Ploughshares Fall 2019 - Edited by Ladette Randolph

It's fitting that I'm trying to write this review of the Fall 2019 edition of Ploughshares when the Winter 2020 is sitting on my TBR right now and today Spring 2020 arrived in the mail. I'm way behind with no hope of catching up on my book goals this year. This global pandemic thing has made it really hard for me to concentrate on reading - which is one reason why I enjoyed the Fall 2019 edition so much. The stories were on the longer side, but they also were short enough that I didn't get away from it completely and shut down.

This collection had so many gems, but let me start by saying the nonfiction essays in this one were really really good.  First, Danielle Spencer's Drifting Out to Infinity was about math essentially. I am an English major who does well with short columns of small numbers so most of the concepts discussed were really beyond me, even the one the author claimed simplified a very complicated concept about prime numbers. But the thing I liked the most about it was the imagination it sparked in me and the desire to know more. I googled. I even insisted my husband watch a movie with me, The Man Who Knew Infinity, based on the mention in the story. So yeah, when a nonfiction piece does this, it's well done.

To that end, Tracy Daugherty's fiction story, So Much Straw, also led me down a path reading into Thomas Merton, who I'd only heard of in passing (and I'm Catholic). Pope Francis once mentioned Merton as an American approaching sainthood. So I've added Merton's memoir to my reading list.

This is really the mark of good short stories. They may be short, but the worlds they open up and the imagination they invoke are limitless.

I should also mention Kiley Reid, who's new novel, Such a Fun Age is getting rave reviews, wrote an excellent story in this collection about a teacher assigning a student a history lesson regarding George Washington's Teeth and the teacher's own history becomes through an association with the student's mother.

Really so many stories were good in this collection on a humorous track, including Ian Stansel's The Calleri, which is more complicated than can be briefly explained but was darkly humorous. And Nancy Mays, The Pfeffermans about a middle class family concerned for their mother who through a close call medically develops an imaginary friend. And finally, Takbum Gyel's, Notes on the Pekingese about an office dog with a strong sense of ambition. Yep, you read that right.

Where else can such a collection exist? No where. That's why Ploughshares remains such a valued investment for me.

4/5 Stars.

Ploughshares Spring 2019 Edition

I finished reading Ploughshares Spring 2019 Edition on the flight home from Canada last week. It was a wonderful visit with family and friends and it reminded me of my entire extended network and the love I'm lucky to have. But my grandmother's house is the one my mom grew up in. We spend weeks during summer and winter breaks visiting as children. I slept in a room with my daughter that I've shared with my sister more times than I can count. If my daughter hadn't been there, I'm not sure I'd know quite how to "adult" in the space.

And so it was only fitting that I read "The Enchanted Tiki Room" by Daniel Chacon while there. In it, a man visits Disneyland where he runs into various versions of himself from the past. As he comes to grips with his own questions and dismay at the priorities of his younger self, his younger selves look for answers from the man. 

I also laughed through Brock Clarke's "One Goes Where One is Needed" about a former American administrator in Iraq who becomes a ski instructor when his skills are no longer needed (or wanted). And because I met a lot of very ineffective civilians in my time there, this was extra funny, but also very sad. 

I really liked the sweet but sad story "A Private River" by Alice Elliott Dark about an elderly couple and all the things the man wishes he could do but can't now that his freedom is limited by his cognitive decline. 

"Malcriado" by Edgar Gomez was a sad story of a young man coming coping with his family's failure to accept his sexuality. That this was nonfiction was touching in its vulnerability. 

"Jose's Girls" by Jonathan Winston Jones, also nonfiction, was also poignant in its analysis of the effects of drug abuse on communities and families. I loved Jones' moments with the Deputy Chief of Police in which the grandfather is seeking a way to extract Jones' sister from a bad situation and the Deputy is not sympathetic. Asking if there is anything the family can do, Jones interjects "I know what we could do. Let's get a working list of all the rich white people in our town who do drugs with impunity and we'll make a mural on Main Street."

