Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 21

Review | Kings of Paradise – Richard Nell

About the Book

A deformed genius plots vengeance while struggling to survive. A wastrel prince comes of age, finding a power he never imagined. Two worlds are destined to collide.

Only one can be king. 

Ruka, called a demon at birth, is a genius. Born malformed and ugly into the snow-covered wasteland of the Ascom, he was spared from death by his mother’s love. Now he is an outcast, consumed with hate for those who’ve wronged him. But to take his vengeance, he must first survive. Across a vast sea in the white-sand island paradise of Sri Kon, Kale is fourth and youngest son of the Sorcerer King. And at sixteen, Kale is a disappointment. As the first prince ever forced to serve with low-born marines, Kale must prove himself and become a man, or else lose all chance of a worthy future, and any hope to win the love of his life. Though they do not know it, both boys are on the cusp of discovery. Their worlds and lives are destined for greatness, or ruin. 

But in a changing world where ash meets paradise, only one man can be king… The first installment of an epic, low- fantasy trilogy. Kings of Paradise is a dark, bloody, coming-of-age story shaped by culture, politics, and magic.

601 pages 
Published on August 8, 2017
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I read this book via Kindle Unlimited. 

Here’s a secret for you, dear reader. When I saw that just about everyone on the planet loved this book, I made a solid, determined effort not to read it. Reason being? I really, really don’t like reading hyped up books because I’m so afraid of being let down. And it’s even worse when said hyped up book is an indie one. I don’t want to be that one person who pees all over an author’s parade. I also don’t want to be the one person who is like, “Everyone loves this thing, and I suck because I hated it.” I know how hard it is to get traction as an Indie author, and I never want to be the person who actively works against someone’s creative efforts. Treat people as you want to be treated, and all that.

So yeah. When everyone is like, “THIS BOOK IS AWESOME” you’ll very rarely actually see me read it or review it. 

However, things happen, and I ended up with a few months of Kindle Unlimited. I saw this book and thought, “Well, why not” and here we are. 

And, spoiler alert, I loved this book something fierce. 

This is one of those books that is so dark, you’ll either love it or hate it (if you aren’t a fan of dark worlds, plots, and characters, then you might want to steer clear of this one, because it does plumb the depths), but what I really loved about this level of darkness was that Nell never really seemed to glorify in the pit he’d dug for his characters. There was no point I felt like he was pushing his darkness or gore to more extreme levels just to see how far he could go. And if I may say, this is one of my personal bugaboos regarding grimdark fantasy these days. There are a million different ways to make your books dark. The books that seem to glorify bloodshed and violence are a dime a dozen, and they rarely do much for me. The fact that Nell avoided this is a huge mark in his favor. 

Kings of Paradise follows three characters: Ruka, Kale, and Dala. Each of them are delightfully twisted in their own ways. We’ve got the cannibal (be still, my heart), the prince, and the young girl. Each of these characters are forced through a stunning personal evolution, and Nell skillfully leads his readers along as they go from who they were, to who they are becoming. This is, perhaps, the aspect of the book I loved the most, because the characters are so incredibly realistic they jump off the page. They live and breathe. They have heartbeats. And this is no small feat. Kings of Paradise is fantasy. The events that transpire are fantastical, and yet somehow Nell has risen above that slight hinderance and made his secondary world and characters as vibrantly real as the world I live in. 

It’s these character evolutions that really captivated me, because in truth, Nell is juggling a lot of balls in this book, and he manages to keep them all in the air whereas I think a lesser author would drop a few of them, and the book would pay for it. It’s very rare that I read a grimdark book that takes on character development on this level and manages it so artfully, making said personal evolutions as big of a plot point as the wider sprawl of events we are reading about. I am a huge sucker for characters that seem to breathe with their own set of lungs. It’s not something I see in grimdark that often, as most authors seem to have a focus more on plot, but Nell really nailed the balance between plot and character development here, and then wove them together so they are inseparable elements that work together to make the book what it is. 

Nell has a way with slowly revealing both the depth of his world, and his plot as the book goes on. Slowly he peels back the layers of his story. Drip by drip, we begin to see the magnificent scope of what he is just beginning to outline for his readers. He has a knack for revelations and complexity, for knowing just when to show, when to tell, and when to deepen which plot points, and just how to do it. I never once felt overwhelmed or confused. I never felt like I was wading through an infodump a mile wide, which is absolutely shocking when you consider just how complex every part of this book really is. 

Basically, I was hooked. I was hooked, and I was shocked. The reader part of my brain spent the entire book just captivated. The editor and author part of my brain was parsing out how Nell managed to do all of this because holy shit. 

I’m also a big sucker for authors who take a chance on world building. I get a bit sick of the standard western-esque worlds, and when I first saw that there was a prince in this book, I will be honest with you. Some part of me was all, “Oh god, another Eurocentric-type governmental system… joy.” (insert eye roll here) However, Nell flipped the script on just about everything. While there are roots in European-style systems here, notably Norse, Nell put his own spin on all of it, and made it different enough that it really ended up being its own thing. He borrows elements from other societies as well, some Asian-feeling cultural items made their appearance, as well as some Indian. The result of this is a wide, sprawling world that feels nearly boundless, with plenty of places off the map–hinted at, but never shown–and is as varied culturally as our own. 

Some things to be aware of.

Kings of Paradise is a long read, and if you aren’t the type of person who is willing to invest time into a book that has a slower pace, then you might want to skip this one. While I loved everything about this one, it is an investment. It’s weighty, and it’s the start to a series, so there’s a lot of setup (and a lot of reward for said setup). However, it is worth being aware of that. Not every shoe fits every foot, and all that. 

Secondly, there aren’t any real battles to speak of, which might seem weird, seeing as how it is grimdark, but notice how I said above that there are a million different ways to write a grimdark book? Sometimes personal evolution, personal struggles, personal battles can be just as grim and dark as the sword and the hacking, and that’s really what you have here. There is blood, and gore, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a different breed of it. Kings of Paradise absolutely is dark, but it’s not the kind of dark you find in Joe Abercrombie, for example (which, honestly, was a huge plus in my eyes). 

I do not consider either of these things negatives, let me be clear. Rather, they are preferential. They worked for me, but might not work for you, depending. In truth, Nell writes more the kind of grimdark that personally appeals to me more than most other types of books that style themselves grimdark. It’s layered, with plenty of texture and a ton of depth, and deeper themes and ideas for readers to gnaw on. It’s not just a story, but an exploration of life, and choice, and the price of both. It’s some secondary world yarn, but a whole other reality, and it comes to blazing life under Nell’s skillful hand. Kings of Paradise is a thoughtful, delicately balanced book, and it really checked off all my boxes. Stunningly well written, and absolutely unforgettable. 

This is one of the best SFF books I’ve read in a while. 

5/5 stars

Book Sale!

Hey folks! Just dropping in here to say that until the June 22, my books (both of them) are on sale for $.99. Click on the link under each cover to find the books on Amazon.

I’m also adding two snippets of each book beneath them. Reason being, I have a pretty uh… unique style and it’ll either land or bounce off you. I feel the need to be cautious here, and show you both description and dialogue in each book. That way you can get a feel for my style, and decide if it’s for you before you dive in.

Also, I’ve been asked. The books are completely unrelated. You do not need to read one to enjoy the other. They don’t even take place in the same worlds…

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About the book

(This was an SPFBO semi-finalist!)

The world is dying. 

