The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves

Oh, what a perfect read! 

The setting took me into another place, a small English village in winter, as Vera Stanhope investigates the murder of a young mother whose body was found on Vera's father's Northampton family estate.

The tale is filled with endless cups of tea served with digestive biscuits, houses without central heating, freezing winter nights, and even a bacon stottie. I felt like an armchair traveler.

I love a mystery that is more than plot driven, where characters are more than types. And Cleeves delivers. 

My first time reading Cleeves was The Long Call, which introduced a new detective character. The Darkest Evening (the title from a Robert Frost poem) is the ninth Vera Stanhope novel. And as I had not read them, or even seen the television series Vera, I can attest that it is superbly how this novel stands on its own. I want to read the other books in the series, but did not feel the lack of having read them.

The characters professional and personal lives are revealed. Vera's confliction about her family history and relationship to the manor Stanhopes, Joe's family obligations, Holly's desire for recognition bring the reader's attachment.

The village suspects are as well drawn. The deceased Lorna, who struggled with anorexia, has never revealed the name of her baby's father. It may bring a clue to her murderer. The Stanhope family, the imperious matriarch and her daughter who married a man with big plans to turn the estate into a self-supporting money making venture. Newbies lawyer Dorothy and wannabe teacher Karam, city transplants who appear to be happily married and content with their menial jobs. The local farm families, the Helsops with their artist son, and the elderly inhabitants of the county homes fill out the community. 

A second murder, a retired teacher who a special friend to Lorna, is found murdered as well. What did she know?

It winds up to a cabin in the woods and Vera fleeing for her life.

I found the novel oddly calming and cozy, a respite from the world. 

I won a book on Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Darkest Evening: A Vera Stanhope Novel (Vera Stanhope 9)
by Ann Cleeves
Minotaur Books
Publication September 8, 2020
ISBN: 125020450X (ISBN13: 9781250204509)

from the publisher

On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets off for her home in the hills. Though the road is familiar, she misses a turning and soon becomes lost and disorientated. A car has skidded off the narrow road in front of her, its door left open, and she stops to help. There is no driver to be seen, so Vera assumes that the owner has gone to find help. But a cry calls her back: a toddler is strapped in the back seat.

Vera takes the child and, driving on, she arrives at a place she knows well. Brockburn is a large, grand house in the wilds of Northumberland, now a little shabby and run down. It’s also where her father, Hector, grew up. Inside, there’s a party in full swing: music, Christmas lights and laughter. Outside, unbeknownst to the revelers, a woman lies dead in the snow.

As the blizzard traps the group deep in the freezing Northumberland countryside, Brockburn begins to give up its secrets, and as Vera digs deeper into her investigation, she also begins to uncover her family’s complicated past.

My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep Around the World by Rebecca Bond and illustrated by Salley Mavor

I love My Bed!

I mean this new book for children, although I do also love my own bed. I have an extra deep mattress and sleep snuggled under my handmade quilts. But not everyone in the world has a bed like mine. 

Rebecca Bond and Salley Mavor have created a marvelous book about the many ways children across the world go to bed. As a girl I loved learning about costumes and flags of the world. The brilliance of My Bed is how it illustrates material and cultural differences through how children go to sleep.

Mavor has created handmade embellished fiber scenes, exquisite in detail. It took her several years to create the art for this book. You will study each one for a long time. I know my son loved to talk about the details of the art in his children's books. I can imagine the discussions that will arise from My Bed.

"My bed rocks on the water," we are told about the Netherlands where some children live on houseboats. (I am jealous!) "My bed sways in the breeze," we are told about South and Central American children who sleep in hammocks.

We see an Indian child with their nets to protect against mosquitos, the alcove beds of Norway, the open air beds of Ghana, Russian beds on the large stoves. Children sleep in yurts and in courtyards and on rooftops.

The Afghan carpet these children sleep on is amazing. Read about how she created it here.

Children will learn how houses and beds across the world are constructed, and about the flora and animals around them. 

Each child's house is unique to its culture, and shown in context to its environment. The Japanese house shows a flowering cherry tree. See how she made this here.

On her blog Wee Folk Studio, Mavor shares how she made her art for My Bed. I am stunned by her art.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is fair and unbiased.

Salley Mavor in her studio

from the publisher

Delightful rhymes and charming hand-stitched art celebrate the many ways we sleep across the world. Perfect for a baby shower gift.

My bed rocks on water 

My bed sways in the breeze.

My bed’s beneath a curtain 

My bed’s aloft in trees . . .

In the Netherlands, some beds rock on water. In Brazil they might sway in the breeze. From Canada to Japan, Afghanistan to Norway, sleep has taken many forms and shapes throughout history. Astonishing, hand-stitched illustrations and a delightful narrative tell the story of sleeping traditions across the world.

