The Mercy of the Sky

The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado by Holly Bailey

Penguin: 5/12/2015
eBook review copy, 320 pages
hardcover ISBN-13: 9780525427490

My Thoughts:
 
The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado by Holly Bailey is a very highly recommended account of the two tornadoes that hit Moore and El Reno, Oklahoma in May of 2013. Most of the book focuses on the May 20, 2013 tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb south of Oklahoma City. Bailey's narrative reads like a nail-biting thriller; even though you know the outcome, the tension is palatable as the storm approaches. This tornado was a massive mile-wide twister with winds in excess of 200 miles per hour that hit during the day, and destroyed two schools. Twenty-five people were killed, seven of which were third graders at the Plaza Towers Elementary School who had their school collapse on top of them. This tornado was one known as "a 'grinder' as it took its time chewing neighborhoods into tiny bits."

The El Reno tornado hit just eleven days after this, on May 31. This tornado was at least 2.6 miles wide and is the largest tornado on record. Both of these monsters were EF5 tornadoes on the Enhanced Fujita scale.

Bailey, a reporter, does an excellent job chronicling the story, and the history of storm forecasting in Oklahoma, through several key individuals, including: Gary England, the renowned and trusted weatherman at CBS affiliate KWTV, Mike Morgan and Damon Lane his rivals; Amy Simpson, the head principal at Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore; Steve Eddy, city manager of Moore; Rick Smith, of the National Weather Service in Norman; Howard Bluestein, a well-known meteorology professor at OU; and several others.

As a native Oklahoman, Bailey was compelled to tell what happened in Moore. She understands that most of us who live in tornado alley follow the weather very closely and those in Oklahoma, perhaps, the most. She "knew I wanted to tell the longer story of what had happened here. As a native, I knew how people felt about the weather, how they loved it and feared it all at the same time. I wanted to know what it was like being in the path of a tornado that seemed bigger than life itself as it bore down on the city from the west. I knew I had to chronicle the story of those who survived one of the worst tornadoes in history  - and those who didn’t make it."

I vividly recall both of these tornadoes. As a resident in several different communities all located in tornado alley over the years, I, too, have my first memory of a night of storms, flooding, and tornadoes that hooked me on meteorology for life. This interest often has me watching weather radar for different areas of the country, including this massive storm system. More importantly the Moore tornado of 2013 has changed the way the local elementary school where I work conducts our tornado drills, including where we go and the position of the students. I'm certain that this tornado must have changed the way tornado drills are conducted and the locations where students must go for other school districts too.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Penguin for review purposes.

The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Simon & Schuster: 5/5/2015
eBook review copy, 336 pages
hardcover ISBN-13: 9781476728742

My Thoughts:
 
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough is a masterful, brilliantly written, extensively researched biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright. It is very highly recommended and will be the definitive biography on the Wright Brothers. Through use of the Wright Papers, McCullough does an excellent job chronicling their story and bringing the brothers to life through their diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks and personal correspondence in this biography.

Together, the Wright brothers from Dayton, Ohio had the determination and the focus to begin the age of flight. Wilbur was the introvert, a genius, and the abstract thinker while Orville was the extrovert and the mechanical genius. While the brothers did not have extensive formal education, their home was filled with books and they both had curious, inquisitive minds. They also had the persistence and grit needed to decode what they were seeing in the flight if birds and how that would help them create their first flyer. Their father, Bishop Milton Wright and sister Katharine also helped as they could and provided support when needed.

All of the trials at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina over several years that eventually resulted in the first successful sustained flight on December 17, 1903 are faithfully recounted. It was quite frustrating to see the American government dismiss the Wright brothers and their invention; while the Smithsonian wasted 70,000 thousand dollars trying to achieve what the brothers had already figured out. It really wasn't until the French embraced them that Americans started to take note.

McCullough includes numerous photos and excerpts from newspapers and letters throughout the book that are credited. As is my wont, I was thrilled to see the extensive Source notes, Bibliography, and index.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Simon & Schuster for review purposes.

Jack of Spades

Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.: 5/5/2015
eBook review copy, 208 pages Hardcover ISBN-13: 9780802123947

My Thoughts:

Jack of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates is a very highly recommended psychological thriller that also pays homage to Stephen King.