The Sunset Lands are broken, torn apart by a war of ideology paid for with the lives of the peasants. Drought holds the east as famine ravages the farmlands. In the west, borders slam shut in the face of waves of refugees, dooming all of those trying to flee to slow starvation, or a future in forced labor camps. There is no salvation.

In the city of Lord’s Reach, Seraphina, a slave with unique talents, sets in motion a series of events that will change everything. In a fight for the soul of the nation, everyone is a player. But something ominous is calling people to Lord’s Reach and the very nature of magic itself is changing. Paths will converge, the battle for the Sunset Lands has shifted, and now humanity itself is at stake. 

First, you must break before you can become.

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About the book

From the moment the first settler dug a well and struck a lode of shine, the world changed. Now, everything revolves around that magical oil. 

What began as a simple scouting expedition becomes a life-changing ordeal for Arlen Esco. The son of a powerful mogul, Arlen is kidnapped and forced to confront uncomfortable truths his father has kept hidden. In his hands lies a decision that will determine the fate of everyone he loves—and impact the lives of every person in Shine Territory.

The daughter of an infamous saboteur and outlaw, Cassandra has her own dangerous secrets to protect. When the lives of those she loves are threatened, she realizes that she is uniquely placed to change the balance of power in Shine Territory once and for all. 

Secrets breed more secrets. Somehow, Arlen and Cassandra must find their own truths in the middle of a garden of lies.

Review | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – Matthew Desmond

About the Book

In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

418 pages (Hardcover)
Published on March 1, 2016
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This book was a library loan.

Whatever our way out of this mess, one thing is certain. This degree of inequality, this withdrawal of opportunity, this cold denial of basic needs, this endorsement of pointless suffering-by no American value is this situation justified. No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.

I’m starting out with that quote because, while it is at the end of the book, I feel as though it summarizes both the tone and the subject of this work as a whole. This is not a happy read. It feels, in fact, incredibly hopeless, and it left me pretty emotionally exhausted. That being said, poverty is something that is so easy for so many of us to turn our eyes away from. We don’t see, we don’t hear, we don’t know, and that is a huge issue. 

Evicted is a book that is equal parts tragic and shocking. I do not live anywhere near the place or the situations the people featured in the book live. The result is, I felt, almost like I was reading about life in another country. Through devastating honesty, Desmond exposes the often-ignored crisis at the center of our American way of life: poverty, and how profound the housing crisis really is. Laws surrounding evictions, the landlords who profit off the very squalor they force people to live in, the people who are stuck in this merciless, grinding poverty—these are all things that I may have known about on the periphery, but I never quite understood, neither the dynamics of it nor the personal toll of it until I read this book. 

The writing, it should be said, is absolutely out of this world. People say, a lot, “this book reads like a novel” and in nonfiction, I understand that to mean, “this book does not read like a textbook.” However, this book really does read like a novel. Important information is spliced in here or there, so subtly you don’t even really notice it is happening. Mostly, this is a story of people, told by people, and written by a man who was on the ground, experiencing all of this alongside them. Desmond’s research is fantastic, but it really was his humanity, his respect for those whose stories he was telling, and his unflinching honesty that made this book land as hard as it did. In fact, the only other nonfiction book I’ve read that, I feel, can rival this one in the quality is Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (this is also one of my favorite books). 

This isn’t an easy book to read. I never quite understood how grinding the cycle of poverty is, nor how completely, absolutely impossible it is to get out of it. I also never realized how some landlords often take so much advantage of those very people they are supposedly meant to be helping, or at least working with. Some of these houses would be determined unfit for human habitation if they were inspected. Landlords commonly don’t repair properties, neither if something is broken, nor to bring it up to “fit for human habitation.” Some of these places are routinely rented out without stoves, electricity, plumbing, etc. When things are broken, they are rarely fixed (and that’s often used as an excuse to kick people out). Evictions cost money, so landlords will often just take the front door off the unit until the people move out on their own. If you get evicted, you get to either pay for the city to put your stuff in storage (you probably won’t have money for that), or they just move it out of the unit and pile it on the street, leaving all your belongings at the mercy of people who will likely come and take what they want.

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate. 

On the reverse side, these people who are relegated to this inner-city squalor are usually behind before they’ve even had a chance to catch up, and it is nearly impossible to work their way out of their situations. Frequent relocations and evictions put strain not just on the people themselves, but on their relationships and family dynamics as well. Kids move from school to school to school, and have a higher risk of dropping out before graduation. Violence fills some of these streets. Abuse and drug issues abound. People take opportunities where they can get them. When the law and the landlords aren’t on their side, they make their own way, and that often requires an iffy relationship with all things law and order. Ultimately, when I read this book, I found myself wondering, “Can I really blame them?” 

It took Desmond, a sociology professor at Harvard, years to write this book, and it is obvious not only from his meticulous research, but his unflinching, boots-on-the-ground telling of these tales. This is a topic that is easy for people to speak about, from a distance. You can make anything look however you want it to look when you’re far enough away from it. It is very rare that we, out here in the suburbs, get a true look at poverty, at the housing crisis, at the rampant exploitation of impoverished people. At how our system is broken enough for people to make money off of the very individuals who have literally nothing left to give. Somehow, this book manages to give readers both vignettes of these individuals lives, while making everything feel so vivid and in depth, a real sucker-punch to the emotions.

Milwaukee is nowhere near where I live, but I ultimately feel that this book, while it is located in one place, could probably be easily told about nearly any inner city in America, which is part of why it hit me so hard. This is not a Milwaukee-central issue, this is a United States issue. It says something profound about our society that this happens all around us, and so many of us know so little about it. We, in a country who pride ourselves on being able to do anything, be anything we want if we are willing to work hard enough for it, have completely overlooked and ignored everyone in this book, and everyone like them, who never had a chance to reach for that American ideal we so cherish. Ground down. Stuck. Exploited. Sure, some people work their way out of poverty, but for the vast number of people in inner cities, this is all they will ever know, and there is really something about that which needs to be examined. 

This book is hard. It is difficult to read. It forces a certain level of self and social evaluation I don’t think many of us spend a whole lot of time partaking in. While this is largely about the housing crisis in America, it is also about America itself. It’s about segregation, and pain. It’s about unflinching exploitation, and people trying to make it in substandard living conditions. It’s about all those people who are generally easier to look away from, than help. It’s about people who never got a chance.

Ultimately, it’s about how good we are at not hearing those who are crying out for help.

And I will absolutely never forget it. 

5/5 stars

Review | The Borgias: Power and Depravity in Renaissance Italy – Paul Strathern

About the Book

The glorious and infamous history of the Borgia family—a world of saints, corrupt popes, and depraved princes and poisoners—set against the golden age of the Italian Renaissance.

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty—all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.           

This is but one of several paradoxes associated with the Borgia family. For the family which produced corrupt popes, depraved princes and poisoners, would also produce a saint. These paradoxes which so characterize the Borgias have seldom been examined in great detail. Previously history has tended to condemn, or attempt in part to exonerate, this remarkable family. Yet in order to understand the Borgias, much more is needed than evidence for and against. The Borgias must be related to their time, together with the world which enabled them to flourish. Within this context the Renaissance itself takes on a very different aspect. Was the corruption part of the creation, or vice versa? Would one have been possible without the other?           

