The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James

In The Tusk That Did the Damage, by Tania James tells the story of ivory poaching in southern India from three different points of view: the poachers; American documentary film makers; and an elephant, a rogue man-killer who buries his victims after the kill. Orphaned and captured by poachers as a young calf, the Gravedigger eventually escapes captivity and terrorizes the countryside, destroying crops and human life at will. The poachers hunt elephants to protect their crops and community and, also, for the valuable ivory tusks.  Brothers Jayan and Manu have lost a cousin to an attack by the Gravedigger and set out to kill the elephant as much for revenge as for his tusks. Jayan has killed elephants previously and even served prison time for the crime, but Manu is a gentler soul and very conflicted over the plan. Meanwhile, the American film makers document the work of an Indian veterinarian who has devoted his life to protecting elephants. Elephants are a species that needs protecting, but a rampaging elephant can destroy the lives and resources of people who have very little to start with, people who have their own need for protection. This struggle involves both man versus nature and man versus man. It’s an age old conflict with the addition of two modern elements: overpopulation and endangered species. 

The Stories We Tell by Patti Callahan Henry

In The Stories We Tell, Eve and Cooper Morrison have everything they could ever want. They have money, perfect careers, a beautiful house in Savannah, and the perfect, well-to-do, old family. Eve owns a letterpress studio, where she focuses on designing and making homemade cards, invitations, and special paper items. Her husband, Cooper, owns an e-magazine company. On the outside, everything is exactly how it should seem.

While everything appears perfect from the outside, that facade couldn't be farther from the truth. Eve's sister Willa is staying with Eve and Cooper just until she gets her life "sorted out." Eve's teenage daughter is going through a rebellious state. And as if that isn't bad enough for Eve, Cooper thinks that she's is so busy devoting time to everything else except her marriage to him.

Amid all of the chaos in the Morrison family, Cooper and Willa wind up in a car accident that leaves Willa with some memory loss. When Cooper tells what happened the night of the accident, things don't seem to match up. Why would Cooper say that Willa was drunk when she wasn't? Where did the money in Eve's business bank account go? Why is Eve receiving cryptic messages written in greeting cards designed by letterpress ?

Sorting through Coopers story, Willa's memories, and the real facts, Eve has to decide if her perfect life is really worth all of this.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

The marriage of Lila Dahl and John Ames did not seem to be a match made in heaven, if heaven there be. The Reverend Ames, a minister with deep roots in Gilead, a small town in Iowa, was an elderly man who lived in the same house and preached in the same Congregationalist church that his father and grandfather had. Lila was a younger woman, a homeless vagrant laborer without religion, education, family, or even her own last name. However, when she stepped into Reverend Ames’ church during a service, seeking shelter from a rainstorm, she immediately caught his interest. Over the summer, they cultivated a relationship that eventually led to marriage and the birth of a child.  Lila had long been an independent woman and she did not easily accept anything the minister offered her, including security and, most particularly, his religion.

During the 1920’s, in the rural Midwest, a woman named Doll had snatched a very young Lila away from neglectful and possibly dangerous caretakers. They joined a small group of migrant workers, walking from farm to farm, seeking out a precarious existence by providing extra hands for the planting, weeding and harvesting that needed to be done. This life sustained them until the dust storms destroyed the farms, impoverished the farmers and eliminated any work for itinerant labor. But no matter how difficult their circumstances got, Doll always put Lila’s needs first, even ensuring that she received a small amount of education.

So, when in the early post-War years, an adult Lila wandered into Gilead and into Reverend Ames’ life, she resisted his theology or any theology at all. Quite a disadvantage for a friend, let alone a wife, of a small town minister. But Lila had her own ideas and looked at Christian teaching with a cool, analytical eye. Doll and her friends were uneducated in all matters except hard work. They were too busy surviving in a hard world to consider matters of religion or patriotism. Yet, they provided for and protected Lila for no other reason than their own human decency. Lila was not willing to abandon them or believe them to be in Hell for eternity because they were not baptized and did not know their prayers. They were “people no one would miss, who had done no special harm, who just lived and died as well as they could manage.”

John Ames was a patient and thoughtful man who did not insist that his wife adopt his religious beliefs. Lila was a thoughtful and introspective woman who eventually came to her own accommodation with Christian teaching. Their natures made their marriage possible.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson is a prequel to her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead although it can be read as a stand-alone book. (After reading this beautifully written book, some may be interested in reading [or rereading] Gilead. Definitely not action-packed, this is a book for readers interested in ideas and personalities.

Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew

These days, you’re most likely to recognize longtime actress Kate Mulgrew from her role as “Red” Reznikov on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.  But Mulgrew has a varied acting history that spans decades.

 In her new memoir, Mulgrew talks in detail about many of the stages of her life.  She details her upbringing in a large, Catholic family on a beautiful Iowa farm, going to New York to study acting with Stella Adler and the death of her younger sister.  A young Kate has to make a decision to work on not one, but two prestigious projects while quitting her training.

