively South Carolina coastal world. There is plenty of action (quicksand, a near-drowning and more) as Del explores the island, trying to wipe away cobwebs from family secrets that Gramma and Nana Rose refuse to discuss. Why did Gramma leave her island home, never to return? Why did she refuse to continue conjuring, which she was quite skilled at as a girl? Everyone, it seems, has secrets; even Del keeps “her questions about her mom buried deep down in her own sort of box.” 

The magic and mystery make this book particularly alluring, and Royce builds her world with finesse, showing how conjuring “connects people, builds community, and strengthens bonds.” She emphasizes the importance of understanding history and our family roots, as well as building meaningful friendships and communities. “The South really is a portal,” she writes. 

Conjure Island takes readers on an exciting getaway and offers a sense of reassurance to anyone feeling lost, left out, lonely or simply in search of some magical fun.

Conjure Island takes readers on an exciting getaway and offers a sense of reassurance to anyone feeling lost, left out, lonely or simply in search of some magical fun.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Hope in the Valley

Review by Alice Cary

On her 13th birthday, Pandita Paul escapes to her own secret garden—the Johnson property, an abandoned orchard and house where she and her now-deceased mother used to sneak away for quiet moments. In this haven just across the street from her home in Silicon Valley, Pandita keeps her most precious possessions: notes from her mother and a childhood photo of her mom, whom Pandita worries she’s beginning to forget. 

That same night, during her family birthday celebration, Pandita hears that the property she adores is slated for development. This intensely personal and political conflict propels Hope in the Valley, an extraordinary middle grade novel from Mitali Perkins, who has previously published picture books (Between Us and Abuela) and young adult novels (You Bring the Distant Near).

Before Pandita knows it, her hidden treasures have been removed and the building demolished. Devastated, Pandita joins a historical preservation group trying to block the development. Meanwhile, one of her older sisters is working with a nonprofit group hoping to provide affordable rental units on the prized parcel of land. 

As Pandita begins to learn more about the property’s history, she becomes fascinated with its long-deceased, widowed owner, Lydia Johnson, who stood up for the rights of Japanese American and Mexican American families, protecting their farms during World War II incarceration and disruption. As Pandita begins to understand the history of “Keep California White” campaigns, she reexamines her stance on what should happen to the orchard property.

If all of this sounds complicated or heavy, never fear: Perkins is an expert at weaving together a multitude of plotlines in a seamlessly thought-provoking, entertaining way. She addresses grief, fear of change, xenophobia, segregation and the power of friendships while reckoning with history and the legacies of injustice. Despite this boatload of serious subjects, the prose feels organic, portraying authentic dynamics in this extended Bengali family, which includes grandparents back in India, Pandita’s lively twin sisters, their grieving father and his new love interest. Each plot thread gets its fair due, and only a writer as talented as Perkins could turn a zoning board meeting into a pivotal, dramatic moment. 

In addition to the many ways that history repeats itself, the novel also explores the power of the arts, bolstered by meaningful references to Emily Dickinson and a variety of children’s books, old and new. Against her will, Pandita is forced to attend a summer musical drama camp, where she meets a new friend (and crush)—a Filipino American boy named Leo. She also has a role in a production of The Sound of Music, in which she discovers “the magic of theater, inviting an audience to travel with actors across boundaries of time and culture into the heart of a story”—which is just what Perkins accomplishes in these pages.

Although she hates public speaking, Pandita is named after renowned Indian speaker and social reformer Pandita Ramabai. Like her namesake, Pandita gradually finds her voice, learning to move forward while honoring the past. Many books advocate for listening carefully to people of opposing views while following one’s own beliefs, but few do it better than Perkins’ exceptional Hope in the Valley.

Many books advocate for listening carefully to people of opposing views while following one's own beliefs, but few do it better than Mitali Perkins’ exceptional Hope in the Valley.
NonfictionTrue CrimeMemoir

I Know Who You Are

Review by Alice Cary

Some retirees quilt; others fish. And then there’s Northern California resident Barbara Rae-Venter, who, with “both feet planted firmly in retirement,” sparked a forensic revolution. How in the world did a retiree sitting alone at her computer looking at family trees manage to crack a horrific criminal case that had been eluding investigators for 40 years? 

Sixty-three days after loading a crime scene DNA profile to a service called GEDmatch, Rae-Venter and others in a group who call themselves Team Justice were able to identify a suspect: a police officer-turned-truck mechanic named Joseph James DeAngelo who eventually admitted responsibility for at least 13 murders and 50 rapes in the 1970s and ’80s in California. She tells the story the world has been waiting to hear in her mesmerizing memoir, I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever. 

