by Keri Mangis ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A nontraditional but effective memoir about one woman’s discovery of spiritualism.
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In the debut remembrance, a wife, mother, and businesswoman’s search for truth leads her to explore two planes of existence.
Mangis begins her book by describing a place called the “Soul Realm,” a “well-organized airport” full of souls that’s part of an endless cycle of reincarnation. The author’s alter ego, Serene Voyager, or “Sëri,” waits here with her guide and “soul friend” Rasa, and they reflect on the truths of life and the uses and limitations of anger and religion. They’re joined by Sëri’s personal, motivational wolf companion Endless Curiosity, or “Curiosa.” In the “Earth Realm,” Curiosa becomes a companion to the author, along with anthropomorphic versions of Fear, Guilt, and Shame. Mangis tells of how she was born in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1972 to emotionally undemonstrative parents, and how she grew to have a voracious appetite for books. She recounts her first encounters with Rasa and Curiosa, and how they shaped her; she went from being a reserved, bookish girl to an accomplished runner in high school, a social butterfly in college, and a successful insurance businesswoman. She eventually found love and became a mother of two. She struggled with anxiety and depression, as well as with Fear and Guilt; her panic and restlessness led her to pursue therapy and the spiritual aspects of yoga practice. Mangis’ use of the speculative Soul Realm is a bold decision that will make some readers question the book’s classification as a memoir. Most characters are Keri’s feelings, with a few noteworthy exceptions, such as her husband and people at work. She recounts a largely solemn, lonely existence, but she also excellently captures the torment of anxiety and depression in these pages. A stark conversation about rape and consent, reflected in the author’s experiences, provides a moving turning point. The Soul Realm could have had the potential to alienate readers, but it’s grounded by the inclusion of real-world objects and concepts, such as libraries, landscape painting, and Post-its. The author’s principal goal is to inform, and the book becomes a kind of self-help guide that encourages intuition, communication, and letting go.
A nontraditional but effective memoir about one woman’s discovery of spiritualism.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Curiosa Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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