In this way, the Borgia too represent the greatest aspirations of the Renaissance. Condemning the Borgia is as futile as attempting to exonerate them. Their leadership and their depravity must both be taken into account, for it would appear that they are both part of the same picture. In the nineteenth century the German philosopher Nietzsche would outline his theory of the Will to Power. In the ensuing century this idea would be hijacked by the Fascists and put into ruthless practice. The Borgia were no Fascists, nor were they thinkers of the calibre of Nietzsche: yet it is arguable that they united both the idea and the practice of the Will to Power some four centuries prior to Nietzsche’s conception of this guiding human principle. Telling the story of the Borgias becomes both an illustration and an exemplary analysis of the strengths and flaws of this  evolutionary idea.

The primitive psychological forces which first played out in the amphitheaters of ancient Greece: hubris, incest, murder, the bitter rivalries and entanglements of doomed families, the treacheries of political power, the twists of fate – they are all here. Along with the final, tragic downfall. All these elements are played out in full in the glorious and infamous history of the Borgia family.

400 pages (kindle) 
Published on August 6, 2019
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This book was a library loan.

I’m a big fan of reading about depravity. I get a huge kick out of seeing how weird powerful people are/were, and seriously, what better place to really examine that dynamic than with the infamous Borgia family? 

Honestly, there isn’t much that is new here. The Borgias have been studied and endlessly written about since Cesere was killing his way across Europe, and the 60 year old Pope Alexander VI was enjoying time with his teenaged mistress. That being said, if you enjoy reading about really uh… unforgettable people, you really can’t go wrong with this family, regardless if you’re already well-versed in all things Borgia, or if you’re new to this family and all its drama. 

Paul Strathern is a Somerset Maugham Prize-Winning novelist, who has a particular interest in history. His writing, in this book, showcases his talent as an author. At times, this book reads more like a novel than the nonfiction biography of a family. It was incredibly immersive and very easy to just sit back and enjoy. And, while I do say in the previous paragraph that there isn’t a whole lot new here, it is, perhaps, Strathern’s particular focus on this family that presents a lot of the events in a new light. 

The book starts out with a bit of family history, discussing the town of Borja, in Spain, the family hails from, and what took them from that region, to Italy. Furthermore, there is some elaboration given as to the popes of the time, and how the Borgia family, specifically Rodrigo, managed to insinuate himself in the heart of the Catholic Church. Now, let me be clear here. I basically know next to nothing about Catholicism. I’ve been to a boatload of cathedrals in Europe, and I know the pope is a dude in Rome who wears impressive hats, but that’s seriously just about it, so this part of the book really intrigued me (and the vignettes of previous popes was also one of the most interesting and memorable parts of the book). I guess I’d never really paid much attention to the popes Rodrigo served before he became Alexander VI.

Specifically, I had no idea how the depravity so many associate with Alexander VI was, by no means, unique to him. At the time, the handful of popes before him seemed no better or worse than he was. Nepotism, in fact, seems like something the popes in that day and age really specialized in. So, why then did the Borgias carry such infamy regarding debauchery while the others did not? 

In my mind, a lot of it had to do with politics. Alexander VI had a driving desire to unite all of the papal states and have them ruled over by one hereditary Borgia prince. As you can imagine, a lot of people didn’t like that. Furthermore, the family was (gasp) Catalan, and not actually Italian, and that was a Very Big Deal to a lot of important people at that time. When Cesere was born, his name literally meant “Prince-in-Waiting” which really highlights the desire for a dynasty that Rodrigo was after. 

Cesare was notorious in the realm. Bloodthirsty and conniving, he was absolutely ruthless and was rumored to have orchestrated the murder of his own brother. Furthermore, it was Cesare who was rumored to have an illicit affair with his own sister. While Strathern doesn’t really waste time on this claim (largely, I think, because he doesn’t think much of it), he does acknowledge that the family—Rodrigo, Cesare, Lucretia—were very, very close and had different views of intimacy that may have raised eyebrows and set people talking. Furthermore, apparently Cesare and Lucretia had a bit of jealousy regarding each other and their intimacies with other people, probably just fueling the fires of that particular rumor. 

The other child, outside of Cesare, that everyone will associate with the Borgias is Lucretia, the beautiful and favorite daughter of Alexander VI. She was incredibly loyal to her family, and to the vision her father had for a united Italy, and spent most of her life in and out of marriages with families who would support her father’s vision for Italy, and her family’s ultimate goals. Smart, and crafty, she had her fingers in plenty of pies, and also seemed to be either loved or hated, as did most of her family. Her storied life, however, is quite impressive, considering the fact that she was a woman in the 1400’s, she seemed to test a lot of the roles for women at the time, and redefine exactly what women in power should be, and were, capable of.

The son that perhaps doesn’t get much limelight is Juan (there are other sons aside from Juan and Cesare as well, but really is it these three children that define the Borgias), who was murdered early on. Juan is not a son that ever gets spoken about much, likely because there just wasn’t a whole lot of time in the dynastic manipulations for him to get spoken about. What interested me about Juan, however, was how much his father loved him. I did not previously know of the sibling rivalry between Juan and Cesare, nor did I know that Juan’s death nearly destroyed Alexander VI, as he refused to eat and drink for several days, as he mourned the loss of his favorite child. 

(Side note: Cesare and his syphilis got me googling how syphilis was treated back in the 1400’s, when it first appeared in Europe, and I can never unsee that.)

Love them or hate them, the Borgia family is fascinating to read about. Machiavelli wrote The Prince based largely on Cesare Borgia’s life. Lucretia is still one of the most storied women out there. Juan, the favorite and fallen son is a tragic story that has been told time and again through the hands of playwriters and other authors. Alexander VI had his eyes set on dynasty, and spent his time as pope trying to not only seize those goals, but trying to promote the growth and development of the Catholic Church as a whole (despite the fact that he wasn’t terribly religious). While he may have been a letch, he also was instrumental in the Renaissance and was tolerable (more than many others) toward Jews, and other minority groups. He focused a lot on poverty, and he threw some incredible parties that are still talked about to this day. 

This is, perhaps, the strength of this book. There isn’t a whole lot new under the sun about the Borgia family, but Strathern does a great job at focusing on their juxtapositions. They were focused on empire, would do absolutely anything to further their family’s cause, and yet they were instrumental in the spread of the Renaissance. Alexander had a soft spot for the downtrodden. They helped a lot of people who had been looked over by many others in power. 

If you do not know a whole lot about this period, this is a great place to start. And even if you are quite familiar with this particular story, I do think Strathern’s focus in this book might cast some events in a new, interesting light. There is a lot here, from family feuds, to jealousies, to battles, to land grabs, the questionable treatment of prisoners, and so much more. The Borgias defined the times in which they lived, with all their ruthless power grabs, and their softer, often overlooked side as well. Love them or hate them, you can’t really get more dramatic than this. I think the author put it perfectly: “all one can state—dispassionately—is that they were often better than they appeared…and…on occasion they could be far worse.” 

5/5 stars

Review | Daughters of Chivalry: The Forgotten Princesses of King Edward Longshanks – Kelcey Wilson-Lee

About the Book

Virginal, chaste, humble, patiently waiting for rescue by brave knights and handsome princes: this idealised – and largely mythical – notion of the medieval noblewoman still lingers. Yet the reality was very different, as Kelcey Wilson-Lee shows in this vibrant account of the five daughters of the great English king, Edward I. The lives of these sisters – Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth – ran the full gamut of experiences open to royal women in the Middle Ages. Living as they did in a courtly culture founded on romantic longing and brilliant pageantry, they knew that a princess was to be chaste yet a mother to many children, preferably sons, meek yet able to influence a recalcitrant husband or even command a host of men-at-arms

364 (hardcover)
Published on September 1, 2019
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This is one of those books I didn’t actually intend to read, but I read the excerpt portion of it on Amazon, and I couldn’t stop. I ended up buying the book, and absolutely devouring it. It was impossible to put down. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. 