“All my life, mysteries have called out to me to be solved,” Rae-Venter writes. As a child growing up in New Zealand, she had what her mother called a “grasshopper mind,” meaning that Rae-Venter tended to circle a topic, coming at it from odd angles before zeroing in on an insight. She came to the United States at age 20, eventually earning a Ph.D. in biology and becoming a patent lawyer specializing in biotechnology innovations. In retirement, she started researching her own family history, then became a volunteer genealogist at a not-for-profit organization called DNAAdoption that teaches adoptees how to identify biological relatives using autosomal DNA. In 2015, Rae-Venter became involved in a cold case pertaining to an adoptee named Lisa Jensen, who at age 5 was abandoned by a man who claimed to be her father but wasn’t. The now-grown Jensen had no idea who her birth parents were until Rae-Venter solved this family mystery, and what turned out to be a mind-blowing criminal case, using investigative genetic genealogy (IGG). 

In addition to Jensen and the Golden State Killer, Rae-Venter describes a number of additional intriguing cases she’s worked on, along with the chilling details of actually being present at DeAngelo’s sentencing. She also discusses the ethical issues that IGG poses to the privacy of individuals’ DNA profiles, explains the complicated process of IGG in layman’s terms and includes a helpful glossary.

After unmasking the Golden State Killer, Rae-Venter planned to be identified only as an anonymous geneticist, but her son finally convinced her to go public. “If my story can inspire a budding young scientist somewhere to pursue her dreams, then my story is a story worth telling,” she writes. Indeed it is, and true crime lovers everywhere will agree.

Some retirees quilt; others fish. And then there’s Barbara Rae-Venter, who identified the Golden State Killer using investigative genetic genealogy and sparked a forensic revolution.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

The Labors of Hercules Beal

Review by Alice Cary

“It’s a tough world, Beal.” That’s the advice that seventh grader Hercules Beal receives from his new homeroom teacher, retired U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Hupfer. The world’s been especially tough on Hercules, whose parents were killed when a pickup truck slammed into their vehicle. Understandably, he’s not happy about much, including the fact that he has to go to a new school, Cape Cod Academy for Environmental Sciences. Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt knows how to write about devastating situations, and just as The Wednesday Wars did, The Labors of Hercules Beal (Clarion, $19.99, 9780358659631) digs deep.

Narrator Hercules is hardly one to wallow in his sorrows. Despite the tragedy he’s faced, he hasn’t lost his sense of humor nor his sense of wonder, always heading out first thing in the morning with his cat and dog to watch the sunrise over the Truro Dunes, which is his time to say good morning to his parents. After their death, his adult brother, Achilles, returned home to take care of him and run the family business, Beal Brothers Farm and Nursery.

Schmidt has created numerous caring adult teachers in his novels—a fact no doubt influenced by the fact that Schmidt is himself a college English professor. The Labors of Hercules Beal is no exception. At the beginning of the school year, Lt. Col. Hupfer assigns each of his seventh graders their own “Classical Mythology Application Project” to “learn something about yourselves through studying classical myths.” Hercules’ assignment is to consider how each of his namesake demigod’s 12 fabled labors might be performed today.

This daunting assignment provides an intriguing theme, as well as a great way to connect young readers to mythology. Schmidt makes great use of the Maine setting, and the Beal Brothers Farm and Nursery is rife with intriguing dilemmas. Hercules’ reflection essays and Hupfer’s responses are entertaining and informative as well; Hupfer is a kind, sensitive but tough grader, making comments such as, “Your grade might have been significantly higher had you not chosen to use tricks that have been obvious to any teacher born since 1702.”

Few writers have the ability to sink a middle grade character so deeply into the abyss and then bring them back again. As Hercules Beal concludes, “By the end of his Labors, Hercules understood that he had been to hell, and come back. That meant a lot—that he had come back. Now he had a lot more living to do—and he was grateful beyond anything for that.” The Labors of Hercules Beal is an exceptionally honest and empowering book, offering multitudes of hope, kindness and unforgettable adventures.

Gary D. Schmidt’s middle grade novel offers multitudes of hope, kindness and unforgettable adventures as it introduces young readers to classical mythology.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Postcard

Review by Alice Cary

There should be a special word for when readers become so thoroughly engrossed in a book that they can hardly put it down—and are jolted, even bereft, when it comes to an end. Captivated comes close but doesn’t completely convey the experience of reading The Postcard from French writer and actor Anne Berest. Already an international bestseller, it’s a unique piece of autofiction that unfolds like a thriller while seamlessly addressing a number of hefty social issues past and present.