Andrew J. Rush is a mainstream mystery writer who has published 28 books and was even dubbed "the gentleman's Stephen King" in one review. Andrew is successful, pompous, and egotistical, but likes to think of himself (and he likes to think of himself a lot) as a humble, mild mannered family man. He has been happily married for years and has three grown children. However, unknown to everyone, he is also writing decidedly different novels under the pseudonym Jack of Spades. His Jack of Spades novels are violent, dark, and disturbing. He has a secret room in his house where he keeps these novels. He even writes them on a different desk in his study.

When Andrew is accused of plagiarism by a local woman his carefully separated, murderous Jack of Spades alter ego begins to push to the forefront. C. W. Haider is a local woman who claims he physically stole his novels from her. She is very litigious. He's not the first author she has sued for the same thing, including Stephen King and John Updike. At the same time Andrew's adult daughter finds one of his Jack of Spades novels in his study and decides to read it. She thinks this "friend" of her father who writes the horrible books is stealing ideas/events from their family's lives. And his wife may be having an affair. 

As these events collide and suspicions begin to plague Andrew, his carefully ordered and compartmentalized mind begins to crack. His alter ego, the vicious Jack of Spades, begins to push to the forefront and he wants revenge. What we get is a mind disassociating with itself and see an author's slow slide into madness. 

The writing is brilliant in this novel. Narrated in the first person, Andrew Rush is really the only character in the novel, and we get to know him very, very well. Oates has also made this novel a tribute to Stephen King, who becomes a minor character in the novel through Andrew's thoughts. This is a short novel so it moves quite quickly. There are a few surprises too, so be prepared.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Mysterious Press for review purposes.

Trail of Broken Wings

Trail of Broken Wings by Sejal Badani
Lake Union Publishing: 5/1/2015
eBook review copy, 378 pages
Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 9781477822081

When her father falls into a coma, Indian American photographer Sonya reluctantly returns to the family she'd fled years before. Since she left home, Sonya has lived on the run, free of any ties, while her soft-spoken sister, Trisha, has created a perfect suburban life, and her ambitious sister, Marin, has built her own successful career. But as these women come together, their various methods of coping with a terrifying history can no longer hold their memories at bay.

Buried secrets rise to the surface as their father - €”the victim of humiliating racism and perpetrator of horrible violence - remains unconscious. As his condition worsens, the daughters and their mother wrestle with private hopes for his survival or death, as well as their own demons and buried secrets.

Told with forceful honesty, Trail of Broken Wings reveals the burden of shame and secrets, the toxicity of cruelty and aggression, and the exquisite, liberating power of speaking and owning truth.

My thoughts:

Trail of Broken Wings by Sejal Badani is, if you can bear with it, a recommended tale of abuse in a dysfunctional Indian family. The individual story of their lives and abuse is told by each character in their own voice in separate chapters.

Ranee has tried to be a good Indian wife, submitting to every wish her husband Brent voices, as well as his beatings. She knows that "the men, the father and the husband, were two sides of the same coin. Both owned you and could do with you what they wished." She and Brent have three girls, Marin, Trisha, and Sonya.

Marin is the oldest daughter and a driven woman. Her marriage to Raj was an arranged marriage. They have a 15 year old daughter Gia. Brent beat her as a child and controlled her life.
Trisha is the second daughter and was Brent's favorite. He never beat her and allowed her to marry the man of her choice.
Sonya, the youngest, left her family years ago, after college. She was beaten the most and told all through her childhood that she should have been aborted. Working as a photographer, she has traveled the world and never came back to see her family.

When their father, Brent, falls into a coma their mother, Ranee, wants her three daughters with her. Much to everyone's surprise, Sonya comes home. As each character faces the demons from their past and faces the hurts and challenges of the present day, the complete story of their lives is told and hidden motives and memories are revealed. The secret shame they all carried from their beatings is revealed along with the legacy it has left behind.

The writing is this novel is excellent and almost lyrical at time. I can't fault the writing for my negative feelings toward Trail of Broken Wings. Nor can I fault the presentation. Having the characters speak their truth and tell their story through their own voices in their chapters is very effective. It is the subject matter and all the violence toward women that is hard to stomach. I almost stopped half way through, telling myself that it was enough. I didn't need to read any more about this dysfunctional family full of misogynistic violence. I was struggling to relate to these broken women and some of their choices.


Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from Lake Union Publishing and TLC for review purposes.  

The Dorito Effect

The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker

Simon & Schuster: 5/5/2015
eBook review copy, 272 pages
ISBN-13: 9781476724218
http://www.markschatzker.com/news/

A lively and important argument from an award-winning journalist proving that the key to reversing America'€™s health crisis lies in the overlooked link between nutrition and flavor.