Also loved "Color Therapy" by Marie Mutsuki Mockett about the change of color in leaves in Japan. I had never thought about leaves changing color and am woefully uninformed about the climate of Japan in general. So this was informative and really cool as the author seeks out the color red which is also my favorite fall color. 

So basically, I guess I liked all these stories. And this was a great edition. There was some really excellent poetry in this edition as well. Here are some mentions:

Ars Poetica - Sara Borjas
The Vault - Andres Cerpa
Delta Delta Delta - Tiana Clark
After the Breakup, I Encounter My Whiteness Again - James Allen Hall
Two Gifts - Safia Jama
Moon Cricket - Julian Randall
Cover the Mirrors - Callie Siskel

4/5 Stars

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking has embarrassingly been on my TBR list since it came out in 2005. So it's only fitting that my review was also so long in being finalized. It finally made it on my TBR shelf thanks to my local library used book sale and I picked it up for a solid $1. 

As soon as I started reading I remembered why I had been so interested in reading in the first place. To say that Joan Didion is an exceptional writer should really not have to be said, but for the uninitiated, Joan Didion and her husband John Dunne are basically literary royalty. That a personal tragedy would occur and the best way Joan could process it was to write it all out as a touching memoir is the least surprising thing that could happen. 

And it's fortunate for us that she decided to do this. Because there is something so poignant in the way she has shared her sorrow. She's able to put words to experiences that others can only feel. And she has access, in her brain, from all this writing to the writing of others that can succinctly say what she needs said, and there's only honor in turning to these sources when they're required. 

I read: "'one has only learnt to get the better of words / For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which / One is no longer disposed to say it'". YES!! My heart sang as I LITERALLY leapt out of my seat. Yes! I've felt so many things in my life that I was unable, at the time, to explain or comprehend, only later to find I could put words to the thoughts when they were no longer relevant, or no longer urgent and the time had past for saying them.

Joan is able to spell out the pain and confusion and just plain heartache that comes when losing a spouse. The fog she wandered in for months afterwards feels so real and so damn relate-able, even if I can't imagine myself in a NY apartment, having the connections she had. That she was also dealing with her daughter's serious illness just compounds my deep sympathy and admiration of her courage in sharing it all on the page.

5/5 Stars.

American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land - Monica Hesse

There's nothing like a good airplane ride to get some pages logged. I finished American Fire shortly after touchdown in Florida. I love a good narrative non-fiction book. This one felt a little less smooth than my favorites, but I really enjoyed the subject matter.

Essentially, abandoned structures start burning on the East Shore of Virginia. Accomack County has seen better days and the countryside is littered with buildings left behind when the County was. Brave crews of volunteer firefighters begin to battle the blazes and are shocked when three burn in one night. Something nefarious is going on. 

Hesse does not structure this like a mystery, so we know right away who the culprit is. The details of why are teased out over the course of the story. Charlie Smith, a one time volunteer firefighter and convicted felon has had a rough go of life. Seemingly below normal in IQ and decision making skills, Charlie has a recurring drug problem that leads him into trouble, but he is occasionally able to set that aside for the sake of love and a new woman. He does so about a year before the fires begin. His new flame (haha I'm punning) is Tonya Budnick, a bit of a party girl. The two of them fall in love and annoyingly have a joint facebook account. 

But there's a problem. Charlie suffers from crippling insecurity and he can never believe he is deserving of this woman. So he is unable to "perform" sexually. Which, combined with the couple's dwindling finances and problems with one of Tanya's children, lead to a whim one night to burn something down. So they begin.

And for 66 fires, they baffle the investigative teams sent to solve the crimes. Until they are caught. While Charlie confesses right away, Tanya remains steadfast that not only was she not involved in the setting of the fires, she also was not aware Charlie set any of them. If you find that far fetched, you're not alone, so did the jury that convicted her. 

I liked the woven themes of an aging and declining County and the arson. It was a good read.

3 1/2 Stars. 

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America - Morgan Jerkins

This is the third nonfiction book I've read by a WOC this year (black woman to be specific) and I'm so glad to be hearing these new voices and growing in understanding of a life experience I am not closely familiar with. So This Will Be My Undoing was a deliberate pick by me to do better, to be more aware and to really just appreciate the story of someone who I might otherwise never had heard from.