My Bed
Rebecca Bond, Salley Mavor (Illustrated by)
HMH Books for Young Readers
Ages 4 to 7, Grades P to 3
On Sale Date: September 8, 2020
ISBN 9780544949065, 0544949064
Hardcover $18.99 USD, $26.99 CAD

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall

My first biography of John F. Kennedy was a comic book. One image that has always remained in my memory is of the Kennedy family at the dinner table, father Joe quizzing his children on current events.

My family never talked about current events or politics at the dinner table. When my school friend Christine asked if my family was going to vote for Kennedy I was clueless. I had never heard of him. Then she asked if we were Democrats, but I had never heard of them either. Finally, in exasperation, she asked if we were Catholic or Protestant, because if we were Catholic we were voting for Kennedy, and if we were Protestant we were going to hell.

In great duress, I ran home to ask mom these vital questions. In one moment I learned of our politics, our religion, and eternal damnation.

I was in sixth grade when my teacher took told us the president had been shot and sent us directly home. All those long blocks I fretted, feeling vulnerable, wondering if the Soviets could take over since we had no president to protect us. I remember gathering in my grandparents' living room, watching the black horse and carriage as it passed Carolyn and John and black-veiled Jackie.

souvenir Kennedy scarf

Every home had Kennedy souvenirs, a book, a photograph.

Over the years his image was tarnished. We doubted his authoring of his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage (which I unsuccessfully tried to read as an early teen). There was his multitude of affairs before and after marriage. We heard that his daddy bought his political offices. We doubted his leadership, blamed him for Vietnam.

Who was the real John F. Kennedy?

I opened volume one of Fredrik Logevall's biography JFK hoping to understand this man, this icon, this American president.

It is a marvelous study of the man in context of his times and his family, from his childhood to his decision to seek the presidency.

Plagued with health problems, careless about his person, a man of great intelligence and inquisitiveness and charm, a womanizer, a workaholic, a man of unquestionable courage, a family man who did not hesitate to veer from his father's beliefs, the real Jack Kennedy was complicated and everything you thought he was and somehow more than what you thought he was.

Believe the hype about this book. I enjoyed it as a biography and as an exploration of the times and the political process. I look forward to reading the next part.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
by Fredrik Logevall
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9780812997132
hardcover $40.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president.

“An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person.

Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK’s life—from birth through his decision to run for president—to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings, his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we’ve previously known, whose distinct international sensibility would prepare him to enter national politics at a critical moment in modern U.S. history.

Along the way, Logevall tells the parallel story of America’s midcentury rise. As Kennedy comes of age, we see the charged debate between isolationists and interventionists in the years before Pearl Harbor; the tumult of the Second World War, through which the United States emerged as a global colossus; the outbreak and spread of the Cold War; the domestic politics of anti-Communism and the attendant scourge of McCarthyism; the growth of television’s influence on politics; and more.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 is a sweeping history of the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as well as the clearest portrait we have of this enigmatic American icon.

The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy by Chris Murphy

In 1764, my sixth great-grandparents were murdered and scalped by Simon Girty and a group of Native Americans whose reign of terror was waged to scare settlers out of the Shenandoah Valley. The Rev. John Rhodes, a Swiss Brethren and a pacifist, was an early settler in the valley. 

Unable to defend themselves, the community built underground cellars, but eventually they were converted by a visiting Baptist. One advantage of this change in faith was that they were allowed guns for self-protection.

Our immigrant ancestors employed guns for hunting game and to defend themselves against the people whose lands they stole. Guns were safeguards in far-flung lawless frontiers and they were needed by state militias before a centralized government created the first American army. 

American has long embraced gun ownership. In The Violence Inside Us, Senator Chris Murphy notes that the Pilgrims required every man to have a gun.

Murphy's life was changed with the shooting of school children in Newtown. As a newly elected senator, he saw the pain close up. Gun violence became his bailiwick.

Our son was in junior high at the time of the Columbine shooting. A student at his school talked about bringing a gun to school. Our son insisted he stay home the next day. The threat was investigated and the student punished. But our son never again felt safe at school.

Years later, and many school shootings later, we still can't guarantee our children that they will be safe in their classrooms.

This passionate and well-thought out book addresses the central questions behind violence. Is it human nature to be violent? Why is America the most violent nation in the industrialized world? What can we do to alter the violence? Why are our political leaders loathe to pass legislation that protects innocent victims of gun violence? He looks beyond our borders to how America has taken violence abroad through war and weapons sales.