The thing is, this book is about so much more than Edward I’s daughters. It’s about the life of a woman in the 1300’s, and, if you are like me, that’s really not something you knew a whole hell of a lot about. 

Kelcey Wilson-Lee uses Edward I’s daughters—Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth—as a vehicle to show what life was like for high-status women in the 1300’s. His daughters were a fantastic vehicle to do this through, because their experiences and life stories really spanned the gamut of possibility for royal women in that day and age. Some of them ended up married, one of them was sent into church service at the age of six. Some stayed in the country, close to their home base. Some of them hated their husbands. Some left their country to go live in their husband’s native lands. One of them went with her husband to help put down a rebellion. And all of this is shown, and discussed, both the likely reasons for, and the likely reasons against any one action, and the political and personal reasons for all of the above, as could be inferred by both what is known to the period, and what is written in journals and various surviving records. 

More than that, their lives were never dull. Bound by blood, each of these women, the daughters of England’s most famous warrior-king, had to navigate revolts, insurrections, battles, political power plays, childbirth, and life in a court that was always moving. (Literally. I had no idea that a royal court at that time was basically never in one place longer than a short span of time. Edward I, and his entire family and all their furniture, was always moving between palaces on a well-traveled circuit, and my god, that sounds exhausting.) Edward’s daughters all dealt with the difficulties of life differently, as per their personalities and the social norms and stations at the time, and that is addressed here. 

Interesting tidbits of letters, journals, notes from those in the daughters’ service, and requests for things like clothes, shine a light on the daily lives of these women, and their struggles and personalities. It is known, for example, that some of the daughters preferred a certain color, or certain style of clothes above other styles from these letters. It is known, also, what kind of dresses they likely wore, based on documentation and what other women wore at the time. Education levels are also addressed, as some of the daughters took a keener interest in politics than others, and it appeared that some, if not all, knew how to read and write, and argue on their own behalf, and issue commands and decrees, which was rather abnormal for royal women at the time. And even feuds between sisters are examined, as jealousies are also catalogued here. These details were really interesting to me, as they worked toward making these women humans, who actually existed at one point in time, rather than just names on a page.

History isn’t usually fair to women, and that is, perhaps, one reason why this book surprised me so much. First of all, I doubt many people likely even know that Edward I had daughters, or what their names were. Secondly, the fact that this was so many years ago, in a time of poor record keeping, when women were important due to the men they married and the children they produced and little else, I was absolutely amazed by how much information Wilson-Lee found out about each of these daughters, and how she managed to absolutely pack this book full of information, not just about these five daughters, but about the wider world and cultural norms at the time. This wasn’t just a brief overview about each daughter, this was an in-depth portrait of women time forgot, and the author did a fantastic job of giving each woman equal coverage, slowly unrolling their stories as the book progressed, never really seeming to favor one over the others. 

As a work of scholarship, I was honestly blown away. 

It should be noted that these women aren’t particularly noteworthy against the backdrop of their time period. None of them really went on to move empires or forge nations. In the grand scheme of things, they were likely pretty average in comparison with other royal women of their time, and that fact may or may not disappoint some readers. If you like reading about women who change events and fundamentally impact history, you won’t really find it here. There is drama, yes, but it’s more personal and smaller scale than you may prefer. I, however, really enjoyed the fact that these were as close to your average royal woman of the times that you could get, and I think that was one of the strengths of the book. When you read about people who had a huge impact on their times, the book is often so focused on this particular person, and what makes this particular story so unique and impactful, that you lose scope of the wider world, and all of the other people in it. Their stories get drowned out. In this book, these women, while noteworthy, weren’t really more noteworthy than any other royal woman, and they all got overwhelmed by not just their father, but their brothers as well. In this book, Wilson-Lee peels away all the layers of their more famous family members, and exposes the life of the average (royal) woman in a detailed, nuanced way that you wouldn’t get otherwise. 

Wilson-Lee alternates between the daughters rather fluidly, and her writing is skillful and engaging. She has an easy way about her, and seems to have a knack for boiling down and distilling complex European politics of the age, as well as showing how social and cultural norms would impact the day-to-day life of these women who are swept up in all these goings-on. I found the entire book to be fantastically engaging, and quite honestly, when I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. I’m pretty flummoxed why more lovers of history haven’t read this book yet. You’re really missing out on a gem. 

In the end, this book was a perfect balance between personal life stories, complex politics, and a life in the 1300’s that really made an impact on me. I learned a whole lot, not just about Edward I’s daughters, but about the time in which they lived. More than that, I learned the names of these women who have been forgotten to history, and internalized their stories. Under Kelcey Wilson-Lee’s deft hand, these women lost their anonymity and became living, breathing people, both on and off the page. 

Highly, highly recommend to history lovers. 

5/5 stars

Review | Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS – Azadeh Moaveni

About the Book

An account of thirteen women who joined, endured, and, in some cases, escaped life in the Islamic State—based on years of immersive reporting by a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Among the many books trying to understand the terrifying rise of ISIS, none has given voice to the women in the organization; but women were essential to the establishment of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. 

Responding to promises of female empowerment and social justice, and calls to aid the plight of fellow Muslims in Syria, thousands of women emigrated from the United States and Europe, Russia and Central Asia, from across North Africa and the rest of the Middle East to join the Islamic State. These were the educated daughters of the middle-class as well as working-class drifters and desolate housewives, and they set up makeshift clinics and schools for the Islamic homeland they envisioned. Guest House for Young Widows charts the different ways women were recruited, inspired, or compelled to join the militants and how all found rebellion or community in political Islam.

It wasn’t long before the militants exposed themselves as little more than violent criminals, more obsessed with power than the tenets of Islam, and the women of ISIS were stripped of any agency, perpetually widowed and remarried, and ultimately trapped in a brutal, lawless society. The fall of the caliphate only brought new challenges to women no state wanted to reclaim.

352 pages (hardcover)
Published on September 10, 2019
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This was a library loan.

I put off reading this book for a while, but recently I saw the audiobook on my library’s website and decided to give it a download. It’s not an easy listen. The subject matter is divisive and difficult, and there really aren’t any happy endings. There’s a saying that basically goes, there are no winners in war, and I think the conflict in Syria is the perfect illustration in that. No one won. Everyone lost. And, arguably, it is still happening in one form or another. 

The thing that has always fascinated me with Isis, that you just never saw with other radical movements, was this vast swath of people relocating for the cause. No one really did that for Al Qaida, but for Isis, men and women were picking up and moving to Syria in droves, sometimes alone, sometimes their entire families would come along. And, perhaps the plight of the women was the most interesting to me. These (usually) young women from countries all over the world, relocating to arguably play a role in their own subjugation. Why… why would anyone want to do that? 

And it’s been discussed. Of course it has been discussed. Entire documentaries have been created that talk about the Isis movement, but usually all of this discussion is from a very Western point of view, and a lot of the issues that move women to join Isis are so bogged down in Western jargon and perspective that it makes no real sense why something like (insert thing here) would inflame a sixteen-year-old girl enough to just pick up and leave. 