I loved Morgan's essay which explored living in Harlem and what Harlem meant and how she saw it. I loved thinking about spaces outside of a white gaze. I am accustomed to looking at culture through my own white lens. My own (flawed and often unconscious) judgments are based on the white norms I have accepted and reinforced. The ways in which I expect people to ask, the conformity I expect them to accept is based on expectations that have their origin in white supremacy. 

Maybe the first step of allyship is to really listen to the stories of POC and specifically WOC and specifically black women. I'm there. I'm doing that part. And now it feels not quite enough. Like this is the baseline. This is the absolute minimum. Morgan talks about going to Japan as a middle school and then undergrad student. And during that time there she would walk into a store and the attentive sales people would help her and ask if she needed anything. This was such a mind blowing experience that she couldn't wait to see her own mother experience it as well. 

Wait, back up. Yep, that's what I wrote. This brilliant, beautiful, multi-lingual woman was feeling truly seen, by a sales clerk. Shit, America we are doing something dreadfully wrong if we can't even up our game to baseline dignity and respect for women of color by saying hello and asking if they need help when they enter our shops. Phoebe Robinson told a similar story about going to a Michael's store and standing at the framing counter waiting to be helped. (You can read my review of Phoebe's book, You Can't Touch My Hair here). She wasn't even acknowledged and several other customers walked in later and were helped in front of her. So, yes. This is a problem. This is a embarrassing basic problem. We need to not only see WOC, but we need to allow them to take up whatever space they need AND be fine with it.

4/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Winter 2018-2019 - Edited by Ladette Randolph and John Skoyles

The Winter 2018-2019 edition of Ploughshares really brought the short of short fiction. Most of the short stories are ten pages or less. And the poems in this one are interspersed. For only 221 pages, this one packs a lot of different feels. 

I've been doing this Ploughshares thing for a while now, so I'll stick to what was best, but know that every edition is solid and worth the time. 

What was the best of the best were the Emerging Writers Winners. While I enjoyed reading many of the stories and poems in the collection, it's these three that I return to again and again in my mind. Like running a new stone in between thumb and forefinger until it's worn smooth and I know the shape of it.

I'm not sure how the winners are deemed "emerging". For instance, in fiction, Anne de Marcken has been writing for quite some time. Her story, "Foil" she says took her twelve years to right. It's artistry is evident in the first sentence:

"My mother gives birth to me again and again, multiplying my body to outnumber the deaths she foresees, until I can do it myself and can no longer tell the difference between the first me and the many who follow."

I mean, what? The story is short but you have to stay with it - to feel it, again and again. Here's another which is a repeated theme and which is an example of the language I love here:

"My silence is lit by the stroboscopic flutter of an entire generation of moths clambering at a bare bulb. If I were a bare bulb, which I am, I would know what it feels like to be mistaken for the moon, to suffocate." 

The language is so strange but beautiful but not in a pretentious way that I found myself reading, re-reading and re-reading the paragraphs again and again. 

The same mood can be said for poetry winner Alycia Pirmohamed for her collection of poems that explore the second-generation distance between the origins of her ancestors and her own genetic make up. The poems are chock-full of metaphors that poetry judge Roger Reeves says are "at once embodied and cerebral, emotionally rigorous and intellectually arresting." I can't describe that better so I won't try. I'll just leave you with this phrase from "Ways of Looking":

"This mosque is a cut of apple-I mistake each slice for a mouth"

You can continue here after you're done puzzling on that one.

Lastly, the Nonfiction winner, Laura Price Steele's essay "These Bodies Will Undo Us" is such an open, honest reflection of her relationship following her partner's transition. This story has three things going on, the partner's transition, a hunting trip to Montana, and an ill dog. And for whatever reason it all just works. It's probably because of these arresting insights:

"It surprised me just how much of myself I had to cut away to avoid the subject, how my new tentative friendships seemed drained of the lifeblood they required to survive. The more I spoke about myself, the more misshapen my life became. Just saying that I had moved to the city where my husband found a job felt deeply dishonest, as if I was tapping into a long line of history that was not mine to claim."

