Book: Killing Kennedy by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

The End of Camelot....

I liked this book. The writing is fluid and smooth as the authors summarize the highlights of Jack Kennedy's life, beginning in 1943 when his PT-109 patrol torpedo boat gets rammed by a Japanese destroyer near the Solomon Islands. Jack was the skipper of the patrol boat and, after a faltering start, realizes he needs to take charge. He "tows a badly burned crew member by placing a strap from the man's life jacket between his own teeth and pulling him. During the five long hours it takes to reach the island, Kennedy swallows mouthful after mouthful of saltwater, yet his strength as a swimmer allows him to reach the beach....Days pass. Kennedy and his men survive by choking down live snails and licking moisture off leaves." After several days and nights during which Kennedy repeatedly swims out into the Pacific at night hoping to intercept another PT boat, he and his men are finally rescued by local islanders. It was a nightmarish odyssey from which Kennedy emerges a much stronger man than he had been.

The book also details highlights of Lee Harvey Oswald's rather pathetic life as a perpetually frustrated and unhappy man, a former Marine, who never achieves the recognition he craves. He defects to Russia, meets and marries Marina, but is still a person of little consequence in spite of his socialist beliefs and not accorded the stature he feels his due, so he decides to return to America. Because he had lived in Russia, he was on the radar of the FBI and was questioned but ultimately deemed not a threat. Was there a conspiracy? The authors only say that "The world will never know the answer." It seems to me that they think Oswald acted alone even though they don't state that explicitly. 

Most of the information in this book is known but was presented anew for our review and pleasure. It is gossipy at times with tales of Marilyn Monroe, the Mafia, Frank Sinatra, the intense personal enmity between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Jackie's frolic aboard Aristotle Onassis' yacht, but there are also chapters on the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, the death of Jack and Jackie's infant son, the days leading up to Dallas and the immediate aftermath.

"They load the body onto Air Force One through the same rear door John Kennedy stepped out of three hours earlier. That moment was ceremonial and presidential. This moment is morbid and ghastly."

Bill O'Reilly obviously is taken by the Kennedys and admires them and is fascinated by them as so many of us were.....and some still are. 

"A generation after his assassination, more than four million people a year still arrive at Arlington to pay their respects to the fallen president. And also to the grand American Vision that he represented." 

Book: Facing the Wave ~ A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami by Gretel Ehrlich

One of the best books I've read lately.

Gretel Ehrlich spent many weeks in Japan very soon after the tsunami that devastated so much of that country on March 11, 2011. She travels up and down the eastern coast bearing witness to the devastation. It is beautifully written:

"Upstairs I roll up my futon. The smell of green tea, coffee, rice and fried eggs wafts through the small house, mixing with the savage beauty of geological violence that continues to take place. There have been over 800 aftershocks greater than 4.5 since March and it's only June now....."

"On March 11, 2011, Japan's earth-altar broke. The descending oceanic plate--a slab of lithosphere--slid under the overlying plate that carried the island of Honshu. Pulling and grinding, the subduction zone was pulverized. Its topmost plate bulged and dropped and a rupture occurred: an undersea rip, 6 feet across, 310 miles along, and 120 miles wide."

She tells of the ongoing radiation, the rescue of animals, the woman who rents a bulldozer and spends her days looking for her lost child; she visits with an elderly geisha; she quotes from Hirayama's blog: "Urchins were cancelled this year. We thought abalone season might be stopped too, but it wasn't."

Radiation News (a continuing disaster and a theme that runs through this book):

"Five thousand, two hundred tons of stone from the town of Namie were quarried and used to build condominiums for refugees from the no/go zone. The stone is all radioactive and has to be removed."

"The Daiichi nuclear plant scraps plans to dump its contaminated water into the ocean. TEPCO's new insurance policy cost three hundred million yen a year."

The writing is sparse and powerful:

"Death leaves marks: a woman told Abyss-san that her 14-year-ld grandchild was practicing with the school's swim team when the tsunami occurred. The wave came over the pool. The granddaughter survived but she had scratch marks all down her legs made by the other girls as they tried to claw their way up to air. They drowned."