This book isn’t like that. Written from a very pro-Muslim point of view, it really dissects social issues in a way that I, frankly, have not seen done before. From the Arab Spring, to issues surrounding the media in the UK, to the clash of cultures with Muslims living in Western countries, and general life dissatisfaction, all of this is covered here, and in a much different light so, while I don’t agree with the sentiments these women felt, I understand, more or less, where they were coming from and why they would feel the way they felt—an outsider in their world, and why the appeal of this far off place was so strong for them. 

That being said, this book is a lot about radicalization, and that’s what surprised me more than anything else. How these people in these radical Muslim groups seemed to know just who to target, and just how to do it. They had their marks—the depressed, lonely, dissatisfied, misunderstood, misfits, etc. They knew exactly who to ply with their messages, and they knew exactly how to twist their Muslim faith just enough to sell their product to these desperate, lost youths in just the right way. They’d slowly suck the lives out of these people. It would start with a friendly introduction, and then it was activities every day, and constant text messages, and Youtube videos and on and on, until these women were eating and drinking this stuff all the time, constantly. Until there was nothing else for them to absorb but this call to Syria and the great glory of this Islamic state. 

And outside of those Muslims who live in Western societies, a few of the women covered in this book are from Tunisia, where there was huge political unrest, and poverty, destitution, and societal insecurity drove a whole lot of men and women to Syria, because that appeared to be the only opportunity they’d have to make money, and do something other than hope that tomorrow would be better. 

As we know, nothing ended up the way anyone wanted it to. Not those under Isis, and not the rest of the world. Now, there are huge refugee camps, and one of the largest relocations of people in human history. Despite the fall of the caliphate, there are still ardent, devout believers. Women, who have given up everything, are living out there either believing, or not believing, in the thing that brought them there in the first place. Countries around the world are trying to figure out how to deal with their citizens who moved to Syria to fight in this war. There are still a whole lot of Isis pockets around the world. It’s not gone, and I do worry that the next generation is growing up equally as indoctrinated as those who joined the caliphate in the first place. An entire generation of children living in refugee camps are still growing up knowing nothing but war, and someday we, the world, will have to reckon with that. 

So yeah, this book is not comfortable, and it’s not happy. It’s a hard, incredibly disturbing read about the slow slide into radicalization, and the often-catastrophic results of said journey. Not every woman the author covers survives to the end of the book. Not every family gets reunited. I don’t think any story ends happily. I don’t think I expected them to, but I also don’t think I expected to be this… bothered… by it. And it’s not that any of this really surprised or offended me on any real level. I knew what I was getting going into this book. What bothered me, perhaps, is just how sick and pervasive this radicalization was, and how it just blew apart and shattered so many lives. I suppose destruction is different when it has a face and a voice. When it’s humanized.

I can’t imagine being the sixteen-year-old girl leaving school in London to join Isis. I equally cannot imagine the hardship her parents must have faced after they discovered their daughter missing. 

I cannot imagine the mother who had to get the phone call that her daughter was never coming home because she died in an air-raid. 

I can’t imagine being one of the mothers raising their children in a refugee camp. Children who, quite literally, will likely never know anything but war, fighting, and poverty, the likes of which none of us can understand. 

In the end, I do feel like books like this are incredibly important. To understand radicalization, to understand how movements like Isis even begin, we have to know how people are being pulled into them. We have to know why dissatisfied people decide to become suicide bombers, rather than write the local newspaper, or effecting change on a local level. We have to understand what is being said, and why it appeals to people. 

It’s like looking in a mirror just so we can examine our ugly spots, as a society. That’s never something any of us want to do, and it’s never comfortable, but it is absolutely necessary. To stop tragedies like this from happening again, we have to understand what allowed it to happen in the first place. 

But my god, this book made my soul hurt. 

On a more writerly note, in the end I decided to minus a star from this book’s rating because there were so many women covered, and there was no real order to their stories, that sometimes I had to go back in the book a bit to remind myself who was who, and what they were up to the last time the book touched base with them.

I also would have liked a lot more of life under Isis. In this book, what is mostly covered is how these women got involved in Isis in the first place. There are some highlights of their lives under the caliphate, but not many, and then there are a few escape journeys told, but again, not many. While I think the focus of this book was correct, with its focus on indoctrination, spliced with current events and how local Muslims in various areas could have interpreted them, my personal curiosity regarding life in the caliphate wasn’t really satisfied. Then again, that’s not really what the book is about so this point is really neither here nor there.

I will also say that I do think sometimes the author went a bit out of her way to be overly sympathetic with some of these characters. While I do think it would be very hard to divorce yourself emotionally from stories as fraught through as these, there were some occasions where I did feel like she bent over backwards to paint these women in a better light than they, occasionally, may have deserved. 

In the end, I am really glad I read this book, and it is not one I am likely to ever forget.

4/5 stars

Review | Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter – Kate Clifford Larson

About the Book

They were the most prominent American family of the twentieth century. The daughter they secreted away made all the difference.

Joe and Rose Kennedy’s strikingly beautiful daughter Rosemary attended exclusive schools, was presented as a debutante to the Queen of England, and traveled the world with her high-spirited sisters. And yet, Rosemary was intellectually disabled — a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful and glamorous family.  Major new sources — Rose Kennedy’s diaries and correspondence, school and doctors’ letters, and exclusive family interviews — bring Rosemary alive as a girl adored but left far behind by her competitive siblings. Kate Larson reveals both the sensitive care Rose and Joe gave to Rosemary and then — as the family’s standing reached an apex — the often desperate and duplicitous arrangements the Kennedys made to keep her away from home as she became increasingly intractable in her early twenties. Finally, Larson illuminates Joe’s decision to have Rosemary lobotomized at age twenty-three, and the family’s complicity in keeping the secret.  

Rosemary delivers a profoundly moving coda: JFK visited Rosemary for the first time while campaigning in the Midwest; she had been living isolated in a Wisconsin institution for nearly twenty years. Only then did the siblings understand what had happened to Rosemary and bring her home for loving family visits. It was a reckoning that inspired them to direct attention to the plight of the disabled, transforming the lives of millions.

320 pages (hardcover) 
Published on October 6, 2015
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This book was a library loan.

Before you go on, please know that this is less a book review, and more a rant about how much this family ended up repulsing me on almost every possible level. Spoilers abound. You have been warned.

Look, I’m going to level with you. I know nearly nothing about the Kennedy family. I know, for example, that they are Irish, Catholic, rich, and JFK was a womanizer who was assassinated. That’s about it. I don’t generally have that much of an interest in wealthy “American royalty” and other than the bullet points, I don’t typically feel the need to dive deeper. 

That being said, I’ve been reading some darker books recently and I wanted a bit of a detour. I was browsing through the online library’s website and I saw this audiobook. My thought process was, “Well, it’s about a Kennedy. How bad could it be?” 

Famous. Last. Words. 

Friends, I don’t honestly think I’ve read a book that has infuriated me this much in a long, long time. And let me be clear: It’s not the book that made me so mad. It’s what the book is about that brought me to a land of righteous fury I heretofore have not experienced before. 

Rosemary Kennedy was the eldest Kennedy daughter, their third child born of nine. She was born during the influenza pandemic in 1918. Due to a mishap, she was held (forcefully) in the birth canal for two hours by the nurse before the doctor could arrive to bring this baby into the world. Now, nothing is ever decisively said one way or the other about that, but my personal feeling is, if you hold a child in the birth canal for two hours after it starts working its way toward life, and said child ends up with some disabilities, then the two are likely related, but what do I know. 