4/5 Stars. 

Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men - Meg Meeker

"In most situations we encounter with our sons, our instincts tell us how we should respond and what we should do. So when you are faced with a decision that you must make about your son and you feel confused, I encourage you to pull back from the advice of well-meaning friends and listen to what the small voice inside you is trying to say."
At times repetitive, but I did gain some good insight from reading this book about mothers and sons, and mothering sons. It made me ask some hard questions about the way I parent and whether I am allowing my husband equal opportunity for parenting. Since fathers (or father figures) are so important for boys, pushing for a closer relationship between those two is important. There were several passages I snapped a photo of and sent to my sister, "remind you of anyone?" (Sorry Dad, but it was all RIGHT there). 

Meg Meeker is a physician who has seen many mothers and sons in her practice. In Strong Mothers, Strong Sons, she imparts many of the lessons she's learned from her patients and from mothering a son of her own.

One chapter deals with making sure your son is not overly dependent on you. Allowing him to fight his own fights and battles but supporting him all the same. It's an interesting phenomenon I've seen tangentially through work and talking with people who work in higher education. Parents who call professors regarding grades. Parents who manage grocery deliveries and try to mediate roommate squabbles. And this is for young adults. Meeker mentions mothers who finish homework for boys and take to Facebook for public airing of their sons grievances. Yikes. Won't be doing that (I hope).

I also really appreciated the section that talked about boys and sex. I'm a squeamish person by nature. I hate awkwardness in all forms. And sex talks between parents and kids seems really just, awkward. But Meeker gives some really basic pointers and conversation starters for boys of any age. Curious, I gave it a shot testing out the elementary age question suggested that went something like this:

ME: "I know kids at school might start saying things about what Moms and Dads do when they get married and are in love, like kiss and stuff. If you ever have any questions about that, you can always ask me since I'm a grown up and I know a lot of stuff and because kids sometimes get confused about those things and may not give you the best information." 

KID: silence

ME: "So is there anything you want to ask me about that? Or tell me about that?"

KID: "Well, this one kid in the cafeteria, put all his milk in his mouth and then squirted it all over the table and it even came out his nose."

Ah, okay we'll table this and check back in a few months. All is well in first grade boy land at the moment. 

Since I'm goal oriented and reading one parenting book a year is a goal of mine, I'm happy to get this goal checked off my list. And bonus, I actually learned a few things in the process.

3.5/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Fall 2018 - Edited by Ladette Randolph

Somewhere in the middle of the second story of this Edition, I thought, "man these are really long stories this time around." Flipping to the front - "Longform Essays and Stories." Yes folks, I am super observant sometime.

Though long, I thought the Fall 2018 Edition of Ploughshares was a strong entry.

The edition kicks off with The Blue River Hotel by Stephen Henighan of a Canadian-Guatemalan man who spends time in Guatemala teaching students about the country and living sort of a split life between who he is in Guatemala and who he is back home with a completely uninterested and un-invested fiance. This starts to all slip when he meets a young enthusiastic grad student. I really liked the portrayal of living two lives in two completely separate places.

Endlings by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum follows Dr. Katya Vidovic, a physician treating women (girls) with eating disorders at an inpatient treatment facility. The back and forth from Katya's past in war torn Zagreb. Unlike the main character in The Blue River Hotel, Katya does not go back and seems to have written off that part of her life entirely.

Up next was the devastating A Death in the Family by Billy O'Callaghan told through the eyes of a young girl as her family watches her older brother slowly die. This was a heart ripper.

I also enjoyed Andrew Bienen's Fort Wilderness about a Disney themed breakup. This George guy cannot get his affairs in order and commit already. 

The Man on the Beach by Josie Sigler Sibara imagines what would happen if a young boy encounters Hitler on the beach in Argentina. I really liked the contrast set up by Sibara between what a young boy sees and what he understands as an older man. 

Lastly for fiction, I enjoyed Positive Comments by Owen King. Two dysfunctional siblings perform one kind act together. 