Some of the fisherman raced out of the harbors and "took their boats up the face of the wave. It was steep and they had to use all their power. The ones who went out too late died. One boat climbed the wave and ran out of gas. The fisherman just ahead threw him a line and the bigger boat pulled him that way. They both made it."

28,700 people perished and 4000 bodies have yet to be found.

"Yet I see aqueous corruption: the ruined, broken, bloated; the sickening to-and-fro of corpse-thickened water, and ghost-thickened air. An odd smell pervades--one that is hard to pin down. It is decomposing plants, fish and flesh, and the mineral smell of bodies being burned; the the radiation that moves through flesh has no scent at all."

Reading this book is the least any of us can do for the victims and survivors.

Book: Dinner with the Smileys by Sarah Smiley

One Military Family, One Year of Heroes, and Lessons for a Lifetime

When Sarah wrote this book, she and her husband Dustin and their three sons lived in Bangor, Maine. Dustin was stationed there as commander of Navy reservists. He was also a Navy pilot. When he is deployed for a year, Sarah decides to invite guests to share dinner with herself and her boys one day a week for the year Dustin will be gone, and this is the story of those guests and those dinners. It is also the story of her sons and how they mature through the year.

I am of two minds about this book. I got it from the library because a woman saw it in the new book section where I was browsing and recommended it. I probably wouldn't picked it up otherwise.

Of course, it is a "feel good" book. What's to not like about it?

Sarah writes of having to stretch some to do this thing..."I don't like to cook, and I hate small talk."

Her kids are not always thrilled and she is honest about the grumpiness, obstinate behavior and anger she sometimes has to deal with. They all survive though and are certainly better for the experiences. They meet and make new friends, and the boys (and Sarah) become the beneficiaries of many acts of generosity as they struggle with loneliness. Also, during this year, Sarah graduates with her Master's degree and teaches part-time. So, yes, she is a busy working mom.

The guests were teachers, coaches, political figures, friends, radio personalities, authors, a US Marshal, the governor. Sometimes the dinners were off-site, like at Fenway Park in Boston, or just a family picnic at her parents' summer place.

So, what didn't I like? It was undoubtedly hard for Sarah to be a single mom for a year, but thousands and thousands of women do this for much of their lives. I'm sure she is a good and well-intentioned lady but perhaps a bit self-absorbed. She got a lot of attention for what she did and tons of support and help. Several of the dinners were not at her home and she didn't have to prepare them. She became the beneficiary of the publicity. It was only in the Acknowledgments that Sarah reveals there was a photographer present "at almost every dinner..." Her name was Andrea Hand. For some reason, it seemed odd that all this time there was a person documenting these dinners without the reader realizing it until the end of the book. It made the whole concept not quite so spontaneous or simple. It made it more of a show.

But, enough already of the negative.....Good for Sarah...

Book: Silken Prey by John Sandford

Sandford's lastest novel. I finally got it from the library after several weeks of waiting. He is still my favorite author for this genre. I now have read 20 to 25 of his books. What keeps me interested is the dialogue and characters and the small asides or little deviations which have little connection with the main plot but which are refreshing and make the characters more real. While the plots are good enough, they are the standard stories of mostly good guys, bad guys and really evil guys, along with slightly rogue cops and often an irregular but satisfying justice. 

A woman wins the Democratic primary in the state of Minnesota. She is at her victory party: 

"In what would have been an expansive family room, if Taryn had had a family, all the white folks and the necessary number of blacks and browns were cuttin' a rug, if a lot of really stiff heirs and fund managers and entrepreneurs and politicians could, in fact, cut a rug."

And later, at the end of the story, the denouement: "For a political gathering, there was a remarkable lack of even symbolic amity. The governor shook hands with everybody, but nobody shook hands with anybody else."

 

Irregular justice: "She relaxed her fingers, and the watch dropped like a golden steak through the grey light of winter, and quarter million dollars disappeared into the black water below the bridge." 