Okay, so that happens. Rosemary is a beautiful child. She appears like the standard-issue human, until she turns around one or two years old and it’s obvious that she is developing slower than her two older brothers. She has a hard time walking and talking. The learning disabilities just become that much clearer cut as the family gets bigger and older. 

Now, let me be clear on this point. Rose and Joe Kennedy did try very, very hard to find Rosemary an educational path that would suit her. There was, at that time, almost no understanding of learning disabilities, or many other disabilities for that matter. No one had a clue how to deal with people who were developed differently. It was either deal with them at home, or put them in some hospital for the rest of their lives, and the hospitals were HORRIBLE so Rose and Joe didn’t want that. Instead, they tried hard to find her help, and find her people that had a better understanding of her condition and how to treat it. 

Other than that, there is almost nothing good I can say about those two people. They were more focused on how Rosemary would embarrass them than anything else. They were worried about people finding out that their family had “bad genes” and so they spent forever trying to groom her to behave certain ways in public so no one would find out that she is disabled. They shunted her off from one place to another with little to no consideration for how hard it was for her to adjust, or her anxiety levels, and they started this when the poor child was only ten years old. They had absolutely no consideration for how she’d fit in in intimate family gatherings, where the entire family would play these knowledge games and Rosemary would get really upset and have a tantrum. And no wonder. She was basically treated like the third wheel, part of the family, but completely apart from it and given almost no room to be part of it in her own way. 

There were other issues, too. Like Rose sent Rosemary off to a summer camp without telling anyone at said camp that Rosemary was disabled and needed special care (her instructions were to make sure Rosemary does her arch exercises, nothing about her disabilities and specialized care needs). Rosemary shows up in shoes that were so small her feet were bleeding. The nuns at the camp were completely unprepared for her, and when the task at hand was too much for them to handle, Rose refused to bring her child home, and then ran up to Maine for a nine-month long vacation at some makeup artist’s mansion, and then complained about paying a $200 bill for her own child’s care when it was all said and done. 

When World War II starts up in Europe, they vacation in Spain after watching the new pope get uh… pope-ified, and instead of being all like, “Whoa, look at what’s happening all around us,” Rose complains about two-piece bathing suits, and Joe admires all the leggy women. I swear to God, these people just lived on a completely different planet than the rest of humanity.

And let me complain about Joe sr. and Joe jr. for a minute, because the other thing I had no idea about was the fact that they were basically jazzed up Nazi sympathizers. Both Joes thought that Hitler had some great ideas in his forced sterilization programs, and that if Hitler was executing the Jews, well, obviously they had done something to deserve it. 

So here are these guys, with a disabled family member, who absolutely know that if they lived in Germany, then Rosemary would be killed in Hitler’s various purges, saying, basically, “Man, that guy has some great ideas. Look at the wonderful job he’s doing of ridding the planet of some really shitty people.” And seriously, just take some time to let that sink into you for a minute, because I did, and that alone nearly had me orbiting the moon on a tide of my morally fueled ire, and not just on Rosemary’s behalf, but on the behalf of like… you know, humans inhabiting the planet.

Fast-forward from there. Rosemary gets older, and she starts having these wild, erratic mood swings. She’s hard to control, and Joe and Rose start worrying that Rosemary will run away, and end up getting pregnant somehow (because another belief was, apparently, disabled women are “loose” and they will basically all wander away to screw anything that moves because that’s in their nature.). Joe is afraid that her mood swings will put the family in danger, that she will become a “menacing disgrace” to the family’s “political, financial, and social well-being.” So he decides to put her forward for a lobotomy, because heaven forbid his own daughter embarrass the family and impact their social standing. 

I mean, my god. I’m basically over here vibrating with rage. Never once was the consideration ever for how they could help their own daughter live her best life. They were nearly always focused on how to minimize any potential embarrassment that she would heap on the family, and limit the amount of people who knew about the “bad genes.” It wasn’t ever, ever, ever about anything more than limiting Rosemary’s lasting impact on the rest of them. And you know what? Here’s a heaping pile of fuck all of these guys. That is NOT how you treat a human being.

Rose, for her credit, was not fond of the lobotomy idea. However, King Nazi-Sympathizing-Eugenics-Loving Asshole isn’t that excited about having an unpredictable daughter and what says goes, because he is man, hear him roar. The lobotomy goes forward. Something goes wrong, and Rosemary is basically… undone. She has to learn how to walk again, talk again, eat, drink, think… she can never, ever, ever live without full-time care for the rest of her life. She ends up in a hospital. Rose Kennedy never says her daughter’s name again, either spoken or in writing, for two decades, and she ends up telling the younger children that Rosemary “went to the Midwest to become a teacher.” Though, information doubtless got out. Apparently, Ted Kennedy believed that if he cried too much, his dad would give him a lobotomy too. 

Just a whole family of peachy assbags. 

Now, away from how putrid and repugnant these people are, everyone seemed to deal with the issue of Rosemary differently. JFK and Ted both worked to pass very forward-thinking disability legislation. Eunice Kennedy was likely impacted by Rosemary’s story earlier than many of her siblings. She was very close to Rosemary, and the loss of her sister really, profoundly had a very severe emotional and physical impact on her. She ended up with her own health problems, and actually started the Special Olympics. I swear to god, Eunice and Rosemary were probably the only two people in the entire family that didn’t really piss me off on some fundamental level.

And, let me be clear: It is really, really good that the kids of these two pukes worked hard through social work and legislation to profoundly alter the lives of millions of disabled Americans due to their own reckoning with their sister’s story. That being said, what happened to Rosemary is appalling, and that it took twenty years of her being hidden away in some backwater town in Wisconsin before any of them learned, definitively, what happened to their own sister is honestly grotesque.

So now that I’ve spoiled the plot and ranted for a billion words here, let me say that this book is very much worth reading, but my god is it full of emotional landmines, and it rose up a fury in me which was, quite frankly, stunning. I knew absolutely nothing about the Kennedys going into this, and now that I’m done reading it, I really, profoundly dislike nearly the entire family. Rosemary’s story, however, is one that needs to be told. It’s beyond tragic, but she deserves to be known. She never had a voice. Never got a say in her own life. Never got any measure of self. She was lost in the shuffle of an upward-moving family, and my god is it sad. 

Basically, if you read this book, read it to be aware of what happened, what some people suffered through, and please, for the love of god, read this book and do everything these human sacks of crap did not do for their own daughter. 

I can’t even rate this book. It was really good, but the content pissed me off so much I just don’t even know where to put it on a scale of one to five stars. 

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier – Ian Urbina

About the Book

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.

Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning expose, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.

560 pages (hardcover)
Published on August 20, 2019
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This book was a library loan.

The Outlaw Ocean is a book I read when it first came out, and it made a huge impact on me. I actually have it on hold at the library again, because I intend on a second read for novel-writing research purposes. However, this is one of those books that I think should be widely read, because there are certain conversations that, I think, need to take place. 

The Outlaw Ocean is, first and foremost, a stunning work of journalism. Ian Urbina has always had a thing for the sea, and has worked as a journalist reporting from the world’s last true frontier for years and years. Now, before we continue on, I think all of you need a bit of a background on me. There are a list of things that nothing in the world could make me care enough to read about: Zombies, flesh-eating bugs, Oprah, and boats. And honestly, “boats” is absolutely not fourth on that list. It’s somewhere like item number one or two. I don’t honestly know why my aversion is there, but it absolutely is. 