For non-fiction, I also really enjoyed Allen Gee's tribute to James Alan McPherson in Old School . I've never read any of McPherson's work, but that didn't matter. Gee's rendering of McPherson is so full that I felt comfortable with the characters. I've added some of McPherson's work to my TBR pile.

In a world where Jamal Khashoggi was intentionally targeted and killed by a ruling Prince, the translations of Georgi Markov, Prostitution and Wastewater are timely. Markov was also assassinated by his government for his own criticism of the communist regime in Bulgaria. It makes you wonder how much if any things have changed.

4/5 Stars.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics - Richard Thaler

Finishing this book was a race against time to get it back to the library, but I made it. And I'm so glad I got to soak up even the last pages. This book took a long time for me to read because the concepts were mostly new and I took notes throughout. 

A few months ago I read The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis  (you can read that review here) and his discussion of Prospect Theory as first explained by genius psychologist Amos Tversky and his partner, Nobel laureate Danny Kahneman. This book exploded in my brain. It awakened a curiosity for behavioral economics and decision making I didn't even know was there. It spoke to concepts I grapple with daily in my work adjusting and reserving claims and I simply had to know more. 

I suppose I've always been a curious person. I really enjoy the act of learning. I've spent fully 22 years of my life in formal classroom settings. But having a full time job and trying to love and nurture two tiny humans can sometimes leave little room for exploration and discovery into new interests. So between The Undoing Project and Misbehaving, my curiosity is born anew and I'll be starting a new certification program in January, largely in response to the way my mind has reacted to these books. And to me, that's probably the very best thing about books and their power.

Richard Thaler took a risky approach to economics. In Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, Thaler details his humble behavioral beginnings in economics when a list on a blackboard kept taking him back to things that were unexplained in current economic theory, things that broke the rules, things that didn't make sense. Thaler stumbled upon Kahneman and Tversky's work and sought them out, finding kindred spirits. Their collaborations are briefly touched upon in The Undoing Project. And from there Thaler forged ahead, gathering like minds to explore the incongruities of human behavior and economic theory - the misbehaving. (You may have caught Richard Thaler's brief appearance in the movie The Big Short based on the Michael Lewis book where he appears next to Selena Gomez in a casino - review here).

He made enemies. He made friends. He made an entirely new field of study within economics. And our world is better for it. We are not all economists. We are not all rational beings. Instead we often act irrationally. Become incomprehensibly attached to objects through ownership. Coming to value what we have far above the true value of the item. Econs don't do this. But humans do. And to understand the economic and market system in which we live, we must take these things into account. Doing so gives us a much better descriptive model from which to work and predict. 

Thaler does a great job making these theories accessible. I'm not making the mistake of believing I now could practice or completely understand the field of Behavioral Economics, but I do understand the broad brushes and my life is just plain better for having read this book.

5/5 Stars. 

Thunderstruck - Erik Larson

First things first, Erik Larson knows how to research an issue. Sometimes you forget that these things in his books happened to real people. Like Deadwake (you can read that review here), Thunderstruck involves ships and transatlantic crossings. But the similarities really end there.

Thunderstruck follows the progress of two seemingly unconnected events. First, the development of wireless telegraphy by inventor Guglielmo Marconi and the turbulent marriage of Hawley Harvey Crippen and Cora Crippen. 

As Marconi races against critics and arrogant scientists to achieve wireless transmissions across the Atlantic, Crippen and Cora move from New York to London to pursue Crippen's career in homeopathy and mail order pharmaceuticals. Cora, unable to accept her lack of talent, spends copious amounts of her husband's money in pursuing Opera and then local cabaret gigs to little result. She is presented as domineering and belittling of her husband, engaged in extramarital flirtations and affairs. Crippen, small and meek finally takes up with his secretary. And, well, then Cora goes missing, Crippen gets on a Marconi equipped vessel, and the gory remains of a body are found in his basement. 

Crippen and his secretary are pursued through wireless technology over the Atlantic Ocean and arrive, unwittingly, to be delivered in to the hands of the authorities, while a rapt public follows their 11 day journey through news reports made possible by the Marconi technology, thus cementing the use of Marconi's system into the hearts and minds of the once skeptical public. 