Carefully building an understanding of the use and misuse of guns as rooted in human nature and American society, Murphy argues for reasonable legislation, on which the majority of Americans agrees, and explains the forces that prevent that legislation from passing.

Murphy's personal transformation makes a connection and the stories he shares grabs you by the heart.

Hear an audio excerpt here.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy
by Chris Murphy
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date: September 1, 2020
ISBN: 9781984854575
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

In many ways, the United States sets the pace for other nations to follow. Yet on the most important human concern—the need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from physical harm—America isn’t a leader. We are disturbingly laggard. Our churches and schools, our movie theaters and dance clubs, our workplaces and neighborhoods, no longer feel safe. To confront this problem, we must first understand it. In this carefully researched and deeply emotional book, Senator Chris Murphy dissects our country’s violence-filled history and the role that our unique obsession with firearms plays in this national epidemic. 

Murphy tells the story of his profound personal transformation in the wake of the mass murder at Newtown, and his subsequent immersion in the complicated web of influences that drive American violence. Murphy comes to the conclusion that while America’s relationship to violence is indeed unique, America is not inescapably violent. Even as he details the reasons we’ve tolerated so much bloodshed for so long, he explains that we have the power to change. Murphy takes on the familiar arguments, obliterates the stale talking points, and charts the way to a fresh, less polarized conversation about violence and the weapons that enable it—a conversation we urgently need in order to transform the national dialogue and save lives.

Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives

Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives by Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto combines stunning art quilts with educational essays on animals and plants in peril of extinction.

This big, oversized art book offers hours of interesting reading on the importance of preserving wildlife and wilderness.

Getting to know the vanishing species will spur interest in the work of the organizations working to preserve them, including the Sea Turtle Conservancy and to the WILD Foundation which are funded by a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book.

As a quilter and fabric lover, I enjoy looking at the details of the quilts. The artists show great skill and discretion in the use of preprinted fabrics.

Each species is given a large photograph presenting its representational art and its binomial nomenclature, description, habitat, and threat level.

I love the use of three-dimensional elements in some of the quilts. For fiber artists, there is a wealth of inspiration to be found in these quilts.

The contents include

• Forwards by biologist Kim O'Keefe Beck, member of Board of Directors of Defenders of Wildlife, and professor and author J. Drew Lanham, also a Board of Director member of the Audubon Society  
• Conservation and the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) by Wendy Strahm
• Introduction by the author explaining the origin of the book and how species become identified as endangered
• 182 quilts of endangered animals and plants
• Biodiversity and the Firecrown by Peter Hodum
• What About the Wetlands? by John Overland
• On Mammals and Reviving Species by Janet Rachlow and Jim Witham
• Art and Heart: Our Place in the Story

Fiber artists and quilters will love this book. I also envision it as a gift (especially from a quilter) to younger readers with an interest in nature and wildlife.

With its broad scope of interest, I plan on donating my copy to my local library to sit alongside DeSoto's previous book Inspired by the National Parks, which I reviewed here and donated to our library. Some books are meant to be shared.

I received a free book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Inspired by Endangered Species: Animals and Plants in Fabric Perspectives
by Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto
Schiffer Publishing
Size: 8 1/2″ x 11″ | 182 color images | 280 pp
ISBN 13: 9780764357893
hard cover $34.99

from the publisher

Lively, colorful, and skillfully made fabric “portraits” of 182 endangered species bring them to real, vibrant life. Each portrait features fascinating animal and plant facts from rescuers, scientists, conservationists, and more: where they live, what their superpowers are, why they are at risk, and how we can help. Dedicated and passionate people who work to protect endangered species share details of their roles and specialties, the planning behind conservation measures, threats to healthy habitats, and inspiring success stories. This book fosters eco-awareness and responsibility with a hopeful and positive tone, not only educating but inspiring action. 

The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing by Joseph Fasano

A father and his nine-year-old son trek into the high mountains to hunt a mountain lion. Generations have hunted the lion and failed. The father had sworn to bring one home. 

They depart in late in autumn when the snow shows the lion's tracks. The father patiently teaches the child. At night the boy still dreams of his mother who died in an accident several years before.

Fasano creates a world that can be experienced with all the senses, the iron smell of blood and woodsmoke ingrained in a child's glove, the abrasiveness of dancing on asphalt, the sound of the silent forest and the hound's sharp snarl, the pain of brokenness in soul and body. 

Granite and scree, chickweed and bracken, the velvet of antlers caught on branches, snow and iced-over water---and the snow-hushed pad of a predator's footfall. 

There is beauty there. 

And danger and suffering and pain. 

But isn't life dangerous and painful? A bird flies into the room and a woman intuits a premonition. A pony splits its hoof and we end its suffering.  We lose our most dearly beloved.

