A pleasant and powerful account of faith and family.
The daughter of a Swedish immigrant explores home and community in this family history/memoir.
In 1907, Karl Johan Artur Gustafsson was about to leave Torsås, Sweden, for good. Though the 17-year-old boy was extremely close to his mother, Ingrid, and had a lot of love for the small town where he was born and raised, Karl also knew that opportunities—and money—were extremely limited in “this poverty-stricken area.” Karl would follow his older siblings to America, a “strange faraway place” but, as he understood it, one full of possibilities. After a celebratory send-off and with the knowledge that he likely would never see Ingrid again—along with the secret that he never knew who his father was—Karl journeyed to the larger city of Sölvesborg, to work and save money, and then to the United States three years later. Karl, whose name was changed to Carl Arthur Gustafson on Ellis Island, was happy to reconnect with his siblings. He quickly settled in Bristol, Connecticut, graduating from college, attending service at the local Lutheran church, and falling head over heels for his landlord’s daughter, intelligent and driven Jennie Anderson. In 1917, Jennie and Carl married and, over the years, had three children: a son, Harvey; and two daughters, Thelma and the author. They built a home at 187 Stafford Ave. in 1929, and the next five decades were full of war, hardship, joy, and triumph for the immigrant and his family. In this engaging book, Mona Gustafson writes of her mother, father, and siblings—as well as herself as the youngest child in the family—in the third person. The author includes photographs of key figures and locations along with high school and college yearbooks and newspaper clippings of weddings, farewell parties, and graduations. This rich material grounds the novelistic account in events both historical (the Depression, two world wars, and Vietnam, among them) and everyday (college acceptances, anniversaries, and proms). While lengthy, spanning almost 50 years and running nearly 500 pages, the potent story of the Gustafsons is also the story of America, a land populated with the descendants of hopeful immigrants in search of a better world.
A pleasant and powerful account of faith and family.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 9781950743292
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Wisdom Editions
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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