Thoroughly researched and well written, Larson does not disappoint.

4/5 Stars. 

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt

Great read! This book took forever to receive from the library and it's more than 20 years old! That's how you know a book has some kind of extra quality that takes it out of the realm of popular and into a more sustainable category when it begins to weave a tale of lasting characters and universal truths. 

Berendt said he was not writing a story about Savannah for Savannah, but rather about Savannah for people who had never heard of Savannah before. And he certainly delivered. In the realm of narrative non-fiction, this book is one of the best. Titillating characters, a murder, a trial, a trial, a trial and a trial - this book wraps them all up and manages to make them all relate to one another. 

Berendt visits Savannah on a weekend holiday and decides he needs to set up shop there to really get a feel for the city. He's right of course, you can't visit a city and really understand it, you do have to live there. And on the way he introduces us to a cast of characters that couldn't have been made better even if the book were fiction. In fact, the best part is that none of this is fiction. 

Jim Williams is a wealthy, and a bit eccentric, antiques dealer who is charged with murder in the shooting death of his young lover. Joe Odom is a charming penniless piano player/lawyer, and The Lady Chablis is a black drag queen with a huge personality. The first half of the book introduces us to these and other minor characters. The rest of the book details mostly the trial, retrial, retrial and retrial of Jim Williams for the death of Danny Hansford. 

The book occasionally started to feel a little stale, but these moments were far and few between. I can see why the book has done so well, and left such a lasting mark on Savannah and people's view of Savannah. After reading the book I set out to watch the movie. Aside from Chablis, who was a real treat, the movie felt kind of flat, which was very surprising. (Watch it yourself here). 

4/5 Stars. 

Ploughshares Winter 2016-2017

When I didn't receive this edition in the mail right away, I went to the Ploughshares website and signed up for three more years in subscription because I was so afraid I had run out of my old subscription. That was silly, I still had the rest of this year left, so no at least I know I'm locked in for four more years of this fantastic publication. If you're still not reading Ploughshares, perhaps you'll be lucky enough to find my old copy at the gym, in the work breakroom, at my kids reading center, or any of the other random places I leave these after I read them for people to find. 

This staff edited edition is full of poetry and short fiction which I read with relish, but it also contains the winners of the Ploughshares Emerging Writers contest and those entries did not disappoint. So as per usual, here are a few highlights:

Poetry:
Rob Arnold - What We Did Under the Tree
Yes, you can imagine, sometimes what they did was naughty. But when it comes in verse like:
"Holding our breath, muddied and spent
while tectonics shifted
]imperceptibly under our feet, 
the late century sputtering onward"
It's all quite lovely.

Anders Carlson-Wee - Asking for Work at Flathead Bible
I loved the storytelling quality of this poem and the sense of time as fluid but ever moving. 

Stuart Dybek - Moderation
I love poems and stories that make me feel the passage of time, the lessons of growing up and growing older. This poem was one of those.
"Back then regret hadn't had time to grow. It arrived as suddenly"

Daniel Lawless - The Dean Has No Comment
A streaking girl at the zoo startles everyone it seems except the gorillas.

Jo Sarzotti - Waiting for Achilles
Are we brave in ourselves? Or are we waiting for a hero? 

Hilma Wolitzer - The Separation
Another poem about siblings. I loved it. 

Non-Fiction:
Roohi Choudhry - The Undertaker's Home
A writer living in Ireland at the historic home of a famous writer as part of a fellowship was brilliant. The narrator, of Pakistani descent, is drawn to the cliffs by the cottage and the stories they could tell on their own. His own past lingers like an extra character in the story. 

Beth Ann Fennelly - When Dusk Fell an Hour Earlier
A woman who returns to the Czech Republic after a 20 year absence. Her earlier stint, as a ESL teacher in a far flung coal town was nothing like the study abroad stories of emerging cities and carefree spending in newly independent eastern Europe. She was in a coal town where the people had lived hard and knew nothing of excess or easy friendship. When she returns, she learns that her memories are colored by her own youth and inexperience and she learns a new appreciation for what she experienced. 

