A nuanced and occasionally poignant collection of journal entries from a pivotal moment in history.
Educator Couch recounts living through a year of tumultuous national events between 2019 and 2020.
“Now, in my sixties, I find myself searching once again for a place I love enough to call home,” the author writes in the book’s introduction, adding, “This compulsion toward change seems ridiculous, at my age.” Originally written as personal journal entries, the book is bookended by recollections of two long, dark nights of two winter solstices: December 21, 2019, and December 21, 2020. Many of the chronological diary entries center on vignettes in which the author describes, for instance, her experiences growing up in the Midwest or her fondness for dogs. She surveys her professional life as an adjunct English instructor with a teaching load divided between three schools (an increasingly common feature of academia), and tells how she navigated the logistical difficulties of different start dates and procedures. The book’s timeframe also provides her a venue for exploring some dark days in the nation’s history, as she offers her thoughts about the first impeachment hearings of President Donald Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter protests. In June 2020, for example, the author, a white Midwesterner, reflects on the murder of George Floyd, processing her shock at the brutality of the incident. Couch is the author of multiple scholarly works on Midwestern life and culture, and her thoughtful writing style feels almost novelistic at times, often reflecting on the nature of time and memory itself. Literary and historic references abound, from the book’s dedication to the Greek goddess of memory to its discussions of an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon monk, Venerable Bede. This erudite reflection on a fateful year maintains a refreshing humility that belies its subtle sophistication, as the author describes her perspective simply as that of “a middle-aged woman living in a small rural town in the middle of the county.”
A nuanced and occasionally poignant collection of journal entries from a pivotal moment in history.Pub Date: May 23, 2025
ISBN: 9798281276672
Page Count: 252
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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