Saturday, June 28, 2025

Between Two Kingdoms

Between Two Kingdoms

By Suleika Jaouad

 In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.
It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.
When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.
How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

 It was an interesting experience to read about someone whose personality seems so diametrically opposed to mine. Cancer treatment notwithstanding, it seemed very clear to me that Jaouad is substantially extroverted, someone who thrives on interacting with people and a serial monogamist, seemingly incapable of being alone. Which makes her road trip all the more intriguing, although it does sound like she spent a good chunk of it dwelling on her romantic prospects. 

Jaouad spends the first half of the book detailing her first cancer treatment (since the time frame of the book, it sounds like she's had at least two more bouts) and then the first part of the second half talking about how hard it is to adjust to not being sick anymore, so the road trip takes up a fairly small chunk. For a road trip lasting 100 days and circumnavigating the continental United States, we spend a whole chapter and two weeks not even leaving the state of Vermont and then skip directly from Texas to the end of the story. 

She's a great writer. It's a long book but beautifully described. Naturally, almost all of it is internal musings and descriptions of her pain and care, but it's still well paced, and doesn't get bogged down. And as exhausting as she sounds to be around at points, I both admire and grimace at her bravery in writing about the end of her relationship with Will (again, not a spoiler for those who do a casual google search, she's currently married to Jon Baptiste). It sounds like she was lucky to have Will for as long as she did, doing as much as he did, but never felt lucky. But how could anyone feel lucky, with that kind of diagnosis and illness hanging over their heads? You're more likely to feel like the sword of Damocles is waiting to fall. 

In the end, I don't think that Jaouad comes up with any philosophical ideas outside of ones that seem common sense for someone in that position: focus on the present, not the past, learn to live comfortably with uncertainty, accept the love that others want to give you, etc., etc. But while I think much of the book is Jaouad trying (and mostly failing, so I hope that she's gotten better at this since 2015) to come to terms with her experience, I think much of the value of the book for others is the deep dive into what it feels to be so torn between being sick and being well - between two kingdoms, is the metaphor she uses over and over again. It is hard for many to imagine being so sick for so long that you have something like PTSD from it. And it is a small revelation to consider that being well again after something like that can be harder than being sick, and you should not expect unalloyed joy from a bill of good health.

12: A Book About A Road Trip

Saturday, June 21, 2025

The Frozen River

The Frozen River

By Ariel Lawhon 

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

So I was reading the book and enjoying it reasonably well as one does, and then I come to the author's note at the end and apparently Martha Ballard is a real person! Whose diary entries were excerpted for the book! And it's based around a real rape case! Except that almost all of the rest of it was manufactured, i.e. bodies and murder plots and the Colonel's nefarious backstory about scalping people during the French and Indian War! All of the "juicy" bits.

I was thinking about why this made me so unsettled, and it reminds me of that terrible book The Ministry of Time where the author exhumed someone who died on the ill-fated Franklin Exhibition in 1846 and then wrote this whole book about him time travelling and having sex in lurid, graphic detail. I suppose in one sense, these people died hundreds of years ago and it's not like their relatives are going to be scandalized. And people write about long-dead famous people all the time - Cleopatra, Empress Sisi. But it feels weird that a "normal" person could be molded into this whole fantasy, especially when these modern books are likely going to be more readily accessible and certainly more popular than their actual true biographies. All of that is to say that I enjoyed the story more when I thought it was a story, and had I known it was a fictionalized version of true events, I would have preferred the author not to add their own spin on things.

And I did enjoy the story when it was a story. The mystery is interesting, given how many people seemed to have motive, both moral and immoral, to kill Burgess. The characters (which again, feels like a weird thing to say given that all of these people appear to be based on actual patients and neighbors and relatives) are all neatly drawn and delineated. The authors note humorously says Lawhon helpfully changed names so there weren't ten "Hannahs" in the book. There's a neat piece where [spoiler!] Martha's matchmaking and assumption about a girl who had a child out of wedlock are neatly turned on their head - something to give our hero feet of clay.

I agree the historical detail and setting is a big part of its charm, and it's a nice change of pace to read about a couple who love each other. Although rape plays a central role in both the current and flashback stories, and it is described (in a courtroom setting), it didn't feel exploitative.

It's nothing that strains your brain, or is meant to say something deep about our cultural institutions (except, perhaps, about the overweening arrogance of certain types of men - to take, to dismiss experience born of decades of work). The mystery of which of Martha's family members may be involved in Burgess' death is not hard to guess correctly, and Martha's victory over the villain is never much in doubt. It's just a good story, well-told. 
 

43: A Book That Includes A Nonverbal Character

Saturday, June 14, 2025

The Woman They Could Not Silence

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

By Kate Moore

1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.

The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.