Like the author, the novel’s Anne Berest is the great-granddaughter of artist Francis Picabia and French Resistance fighter Gabriele Buffet-Picabia. But Anne knows little about her maternal grandmother Myriam except that she was Jewish and lost her family in concentration camps. The topic is rarely discussed, and Anne doesn’t think much about it until one day when her young daughter remarks, “They don’t like Jews very much at school.” 

Shaken to her core, Anne can hardly address the subject. Instead, she suddenly remembers a strange, anonymous postcard that her mother had received years earlier, in 2003. The front showed a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris; the back contained the names of Myriam’s parents, Ephraim and Emma, and siblings, Noémie and Jacques, all of whom died at Auschwitz in 1942. 

Anne becomes determined to find out who sent the postcard, though she’s uncertain whether the sender’s intentions were honorable or menacing, “waiting, as they had been for decades, patiently, for me to come looking for them.” She partners with her chain-smoking mother to investigate, hopping into her mother’s messy car, and little by little, their efforts pay off and details emerge, which Berest shares in fictionalized scenes, creating dialogue and details while sticking to the facts as closely as possible. As her mother says, “It’s incredible how much is still there in the archives, like an underground world, a parallel world, still alive. Like the embers of a fire . . . all you have to do is blow on them to rekindle the flame.”

The rekindling is unsettling, and Berest’s moving storytelling brings her ancestors’ story to life in dramatic, artful ways, often interspersing historical events with running discussions between mother and daughter. They uncover an epic, tragic tale that spans the globe, including Russia, Latvia, Poland, France, the United States and Palestine. Although Ephraim had taken note of the growing dangers to Jews in Europe, he was determined to become a French citizen, and in so doing, “He’d allowed himself to become inextricably entangled in a situation from which there was no escape, trapped by rising waters while he simply stood there and watched them rise.” 

As Anne and her mother explore their past, the author notices a number of coincidences and parallels to her own life while acknowledging the extent of the inherited trauma. “I carry within me,” she concludes, “inscribed in the very cells of my body, the memory of an experience of danger so violent that sometimes I think I really lived it myself, or that I’ll be forced to relive it one day.” Readers of The Postcard will be left with similar feelings and much to ponder, especially after these words from Anne’s mother: “Indifference is universal. Who are you indifferent toward today, right now? Ask yourself that. Which victims living in tents, or under overpasses, or in camps way outside the cities are your ‘invisible ones’?”

Readers of The Postcard will be left with much to ponder, especially after these words: “Indifference is universal. Who are you indifferent toward today, right now?”
NonfictionTrue CrimeMemoir

What the Dead Know

Review by Alice Cary

Early on in her job, Barbara Butcher got an invaluable piece of advice from a colleague: “When you leave here each day, surround yourself with things of beauty. Enjoy nature and art and food and music and love. Just do it, and don’t skip a day.” Those words turned out to be crucial, lifesaving wisdom for Butcher, who spent 22 years working at the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. It was her job to investigate the circumstances surrounding unexpected deaths, carefully examining the bodies and their surroundings for clues to determine if it was an accident, a suicide, a death by natural causes—or a murder. Although she calls it “the best career I could ever imagine,” the emotional toll was painful—often excruciating—as she explains in her colorful, compelling memoir, What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator.

Barbara Butcher shares fond and chilling memories from the career that both saved and ruined her life.

Butcher’s life was almost upended by depression and alcohol addiction. Despite rising in the ranks as a physician assistant and a hospital administrator, she was on an extreme crash course to destruction when she landed in Alcoholics Anonymous. By chance, after she got sober, she was hired as a medicolegal death investigator. Butcher was only the second woman to hold the job; the first had quit after only a month.

Writing in a fast-paced, no-nonsense, sometimes funny and always precise style, Butcher shares a treasure trove of life and death stories that touch on racism, wealth, poverty, prejudice, misogyny, justice and injustice. In many ways, it’s the ultimate behind-the-scenes tour of the Big Apple from the 1990s through 2015, including the 9/11 attacks. Butcher guides readers through mansions, flophouses, back alleys, squatters’ buildings, train tunnels and more while taking note of the immense breadth of humanity, both living and dead.

Visceral, impassioned and hard to put down, What the Dead Know is a lively account of an unimaginable career.

Writing in a fast-paced and precise style, Barbara Butcher shares a treasure trove of stories from her 22 years as a death investigator in New York City.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Bitsy Bat, School Star

Review by Alice Cary

It’s Bitsy Bat’s first night at her new school, Crittercrawl Elementary, in Kaz Windness’ inventive and informative Bitsy Bat, School Star. Adorable, irrepressible Bitsy soon discovers that her classmates aren’t at all like her. There’s a mouse, a rabbit and a racoon who uses a wheelchair, making Bitsy the only “toe-hanger.” Windness, who describes herself as “proudly autistic,” beautifully describes Bitsy’s reaction: “Maybe it was the awful feeling that she would never, ever fit in. Whatever it was, Bitsy Bat had a FIVE-STAR meltdown.”