She has several intense romantic relationships and as a young woman, becomes pregnant and gives the baby up for adoption with no knowledge of the child’s whereabouts.   This painful decision colors much of her future and mental health but Mulgrew continues working at a staggering pace.  She eventually marries and has two sons with artistic director Robert Egan. By the end of the book, the reader sees two of the actress’s biggest life events: the search for her biological daughter and her role as Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. 

The actress who plays colorful roles on the stage and screen is no less vibrant in real life.  Mulgrew’s memoir is written with honesty, wit, and beautiful language.  Check out Born With Teeth from the library today!

The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

When Aron was eight years old, his large Jewish family moved from their impoverished Polish village to Warsaw so his father could take a better job. His older brothers also found work and his mother took in laundry. Aron and his younger brother attended school. But their relatively better circumstances did not last long. The German army soon marched into Poland and into Warsaw. Eventually they established the Warsaw Ghetto, literally walling in the Jewish population, forcing 400,000 people into a small area of the city. Families had to double and triple up. Not only shelter, but food, medicine, fuel and clothing were in very short supply. Families began to rely on their smallest children for support. The children were able to leave the ghetto through small openings in the wall and then return, smuggling in the necessities of life. Aron joined a gang engaged in this activity. It was risky labor and getting caught could be fatal. Consequently, life became cheap. The children became inured to the pain and death of others, easily betraying and sacrificing cohorts to protect themselves. Aron lost all the members of his family, one by one, to disease and deportation. Then his fellow gang members either died or turned against him. Eventually he was put out of his own home by a squatter family and nearly died on the streets. Only the efforts of Dr. Janusz Korczak, a real life hero who advocated for and protected children even before the war, saved his life. Dr. Korczak found and brought Aron into his orphanage. Eventually, under the patient care of the doctor, Aron recovered his strength and, more importantly, his ability to empathize with others. He became a valuable assistant to Korczak, accompanying him on the begging excursions needed to feed the orphans. All in the ghetto were in bodily danger, but Aron’s humanity had been saved. Few stories on this subject have a happy ending but the right unhappy ending can be uplifting. 

Check out The Book of Aron at the library!

The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood

The year is 1960, and JFK has just been elected. With the election of such a young president, the entire country has the hope that with John and Jackie Kennedy in the White House, there will be change. Nobody hopes for this more than, Claire, a suburban house wife and mother of one daughter, with another baby on the way. Claire has everything she could want; a house in the suburbs, a loving husband, a family, and a group of friends. Despite having everything she could want, Claire is unhappy. She doesn't love her husband and feels stifled by her life. When Claire and her husband go away for his mother's birthday, Claire's life changes.

It's 1919 in San Francisco, where Vivien is looking for her long lost love who seems to have vanished during the terrible San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Refusing to believe that her lover, David, was killed in the earthquake, Vivien spends time looking for David. Vivien, who is an obituary writer, helps people deal with grief, yet can't come to terms with her own grief or the thought that David is dead. When death hits Vivien close to home, she realizes life is too short to spend life wondering what if.

Ann Hood does a wonderful job weaving together the two stories of Claire and Vivien in The Obituary Writer. For both women, who grieve different things, it's easy to see how their stories just might inspire one another. The Obituary Writer is a beautiful glimpse of two really interesting historical time periods. Hood's writing style makes this a quick, fun read while making you empathize with both Claire and Vivien.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Teddy Todd was the favorite child of mother, father and aunt. Sweet-natured and accommodating, his favorite boyhood activity was walking through the countryside near his home. He loved his pets, literature and Nancy, the girl next door. As an adult he maintained the same accommodating nature and was rather apathetic about adult endeavors, particularly employment. Before World War II, for want of any other interest, he followed his father and older brother into banking. After the war, he worked for local magazines and newspapers and married Nancy just because it seemed to be the thing to do. He lived and died as his wife, and later his daughter, wanted him to. But during World War II, he was different. War inspired him to join the RAF, become a leader of men and fly bombing raids over Germany. The gentle man who loved flowers and animals and poetry found his calling in raining down destruction on civilian populations. In years to come, he, like many other war veterans, found that later generations (represented by his self-absorbed, unlikeable daughter, Viola) did not appreciate, and even disparaged, his service and accomplishments.

A God in Ruins is a companion piece to Kate Atkinson’s award winning book, Life After Life but also a contrast, particularly in the aspects of wartime bombing. In Life After Life, Atkinson skillfully and with horrifying detail created a London suffering through a ferocious effort to bomb its populace into submission. A God in Ruins examines war from the perspective of the young men who, in the face of great personal danger, flew many times over enemy territory, bombing its cities.

Much of the appeal of this book lies in the author’s great descriptive abilities. Whether it is fear and camaraderie in the fuselage of a British bomber, contentment in walking through the countryside, the comfort of huddling around the warm stove in a cold kitchen, revulsion at the horror of war casualties, grief for the dead, or annoyance and irritation caused by many people and situations, Atkinson easily puts the reader in the psyche and physical space of her characters.