I thought, due to that, this book would take an act of god for me to get through, and I will freely admit that the first chapter did almost nothing for me, and I nearly gave up on the book then and there, but I kept on keeping on and I was rewarded for my efforts. After that chapter, I found this book nearly impossible to put this book down. The thing is, Urbina does some incredible journalistic work here, revealing the intricacies of the ocean, the difficulty legislating out there, lax laws, and how corporations and governmental entities have figured out ways to take advantage of all the above. 

It’s a horrifying book. Slavery is still very much a thing in existence, and it seems as though one of the last bastions of slavery in this world is the ocean. Companies base their operations in countries that have lax laws and then fill their boats with, for example, boys who from various inland areas of Asia, who have never seen the ocean before, and get suckered into these impossible jobs where they are paid absolutely nothing and put their lives at risk constantly for their work. It is not unusual to see people killed, or die. It is not unusual to get a small injury, which gets infected, and then lose a limb. When asked why they keep working for these companies, they either are stuck in the job and have no way out of it, or the economy is so broken where they are from, there is literally nothing else for them to do. 

It isn’t a coincidence that this book is called The Outlaw Ocean. In truth, countries can only police so much of the ocean that surrounds their shores, and often fishing boats and the companies that power them know that. There are small wars waged between governments who want to preserve the ocean around their shores, people who try to environmentally protect our deep seas and the creatures that live in them, and those who take advantage of the very same. Vigilante environmentalists linger out in the deep ocean, reporting on practices by pirates and other deep fishing companies that seem to know exactly how to skirt the laws of numerous lands and spend their time lingering in international waters, dragging their nets and destroying ocean floors, but it’s not enough. 

I was, perhaps, the most surprised by just how wide and varied Urbina’s coverage of this issue actually was. He didn’t stop at pirate, traffickers, slavers and the like. He also managed to interview a woman who spent her time ferrying women from various locations in Mexico, where abortion was illegal, to a boat kept just outside of Mexico’s jurisdiction, where she performs abortions on the women who, for one reason or another, require this service. The risks of such an operation, and the legal aspects of it are also focused on, as well as why she feels strongly enough about this cause to put everything at risk the way she does. It was quite touching, and very eye opening, the lengths people will go to for such a medical procedure. 

He also focuses on people who have made the ocean their home, whether by creating their own micro-countries (which was FASCINATING, I will admit), or those who just make it their home to take advantage of lax shipping, human trafficking, and employment laws on the deeper seas. The ocean holds an entire world that has honestly never occurred to me. 

The thing is, this book does focus on a lot of dark topics, but Urbina does a great job at balancing out all these harrowing, dark deeds with the ingenuity of human nature, and the unbroken human spirit. As long as there are people destroying the oceans, trafficking humans, etc. There will be people working hard to stop them. 

The issue, in my mind, is that the task seems so impossible. Perhaps that is the opposite impact this book should have left me with, but there is so very much ocean, and so very few laws and people capable of enforcing (or people/countries who care enough to enforce) them… and there’s just so much of it, and so many people and companies who seem to know exactly how to skirt all of the above for their own financial gain, often at the risk of so many people who literally are trapped, that I just don’t know how it’s possible to really make a huge impact on any of that. 

I’m not a person who advocates pitchfork burnings and marching through the town square until the bad people are run off, but I very nearly think that some of these companies who traffic humans, and basically run slave ships come very close to deserving that (only the end result of “run off” needs to be “a very miserable prison”). This stuff is absolutely revolting. Human trafficking, pirates, slavery? It’s out of some fantasy novel, but it actually happens every day, all over the world, and I think the magnitude of all of it just shocked me. Here I am, in a landlocked state. None of this ever occurs to me. Never even crosses my mind. I never once look out to the horizon and think, “I wonder how many boys have been trafficked from inland parts of Thailand and are forced to work on deep sea fishing boats today?” 

So, in the end, this book opened my eyes really wide to a huge swath of the world I never, ever think about. It’s sad, and hard to read at times, but Urbina’s journalistic research is stunning, and his writing is captivating. He does not shy away from hard topics, yet he manages to balance this with the fortitude and will of the human spirit. It did not leave me with much hope, honestly, but it did leave me feeling like this needs to be a must-read book for anyone who has any concern over human rights and/or environmental issues. This is one of those books that can, and needs to, start a conversation. 

5/5 stars

Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home – Richard Bell

About the Book

Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.

Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

Impeccably researched and breathlessly paced, Stolen tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America. 

336 Hardcover
Published on October 15, 2019
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I listened to the audiobook.

I’ve been pretty interested in US history recently. I spent a lot of last year reading biographies of presidents, which is something a lot of people do, but like, I never thought I’d read a book about James A. Garfield and get excited about it, if you know what I mean. This year, with all the stuff going on, and for research for a book I’m getting ready to write, I’ve been focusing on some more specific points of history, rather than people. The way I came across this book was pretty random. I’ve been doing research into the American prison system, and for whatever reason, this book just flitted across one of my Google searches. I said, “Well, that looks cool” and immediately downloaded the audiobook from my library’s website. 

Stolen tells the harrowing story of five kidnapped boys between the ages of 8 and 16, and their journey from the free north, into the slave-rich deep south. The story of how these boys were caught was roughly the same for each of them, with a few deviations here or there. These boys were all vulnerable for one reason or another. Alone and desperate/hungry, they were lured by another black man, whom they considered one of their own, for a job, or food, or in a few cases, abducted outright. Led away from what they knew, they were either taken into a ship off the coast, and then beaten and chained and kept there, before their southern journey began. 

Their journey south took about four months, and a lot of it was spent walking barefoot across rugged terrain while chained in a line, before being sold into slavery once they got to their destination. In the early 1800’s, it was nearly unheard of for white men to fight for black, and truly, that’s what it took to get four of the five boys in this book back: a fight. The mayor of Philadelphia (where they were all taken from) working in conjunction with four white men in the south. Unfortunately, one of the boys taken was never returned, and he remained a slave for the rest of his life. Three of the boys who were returned were allowed to testify on their own behalf against their captors, which was absolutely unheard of at the time (as black people were refused the right to testify on their own behalf.)

A lot of research went into this book, though at the very start the author makes it clear that a whole lot of what he learned, and a whole lot of what happens hinges on two letters and a newspaper article that pulled all these loose facts together into one cohesive, meaningful narrative. That being said, the work he must have done to parse out the lives and stories of these boys, including the bits that he infers due to the information he had and likely practices in the areas at the times things took place, was painstaking and incredibly well done.

We know a lot about the Underground Railroad, and those people who risked so much to bring slaves from the South, up North. We know next to nothing about the Reverse Underground Railroad, and that’s truly what this book is about, that dark operation, where people worked in the other direction, bringing free black men and women, often through kidnapping and coercion, from free states in the North, to be sold into (most often) a lifetime of slavery in the deep South. This book truly is focusing on an aspect of the slave trade in the United States I knew absolutely nothing about before now, told through the harrowing saga, and often painful journey of five boys who were victims of the Reverse Underground Railroad. 

The Reverse Underground Railroad was a criminal operation, and so not much is known about it, nor are there many records left from the people who trafficked in this way, which makes the telling of this aspect of history, and the learning of it hard for both people like me, who are curious, and a challenge for authors like Richard Bell, who are working to shine a light on this particular aspect of American history. Bell is quite clear from the outset that there were numerous remarkable aspects of the story he’s telling in this book, which make it easier for him to tell it, not the least of which is that four of the five boys were brought back, and three were given a voice at a time where that was nearly unheard of. This makes their stories a bit easier to tell than so many others who were likely trafficked, and lost to history.