When tragedy strikes, the father seeks revenge, like Ahab hunting the white whale. But the father is also hunted. 

Can revenge end our pain? Or is grace found in forgiveness?

I came across Joseph Fasano on Twitter. He was reading a poem a day during lockdown. Sometimes he read other poets, and I enjoyed his choices. He also read his own poetry, which I found very moving. Learning of his first novel, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, I was eager to read it.

Fasano's brilliant use of language, unflinching exploration of suffering bodily and psychic, and the passions of grief and vengeance make this a memorable read. The startling resolution is one of hope that in the dark heart of every wild thing one can also find grace. 

I was given a free ebook by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing

by Joseph Fasano

Platypus Press

September 2020

ISBN: 978-1-913007-07-2

Pre-order $16.60; $20 paperback

Read an excerpt from the book at

https://platypuspress.co.uk/pdfs/Dark_Heart-Joseph_Fasano-excerpt.pdf

Hear the author read an excerpt on Instagram at

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAAma_OFYSv/

from the publisher:

Deep in the mountains of British Columbia, a father-son hunting trip suddenly becomes a struggle for survival. Across an unforgiving landscape, and in pursuit of a fabled mountain lion, one man must confront both the wilderness around him and the wildness that resides within. Through wind, snow, and the depths of grief, he asks what price he is willing to exact on a world that ravages what we love, and whether redemption awaits those who can forgive.

Joseph Fasano is the author of four books of poetry. He was born in New York state’s Hudson River Valley and received degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Yale Review, and American Poets, among other publications.

Advance praise

Joseph Fasano has the heart and the ear and he puts them to magnificent use in The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing. By turns mournful and thrilling, this story, told in precise and glorious prose, traverses the wild heights of grief, vengeance, tenderness, and love. It pierces. — Sam Lipsyte

A father, a boy, and a mountain lion. If it sounds like the start of a parable, that’s because The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing has wisdom to share. But that wisdom is complicated, surprising, and at times even vicious. What seems at first like a quiet book is actually quite fierce, not unlike the big cat at the center of its story. This elegiac novel is a moving meditation on grief, love, and obsession. — Erica Wright

Joseph Fasano is a wonderfully gifted writer. He writes evocatively, lyrically, and never fails to surprise us with his revelations and illuminations. His insights are deep, his delineation of character and place immensely satisfying. He gives us a story that keeps resonating long after we have finished reading. — Nicholas Christopher

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

The day of John Lewis' death I began reading the egalley for His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and The Power of Hope by Jon Meacham.

It was a hard book to read, and heartbreaking, for Lewis was willing to lay down his life to achieve a just society, and he faced the most vicious violence. 

Lewis has left behind a country still divided and angry, the dream of a Beloved Community unfulfilled. The struggle for the promise of America continues.

Meacham writes, "John Robert Lewis embodied the traits of a saint in the classical Christian sense of the term," a man who answered the call to do the Lord's work in the world. A man who faced tribulation and persecution for seeking the justice we are called to enact as our faith responsibility. A man who sought redemption for his country. A man whose faith never flagged, not in the face of hate and blows, not when the movement shifted away from non-violence. He was faithful to his Gospel call of peace and the establishment of The Beloved Community.

"The tragedy of man," the twentieth-century Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed, "is that he can conceive self-perfection but cannot achieve it," Meacham quotes, adding, "And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it."

I was only twenty when I married a seminary student. Professors and the school Dean had worked to integrate churches in the South. (see NYT article here.) I audited classes taught by these men. One wrote a seminal work on White Privilege, Segregation and the Bible. Another taught Niebuhr Moral Man in Immoral Society. It was an atmosphere that believed in faith in action, changing society to bring the Gospel to fulfillment.

The world has changed, including the church. Personal salvation and sanctity replaced social justice. Church as entertainment and community evolved. Separation from general society was the norm, with Christian music and businesses arising. We hardly recognize contemporary Christianity, especially it's alignment with Trump's divisive and racist actions.

We are at a decisive moment in history. What future will American choose?

Meacham is an inspirational and eloquent writer. His portrait of Lewis begins in his childhood through the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights act, ending with the rise of  Black Power.

Meacham calls for us to be inspired by the life of John Lewis as we decide on our future in America. Will we remain divided and filled with hate? Or will we embrace love and faith in the value of every being? "God's truth is marching on," he reminds us, "We can do it...I believe we can do it."

Meacham ends his book with hope that America will yet achieve a just society.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
by Jon Meacham
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date  August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781984855022
hard cover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America 

 John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” 

From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family’s chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it—his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis’s commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God—and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. 

Meacham calls Lewis “as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.