by Mary Odden ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
Not everything works, but there’s much to like in Odden’s observations.
Travels in the Northwest by Alaska-based journalist and essayist Odden.
“My grandmother Mona was missing an index finger on her left hand because she cut it off with an ax when she was a little girl.” So begins Odden’s literate, occasionally florid collection, a piece celebrating the self-reliance and independence of country people while suggesting that all kinds of unhappy things can happen out on the land. In a narrative peppered with horses, cows, rivers, farms, and the people who work all of them, the author often arrives at exactly the right thing to say. Her description of a brooding thunderstorm over the arid plains of her home ground, for instance, is eminently memorable: “In eastern Oregon, you knew you were about to be in a storm when the sky would glint yellowish gray and the filmy veils of virga would start to descend.” Sometimes, however, Odden lays the lily-gilding on a little too thickly, as when she revels in freshly picked berries: “In their moment I am privileged to be among them, their small dark roundness in my hand one at a time, or a lucky handful in the right season.” There are a few throwaway pieces that seem dashed off to meet a deadline—e.g., a Foxfire-ish couple of pages about canning peaches. But though some of the expected tropes are there, given the country under discussion and its trees, lakes, bears, and salmon, Odden also turns in pieces that are marvels of compression, such as a celebration of country dogs that would do Rick Bass proud. “Our present dogs,” she writes merrily, “have transferred most of their instincts to saving us from red squirrels.” In a nice turn, the author closes by admitting that she’s changed the names of people “I could imagine protesting portrayal in these pages” after turning in sketches that are mostly admiring, and that anyone familiar with the territory will appreciate.
Not everything works, but there’s much to like in Odden’s observations.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59709-919-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Boreal/Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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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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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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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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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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