Another thing I like about his writing is that he describes weather, seasons, the north woods and the Midwest and I know exactly what he is talking about... 

Book: Beyond the Bear by Dan Bigley and Debra McKinney

How I Learned to Live and Love Again After Being Blinded by a Bear

Mauled by a huge brown bear as he was returning from a day of fishing, Dan nearly died. This is his story, and it is hugely compelling, both for the adventure and drama but equally for Dan's courage, spirit and attitude. 

Brian (Dan's brother) flies to Anchorage immediately on hearing the news and arrives at the hospital where a nurse tells him: "He's heavily sedated, so he won't be able to respond. You're going to see a lot of equipment and a lot of tubes. He's had a tracheotomy so he's on a ventilator. He has a feeding tube and a catheter. Here are puncture wounds on his back, shoulders, arms, wrists and left thigh. His eyes were severely damaged so his eyelids have been sewn shut." 

Dan describes his mauling: 

"Those eyes, I remember them as yellow and burning like comets. Those eyes would be the last thing I would ever see....Somewhere between the bashing of my head and regaining consciousness, the bear had managed to flip me over. It stood over me now, straddling my body, claws sunk deep into my shoulders, pinning me to the ground with bone-crushing weight. My arms useless, I could do nothing to stop it as it cocked its head sideways and clamped its jaws across the middle of my face. Crunch. Like a mouth full of eggshells." 

And so the rest of his life begins. Dan is a remarkable person with a remarkable story. I could write a lot more of the details, but if you are interested at all, it will be so much better reading Dan's words.

Book: Gaining Daylight by Sara Loewen

Life on Two Islands

The two islands are Kodiak and Amook in Alaska. Amook is where Sara and her family spend their summers while her husband Pete works as a fisherman. They have two small sons. Liam and Luke. Amook is an island in Uyak, one of Kodiak's western bays. In the winter, they move to Kodiak. The book is a collection of wonderful essays about their life, weather, the sea, the Arctic seasons, local history, mothering and homemaking, writing, and Sara's resignation as seasonal affective disorder sneaks up every year:

"By February, I lose all perspective. I'm bewildered by the rage that wells up as I try to buckle stiff car seat straps over Luke's snowsuit while he cries about the cold and a passing truck coats my back with slush, or when I find myself cursing frozen door handles and the snowplow that knocked off the side view mirror, or crying at random magazine articles about warmer climates. And then I recognize the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder....."

Each chapter adds to a painting of their island lives, a canvas of place and history, with details of the grit and grace necessary for this chosen way of living.

"Last night I filled the old drum stove with wood and cardboard and lit the banya--a blending of Russian saunas with Alutiiq bathhouses: side huts carpeted in fresh grass where bathers poured water over heated rocks. A friend was visiting, and we washed the kids in the dark, hot room. Steam hissed off the cedar benches and round beach stones piled around the wood stove. Clean and content, we stepped out onto the banya porch into the cool autumn air. We are rich in  driftwood. Rich in fish. Rich in wind and blue tides."

Cold and always the capricious wind and water and weather; whales and bears; eagles and otters....family, home.... this is their life, and as I would read her words, I was also there.

Her husband returns from Kodiak, across Uyak Bay with their young son:

"It was too rough to bring the skiff in so Pete tied off on the running line. He shouted to me, but I couldn't hear him over the storm. He held Liam and jumped toward the beach, landing in water up his waist. We struggled to pull the boat sway from the rocks. My hands were shaking. Liam's chubby ankles were pink with cold. 'I should have turned back,' Pete said."

The wild heart of Alaska is offered as a gift in this small book....with a deft blending of past and present.

I had dinner with Dave and Ellen last night as they returned from Alaska, and I told them about this author. They, in turn, gave me some recommendations and told wonderful stories of the land, the people they keep meeting, hunting, rivers and mountains, brown bear and moose and halibut fishing one day when Ellen caught the big ones!