The fact remains, the Reverse Underground Railroad was absolutely a thriving operation where men working on behalf of slavers in the south often waited in cities like Philadelphia for young black men and women who looked like they had a lot of working life left in them, and few attachments. These men and women would be taken, secreted to slavers to the south, resulting in a life of servitude. The people who worked on the Reverse Underground Railroad are not celebrated. Their names, often as not, are not remembered. There are no Harriet Tubmans on the Reverse Underground Railroad. This thriving operation worked right under the noses of so many Americans at the time, who either did not see what was happening, or chose not to, or some mixture of both, and yet, countless lives were destroyed, unalterably in most cases. 

It did take me some time to get into this book, but soon the stories of these boys took off, and I was swept along. The narrator, Leon Nixon, does a fantastic job reading this book. He’s easy to listen to, and something about the cadence of his voice was almost hypnotizing to me. Between that, and the story itself, I had a very, very hard time turning this book off when I needed to focus on other things. 

The book itself isn’t terribly long. The narration of it took a touch over seven hours, which is much shorter than my usual listens, however, a lot is covered in these pages, and after the initial setup of the details, the North vs. South culture at the time this took place, and the struggles so many young freed black men and women face in towns like Philadelphia, as well as outlining the basis for the Reverse Underground Railroad and how it functioned, the story really took off. The author lays out his research flawlessly, and is clear about when he is inferring something based on the information he has at hand and/or circumstantial evidence. 

Stolen tells the story of five boys taken on the Reverse Underground Railroad, and the ordeal to find them, and get them back. At the end of the day, I was glad I read this book, but I was ultimately left feeling really cold. Cold, because I wonder how many lives were ruined due to the Reverse Underground Railroad. Cold, because I wonder how many stories aren’t told. Cold, because this is a dark piece of American history, and I think more people should know about it. 

4/5 stars

The Curse of Neutrality

My country is in turmoil.

I have thought long and hard about whether to stay silent on my website about any of this, and I have decided that I cannot do it. If I do not stand for my ideals, then who am I? I am, perhaps, afraid of isolating myself from my readers, of losing fans, of… whatever.

In the end, my country is in turmoil. People are hurting. People have lost their lives, and if I do not stand up from my position of relative privilege, then what is my value as a human being? What is my worth?

For the previous eight days, protests have broken out in every one of the fifty states. Teargas has filled cities along with protestors exercising their rights as citizens in this country. Our president has hidden in a bunker. The world has watched while we have torn ourselves apart.

The reason these protests started, was due to the unjust murder of George Floyd. His death is what raised the issue of police brutality, and that is what people are protesting. In the name of George Floyd and in the names of others who have been killed by the hands of police.

“I can’t breathe” has become their rallying cry.

It took the death, captured by a 17 year old’s camera, to get to this point, but for how long have people in America been crying out because they can’t breathe? How long have we had this incredible chasm between those who have, and those who have not? How long have people been saying I can’t breathe, America, before we have been given no option but to hear them?

Before I continue on, understand that this crisis is absolutely about police brutality and a very necessary requirement our country faces for substantial police and social reform, if not a complete overhaul.

More here.

We are facing a pandemic right now, but in truth, we have been facing a pandemic of a different sort for a long time. We should honor the cause, and what is currently happening. And while I believe it is our moral obligation to fight for equal rights under the law, for ALL people, I also want to take time to examine this other virus in the heart of our society from which so many of these issues spawn.

In 2018, 14.3 million households in America had a hard time securing enough food to keep themselves adequately fed. This is before COVID-19 swept through the nation, killing over 100,000 Americans, rendering so many unemployed, and making hard situations even worse. COVID-19, the pandemic that has thrown the entire planet into a tailspin, has, in America, impacted communities of color far more than their white counterparts.

Furthermore, a disproportionate number of those living in poverty-like conditions were, and remain, people of color. Poverty has been increasing along with the income gap. The chasm between the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-poor is widening, and it’s the Americans of color who are carrying the bulk of that burden. 

There are two Americas.

Poverty keeps people from:

Adequate medical care…

More here.

Adequate education…

More here.

Adequate job opportunities…

More here.

Adequate food…

More here.

Our prison and justice systems are disproportionately flooded with people of color.

Click here for more information.

The lack of all of this means that, for example, communities of color are dying in greater numbers from illnesses like COVID-19. It means that, while I have been bemoaning the fact that I don’t know what to cook for dinner tonight, one in five children in the United States have been going to bed hungry. And as terrible as that sounds, the global pandemic has only made that childhood hunger worse in America.

And this is not taking into account the fact that many of our politicians have systematically disenfranchised people of color voters, robbing them of having a voice in the very country in which they reside.

We now live in a nation that is designed to lock out nearly everyone who’s not white.

More here.

Communities of color have disproportionately been carrying the weight of the secure society so many of us enjoy, and rarely even think about. With backs breaking under the strain, is it any wonder why people have been calling out in an effort to be heard for as long as America has been a country? Is it any wonder why George Floyd’s words have been such a powerful rallying cry for so many thousands of Americans?

Rarely do we see the lack of opportunity and diminished income in impoverished communities as the bedrock from which many of our societal issues spawn. 

We, who live with our privilege, do not tend to see racism until there is one, or a handful of egregious actions that force us to pay attention. The cop, slowly suffocating a man in the streets. We do not see the racism that is imbedded in our communities, in our American way of life. We do not recognize the fact that it is the people of color who have been carrying the biggest burden required to support our various societal chasms–income inequality, food scarcity, lack of access to adequate healthcare, lack of access to adequate education, lack of choice. We stopped acknowledging this inequality. It is so imbedded, many of us do not see it.

Taken by photographer Richard Grant

We, who have the privilege of being on this side of the gap, have had the luxury to not see. 

It is unfortunate that we do not recognize the rot at the core of our system until it all comes spilling out. It is tragic that we choose to not feel ire until a white septuagenarian with a cane is pushed forcefully onto the pavement for no reason at all. Or we do not see how twisted anger can make us, until a man starts shooting arrows into a crowd while yelling, “All lives matter!” Or until police shoot paint cans at American citizens standing on the front porches of their own houses. Or forcefully pull protesters out of cars and pepper-spray them at point-blank range. It is unfortunate that we do not shake hands with our injustices until they cross that divide, and impact us personally.

We have forgotten the art of empathy. How long has it been since we have heard the cries of the oppressed.

There has been a virus in our country for a long, long time. The virus of have, and have not. The virus spread by those who refuse to see, who have forgotten to see, and those who refuse to hear. George Floyd’s murder was beyond tragic, but we are missing the mark if we think that all of this is only about police brutality. While that is a large part of this, and it needs to be recognized and immediately addressed with substantial reforms, there are deeper issues at play here. Deeper problems at the heart of our American way of life that are equally as pressing and need to be seen, and dealt with. Problems that have birthed a society where police murdering a black man in the streets of an American city becomes a thing that happens. This event did not happen in a vacuum. There are seeds planted in this garden, and this is the corrupt fruit that grew.

This is not enough.
Do better.

We have not heard. We did not listen to the voices of those crying out until there was fire in our cities, and people flooding the streets.

I can’t breathe.

If we do not listen to people when they speak, is it any wonder that they eventually shout?