Every young reader, autistic or not, will likely identify with many of Bitsy’s feelings, and the resourceful bat soon comes up with excellent solutions to her problems while reaching out to her classmates so they can all better understand everyone’s unique abilities.

Windness’ dusk-toned art plays up Bitsy’s batlike behavior in clever ways, and the author-illustrator’s personal note, as well as a footnote containing additional facts about autism, make Bitsy Bat, School Star a particularly helpful resource for all kids.

Every young reader, autistic or not, will likely identify with many of the feelings portrayed in Bitsy Bat, School Star, and its resourceful protagonist soon comes up with excellent solutions to her problems.
NonfictionMemoirHumorEssays

Congratulations, the Best is Over!

Review by Alice Cary

R. Eric Thomas is a big personality, and he owns it: “I’m a lot without reason or provocation.” He likes exclamation points, and he’s fun, funny, vulnerable and one hell of a storyteller. Readers will find him a hoot to hang out with in his second book of essays, Congratulations, the Best is Over!: Essays. It’s an excellent follow-up to Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, which recounted his coming-of-age in Baltimore, education at Columbia and early career writing for Elle. Now a multitalented pop-culture guru, Thomas has published a YA novel, Kings of B’more, and written for the TV shows “Better Things” and “Dickinson.”

These latest essays chronicle his courtship and marriage to David Norse Thomas, a white Presbyterian minister who was raised in Oregon. Their dissimilar backgrounds provide tender comedy, as seen in the account of their engagement on top of an Oregon peak at sunset: Eric describes the mountain as “one that we walked up with our feet and bodies and such.” By the end of the expedition, he’s shivering uncontrollably, saying, “David, I think nature is trying to kill me!”

In the first half of the book, “Homecoming,” the couple move from Philadelphia back to Baltimore —which is problematic for Eric, since Baltimore “was where all the ghosts of the unhappy person I used to be still lived.” Eric’s discussions of his depression are frank and charismatic. “I feel like I’m talking about the inner workings of a stranger. The sadness is real and it is always around and it is not who I am.” Readers can feel his loneliness as he writes at his apartment desk, and his attempts to find friends and community are both touching and hilarious.

Engaging stories about neighbors, landscaping and a horde of very loud frogs ensue in the second half of the book, “Homegoing.” When the COVID-19 pandemic hits, Eric and his husband buy a house set on a half acre of land—which Eric poignantly connects to the failed promise of 40 acres and a mule to formerly enslaved Black people in 1865—out in northern Baltimore County. As Eric explains, “Apparently the key to getting me to consider the appeal of the suburbs is locking me in my city apartment for fifty-two days. On day fifty-three, suddenly I’m like, ‘You know what really rings my bells? A Nest camera, a cul-de-sac, and an HOA handbook full of microaggressions.’”

Thomas will keep you laughing, but underneath his mirth lies a wealth of thoughtful observations about his life, family, politics, pop culture and especially his marriage.

R. Eric Thomas will keep you laughing, but underneath the mirth of this excellent essay collection lies a wealth of thoughtful observations about his life, family, politics, pop culture and especially his marriage.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Giant-Sized Butterflies on My First Day of School

Review by Alice Cary

In the marvelous Giant-Sized Butterflies on My First Day of School, Justin Roberts provides an invaluable life lesson for anyone fearful of approaching something new: Lean into those nerves. Roberts borrows a page from fellow musician and author Bill Harley (Sitting Down to Eat) by turning one of his own most popular hits into a picture book. During a drive to school, a girl’s mother explains that those butterfly feelings are normal and happen to everyone. Even Mom and the girl’s dad felt them when the girl first arrived as a baby. “Don’t hold them in,” her mother says. “Just let them fly.”

Paola Escobar’s art visualizes the child’s fears with colorful, delicate swirls of butterflies that follow her as she gets up and heads to school, reinforcing the message that these nerves are actually a lovely, useful force. With its reassuring text and cheerful illustrations, Giant-Sized Butterflies on My First Day of School provides a simple yet powerful message about harnessing one’s fears: “Those butterflies made me realize that the flutters inside are wings opening wide . . . guiding me through my first day.”

With its reassuring text and cheerful illustrations, Giant-Sized Butterflies on My First Day of School provides a simple yet powerful message about harnessing one’s fears.

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