by Cynthia Bertelsen Cynthia D. Bertelsen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 11, 2021
A tasty stew of gripping stories and evocative foodie lore.
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A woman looks back on a peripatetic life via recollections of memorable dishes in this rollicking memoir and cookbook.
Novelist and food writer Bertelsen recounts her youth growing up in Washington state and Florida and many periods spent abroad while working with the U.S. Peace Corps and accompanying her husband, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, to foreign postings. Her travels took her from Milwaukee to Morocco to Machu Picchu and included some tense and even terrifying moments, from a bout of altitude sickness in Bolivia that had her vomiting until a cup of coca tea settled her stomach to a menacing encounter with a band of Sandinista rebels in Honduras and a riot in Port-au-Prince after the overthrow of Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. These episodes are entwined with reminiscences about iconic meals—each chapter concludes with a recipe—and these culinary experiences resonate with the greater narrative. The warmth of her childhood home is conveyed by recollections of her father’s vegetable beef soup, while the grinding poverty of Burkina Faso is brought to life by her relationship with a sick woman who sold her produce that grew more withered as the dry season progressed. Bertelsen’s novelistic prose features dynamic scenes and vivid detail: “Mr. Tartar Sauce grabbed Lee and kissed her right on her big red lipsticked mouth,” she writes of an assault by a drunken man on a cook in a Florida seafood restaurant where she worked. Her food writing is also rich and sensuous—“the crunchiness of the flautas, paired with the creaminess of the guacamole and the crema, seasoned with a squirt of fresh lime, fired with the hot bite of green salsa”—and sometimes nearly carnal: “I ate like a wolf with a fresh kill, gulping the food on my plate in gasping, almost orgiastic bites, wadding up balls of bread and stuffing them into my mouth.” The end result is a truly mouthwatering read.
A tasty stew of gripping stories and evocative foodie lore.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1734557923
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Turquoise Moon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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PERSPECTIVES
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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New York Times Bestseller
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton
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