In The Dorito Effect, Mark Schatzker shows us how our approach to the nation's number one public health crisis has gotten it wrong. The epidemics of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are not tied to the overabundance of fat or carbs or any other specific nutrient. Instead, we have been led astray by the growing divide between flavor -the tastes we crave- and the underlying nutrition.

Since the late 1940s, we have been slowly leeching flavor out of the food we grow. Those perfectly round, red tomatoes that grace our supermarket aisles today are mostly water, and the big breasted chickens on our dinner plates grow three times faster than they used to, leaving them dry and tasteless. Simultaneously, we have taken great leaps forward in technology, allowing us to produce in the lab the very flavors that are being lost on the farm. Thanks to this largely invisible epidemic, seemingly healthy food is becoming more like junk food: highly craveable but nutritionally empty. We have unknowingly interfered with an ancient chemical language - flavor - that evolved to guide our nutrition, not destroy it.

With in-depth historical and scientific research, The Dorito Effect casts the food crisis in a fascinating new light, weaving an enthralling tale of how we got to this point and where we are headed. We've been telling ourselves that our addiction to flavor is the problem, but it is actually the solution. We are on the cusp of a new revolution in agriculture that will allow us to eat healthier and live longer by enjoying flavor the way nature intended.

My Thoughts:

The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker is a very highly recommended, well researched account that addresses the cause of the health crisis today as being a direct result of what we have done to our food.

In an effort to increase size, and production, we have taken the natural flavor out of food. Our bodies naturally crave flavors that the current food isn't providing so we eat more trying to fill the flavor void we're missing. Focusing on mainly chicken and tomatoes, Schatsker does an excellent job tracing how the change in our food happened and the results. There is a complex relationship between flavor and nutrition in food and we have diluted the flavor to increase size and production. Chicken today doesn't taste anything like the chicken of the past. Tomatoes today are mostly water. "The rise in obesity is the predictable result of the rise in manufactured deliciousness. Everything we add to food just makes us want it more." Schatzker points out that the big food companies have "created the snack equivalent of crystal meth and gotten us all hooked." Not only is more and more manufactured flavor being added to things, the availability of the food with enhanced flavors is more available.

"The Dorito Effect, very simply, is what happens when food gets blander and flavor technology gets better. This book is about how and why that took place. It's also about the consequences, which include obesity and metabolic disturbance along with a cultural love-hate obsession with food. This book argues that we need to begin understanding food through the same lens by which it is experienced: how it tastes. The food crisis we're spending so much time and money on might be better thought of as a large-scale flavor disorder. Our problem isn't calories and what our bodies do with them. Our problem is that we want to eat the wrong food. The longer we ignore flavor, the longer we are bound to be victims of it. This book is also about the solution. The Dorito Effect can be reversed. That's already happening on small farms and in pioneering science labs."

Schatzker notes the words to look for on your food that indicate the presence of chemicals that fool your nose and chemicals that fool your tongue. "The following words indicate the presence of chemicals that fool your nose: natural flavor(s) natural flavoring(s) artificial flavor(s) flavoring, flavor. The following words indicate the presence of chemicals that fool your tongue: monosodium glutamate MSG disodium guanlyate disodium inosinate torula yeast yeast extract hydrolyzed protein autolyzed yeast saccharin (Sweet Twin, Sweet N Low, Necta Sweet) aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Sugar Twin) acesulfame potassium (Ace-K, Sunett, Sweet One) sucralose (Splenda) neotame (Newtame) advantame stevia."

I have been talking about this book the whole time to anyone who will listen. Schatzker does and exceptional job presenting the information and scientific research in an entertaining, accessible, and informative manner.  In The Dorito Effect he divides the book into three parts: He tells us what the Dorito effect is, the importance of flavor, and the cure for the Dorito effect. As is my wont, I was thrilled to see a bibliography, notes and index.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Simon & Schuster for review purposes.

Early Warning

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

Knopf Doubleday: 4/28/2015
eBook review copy, 496 pages
hardcover ISBN-13: 9780307700322

From the Pulitzer Prize-winner: the second installment, following Some Luck, of her widely acclaimed, best-selling American trilogy, which brings the journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland into mid-century America

Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between.

As the country moves out of post–World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and ’70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world. And they now have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shock waves through the Langdon family into the next generation. 