Farah Peterson - Illness and Identity
This story also involved siblings, a brother and sister, and how the sister deals with her brother's mental illness. As the title suggests, it really digs into illness and how that shapes or informs identity, not only of ourselves, but how we see others who suffer from illness. Who decides the identity of a mentally ill person?

Fiction:
Tristan Hughes - Up Here
This story centered around the boyfriend of a park ranger, living mostly off the grid. At the beginning of the story, the ranger asks the boyfriend to shoot her dog, an old girl for whom even getting off the ground in the morning has become an extremely painful experience. There's a wisp of something more happening with the ranger in the background, but we don't really get to see it and the mood this lays over the story is supremely effective.

Katie Knoll - IED
I love sibling stories. I'm currently listening to Cutting for Stone, which is about twins in Ethiopia and so this story fell right into that vibe I'm getting from Cutting for Stone. This one is from the sister's perspective. Her brother, the "love of my life" has been injured by an IED. And the story ticks back and forth from their childhood to the present. We're not entirely certain the extent of the devastation the IED has wrought to the brother, but I got the impression it was rather severe. The feeling in this story was so convincingly solid, I was certain this story was not fiction. 

Magogodi Oampela Makhene - The Caretaker
This story really delved into guilt and responsibility. It involved a rabid dog and an injured teen and people who have nothing and a slightly more than nothing. 

Josh Weil - The Essential Constituent of Modern Living Standards
I loved this one about a group of farmers who take on the power company in order to gain electricity for their rural area. I'd never thought about the setting up of the electric grid, and how prohibitively expensive it would have been to provide power over long distances to small populations. 

Finally, I should note that all three Emerging Writer selections were fantastic.
Poetry - Leila Chatti - Confession 
As a Catholic, this view of Mary laboring, as a woman, not as a saint, was a wonderful look at a venerated person.

Nonfiction - Mimi Dixon - Breath
A daughter copes with the loss of her father, a famous oboist. The daughter works to finish her father's book while also dealing with her own medical issues. The story centered around the concept of breath and breathing, and it kept coming back to this concept in so many ways. 

Fiction - Lydia Martin - The Adjustment Act
A Cuban immigrant deals with feelings of guilt and dissatisfaction as he works to bring his sisters and stepmother to America at any cost. 

I'm so thrilled to be exposed to so many great writers with every Ploughshares edition.

4/5 Stars.

Loving Our Kids on Purpose - Danny Silk

This book made my heart happy. I read Peaceful Parent Happy Kids earlier this year (you can read that review here) and this book was a good follow up to that one. I first heard the book mentioned on a blog I follow (tinygreenelephants.com) and was interested because the blog author always seems to have a sweet understanding of her children's needs and I was interested in where she found inspiration. Plus, my momma heart needed a refresher after a rather difficult week with the kids. Nothing special or unique had happened, but the daily battle for moving kids from one task to the next had really started to wear on me. 

The book is short, and I should add, written from a very Christian perspective. There is reference to quite a bit of scripture in there and perhaps this would make the book unappealing to some. But the core message is heartening. 

You cannot control your kids. If you try, you will damage your relationship with them.

It really is that simple. I thought about all the relationships I have in my life and tried to pick out one, just one that was based in control. None of them are. None. So what am I trying to do with my kids? Why do I feel the need to control all their actions and behaviors? I can't do that. What I can do is offer them choices, and if needed, consequences - those will help to shape who they are and the choices they will make later on when their world becomes larger. 

Danny Silk makes a point to say, that while your children are young, yes you can control them with your anger, with the threat of violence, but what do you do when they get older, and actually have some power to defy you? Would you rather rely on your relationship, and their love for you to guide their decisions. I think this is a pretty easy question. I had wished the book was a bit longer with more examples and probably some kind of quick visual guide to remember all the salient points - I probably just should have taken notes.

So, I charge on in this parenting thing, trying to keep in mind that I don't control these two tiny, perfect humans I have made, but instead, when I ask them for the 90th time in the morning to put their shoes on, this time I may just be able to offer them a choice, put your shoes on now, or take them in the care and put them on at school? Both options, it turns out, I can live with.

4/5 Stars.