No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...
Kate Moore writes about women whom history has forgotten, women who have suffered and whose lives have changed the course of history and whom, despite that, we know very little about. Her first book, The Radium Girls was distinguished more by the subject matter than by the writing. Moore's style is a bit flat here too - she cites constantly from the source material but in so doing, I find her use of quotations more distracting than anything else. I would much prefer her to present the facts and cite by footnotes than constantly insert quotations like a Zagat's Guide. There's almost too much focus on Elizabeth and her own thoughts. It's not a short book, although it does go pretty quickly, but in the last few sections, Elizabeth is released and we broaden our scope to her lobbying efforts. It's certainly less interesting, so I don't fault Moore for spending relatively little time on it, but it would be nice to get more of a sense of the effect these laws had on the systems and any long term impacts her anti-asylum groups had.
 
That being said, once again Moore has chosen an excellent subject. Elizabeth Packard is wholly compelling personage and, as seen in her own writings, eloquent and persuasive.  We see very little of her life prior to her institutionalization and perhaps a bit more background could have helped to explain why she felt so called upon to resist, especially given how common it seems it would have been to keep a low and biddable profile in order to return home. Moore's author's note indicates that she wrote, then cut, an entire beginning section that dealt with Elizabeth's church discussion groups, which seem to kick off the schism between Elizabeth and her husband.  Were there other moments of resistance before this that paved the road?
 
It's inspiring, and intentionally so. Moore writes that she deliberately chose a story with "a happy ending" for which I commend her. Nothing like reading about women needlessly thrown into asylums without proof to make you crave a happy ending.  Elizabeth's courage is manifest, but it's still a tragedy that she endured so many years of separation from her children. I did find it amusing that once her husband Theophilius accepts that she cannot be squashed, they seem to be able to live if not comfortably, at least compatibly.  It just goes to show the damage that a weak man, with all the tools of an unjust system, can do in the pursuit of his own protection. If only he had been able to admit that Elizabeth was always the stronger of the two, perhaps all of this could have been avoided. Maybe it was Theophilius all along who held the insane views since his belief in his own superiority was clearly contrary to the truth.

But Moore's central thesis, which she hammers hard at the beginning and slightly again at the end, that "insanity" is merely a convenient way to dismiss and thwart those who would challenge those in power, is a convincing one. It begs each of us to consider all the ways in which our own prejudices and judgments are informed not by truth but by habit. I find myself uncomfortably close to the subject matter right now, as I find myself advising a family that - for her own protection - a woman needs a guardianship. But Elizabeth's example should be a guide here as well - regardless of the circumstances, to treat everyone with kindness and dignity even if they cannot manage themselves.  
 
And if ever we needed a reminder to keep fighting, the book itself is proof that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The Arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards Justice." 160 years later, it is Elizabeth Packard's name, not the good doctor MacFarland, whose name adorns the Illinois state asylum in Springfield. 
 

32: A Book About An Overlooked Woman In History


Saturday, June 7, 2025

An American Marriage

An American Marriage

By Tayari Jones

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

I wasn't really looking forward to this, since I thought the subject matter would be very weighty and therefore depressing (I also considered Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder for this prompt, and maybe I will read that too anyway, since it sounds intriguing). And the subject matter was weighty, I guess, but the book is pretty easy to read and skips over a lot of the time that Roy spends in prison, so it's mostly build-up and then the three characters wringing their hands over Roy's return to freedom.

It's fine. I did spoil the ending for myself, so maybe I would have been more rapt if I hadn't know how it would turn out, but as it was, Celestial mostly annoyed with what seemed to be small cruelty in separating herself from Roy, but not actually divorcing him, thus keeping him on her line and giving him false hope. I think it would have been ameliorated if we'd seen better why she did it, i.e., was it to give him strength while he was in prison? But we don't, we just see her realization that he's in prison for a long time, she doesn't really love him as much as she ought, and then her leaning on Andre because (and for real) he's right there. Honestly, if she hadn't gotten pregnant at the end, I would have said that if Andre would up in prison, she would have left him just as she had Roy. She just doesn't seem to be deeply committed to anyone but herself. And that's fine, I suppose, for her, but it does make the book seem like less of a tragedy and more of a pity.

Meanwhile, of course, Roy is out here not appearing to take his marriage vows super seriously either, so who knows. Perhaps there's an argument that they were married longer because he was in prison than they would have been if he'd been out. I did find it funny that the first question in the "book club" questions at the end was one I had been thinking about while reading it, namely, what makes this an "American" marriage? Is it the wrongful conviction? Certainly other countries are subject to the phenomenon as well, although perhaps it's less common. Is it the racism? Is it the ways in which the characters each justified their actions? I agree that it does "feel" uniquely American somehow, like this story could only have happened in this country, but it's hard to say why.

I liked the beginning of the book much more than the end. The beginning is the love story of Roy and Celestial, as well as their communications in prison. It felt like it might be a story about handling something terrible and life-altering, something that truly is not your fault, and living through it. Something like optimism. Something like Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, haha. But all the characters just wallow. For good reason, especially in Roy's case, but it never felt more than surface level.  I dunno, I just, this is the kind of book where you want to feel deeply for these characters and the loss of their hopes and dreams and the ruins of their marriage, and instead, you just wish they'd be a little more honest - with themselves first, and then with other people. And don't even get me started on the idea that Roy happens to end up in a prison cell with his biological father for five years. Now it's just hokey.

On the plus side, it was a very easy read.

48: A Book That Features A Married Couple Who Don't Live Together