Capturing a transformative period through richly drawn characters we come to know and care deeply for, Early Warning continues Smiley’s extraordinary epic trilogy, a gorgeously told saga that began with Some Luck and will span a century in America. But it also stands entirely on its own as an engrossing story of the challenges—and rewards—of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times, all while showcasing a beloved writer at the height of her considerable powers.

My Thoughts:

Early Warning by Jane Smiley is a highly recommended second book in her planned Last Hundred Years in America trilogy. This continues the story began with Some Luck and follows the years of 1953-1986. Smiley covers one year per chapter and there is a family tree included at the beginning of the book.

Opening at the funeral of Walter in Iowa, the Langdons are now scattered across the country. Their families are growing and we are meeting the second and third generations in this multi-generational saga. You will want to start with Some Luck for a sense of continuity and in order to follow the characters in Early Warning. The series is as much a social history of the USA as it is of the Langdon family. There are a lot of characters and changes to keep track of along with all the social changes of the times.


Smiley's continues to carefully craft her story  while placing her characters firmly in the time period. She covers the decades and the historical events that happened during that time. Her writing continues to be excellent as is her ability to tell the story of various family members while keeping to her organization of by-the-year chapters. 


Early Warning does suffer a little from the second-book-in-a-trilogy syndrome. It is good, but you want the stories to continue immediately rather than waiting for the next installment.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.

The Far End of Happy

The Far End of Happy by Kathryn Craft

Sourcebooks: 5/5/2015
eBook review copy, 368 pages
Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 9781492604952
www.kathryncraft.com

Ronnie's husband is supposed to move out today. But when Jeff pulls into the driveway drunk, with a shotgun in the front seat, she realizes nothing about the day will go as planned.
The next few hours spiral down in a flash, unlike the slow disintegration of their marriage-and whatever part of that painful unraveling is Ronnie's fault, not much else matters now but these moments. Her family's lives depend on the choices she will make-but is what's best for her best for everyone?
Based on a real event from the author's life, The Far End of Happy is a chilling story of one troubled man, the family that loves him, and the suicide standoff that will change all of them forever.

My Thoughts:

The Far End of Happy by Kathryn Craft is a very highly recommended novel about a suicide standoff and a woman trying to come up with the inner strength to make it through the horrific day.

As she is mentally preparing herself for the day, Ronnie (Veronica) Farnham contemplates, "How many months had it been since she’d been able to relax in her own home?"  Today her husband, Jeff, is supposed to move out of their farmhouse in Bartlesville, located in rural eastern Pennsylvania. Their marriage has been struggling for years, but with Jeff's increased drinking and out -of-control spending, which has led to huge credit card debt, Ronnie knows it is time to leave and try to make a future for her and her two boys.

A day that is already guaranteed to be stressful turns into a nightmare when a drunken Jeff pulls his car up to the front of the house. He has had way-to-much to drink, has a hose hanging from his exhaust pipe, a shotgun in the front seat, and is threatening to commit suicide. Ronnie and the boys manage to get the car keys and call 911, but when a crazed Jeff chases them into the house they are afraid. The police arrive but Jeff has taken off, holing up in the office of their farm store, New Hope Farms, with his gun.

The police manage to get Ronnie and the boys out of the house and off the farm. Ronnie's mother, Beverly, and Jeff's mother, Janet, meet them at the local firefighter's hall while the police have the road to the farm and the area locked down and under surveillance. The 12 hour standoff has begun. Ronnie manages to get the boys to a friend's house for the day, but she is stuck waiting, with her mother and mother-in-law. The story is told through Ronnie, Beverly, and Janet. Ronnie discovers that there are more family secrets than she thought, as the truth is slowly revealed during the tension packed standoff. We also learn more about the families and the history of each character as each woman reflects on her life.

Even as I felt the tension ratchet up during the twelve hour standoff, I also could see the personal reflection from each character as they wondered if they had a role in the day's tragic events. Could the marriage have been saved? Did any one action push Jeff over the edge? At the same time secrets are revealed that might have been helpful if they were made known, if risk factors were discussed. There are a wide range of emotions and questions that would plague anyone in this situation. Craft also realistically includes the ever-present media and their following of the "story."

I was totally engrossed in this well written, engaging story from start to finish and only learned afterwards that it was based on a personal experience by Kathryn Craft. That would explain her uncanny ability to capture the genuine, raw emotions  of each character and honestly confront the effects depression, alcoholism, and suicide can have on a family.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Sourcebooks via Netgalley for review purposes.