An engrossing exploration of a hard but ultimately exhilarating trek toward love and commitment.
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confronts her misgivings about marriage on her globe-trotting honeymoon in this soulful debut memoir.
Rueckert writes of feeling a conflict between her church’s characterization of marriage and motherhood as a woman’s highest calling and her own desire to teach, write, and see the world. Compounding her anxiety were the example of her parents’ divorce and a giddy college romance that ended, leaving her devastated. Then she met Austin, a member of her faith who was supportive of her career aspirations; she married him in 2014, when she was 25, and the two embarked on a monthslong tour through South America, Asia, and Europe. The trip threw them into trying circumstances as they weathered squalid hostels, border-crossing snafus, money issues, and even an attack by a pack of wild dogs in Peru. Their accommodations to each other were also difficult, as Rueckert’s cautious, fretful temperament chafed against Austin’s adventurous, impulsive personality. Along the way, the author surveyed the marital wisdom of everybody from the Karen people of Thailand to her Hindu acquaintances in Bangalore. The journey culminated in a grueling 500-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela that also featured warm camaraderie with other pilgrims. Intertwined with these narratives are the author’s recollections of her family—including her fraught relationship with her mother—and the courtship culture of her church. Over the course of the book, Rueckert’s reminiscences present readers with an evocative travelogue and a remarkably sensitive and insightful portrait of the difficulties of modern marriage and the compromises that one makes to feel both autonomy and connection. Her scenes of marital discord, in particular, crackle with barely restrained emotion: “We ate in perfect silence. I stared at the table….‘You don’t inspire me anymore,’ I said, the words reverberating like a bomb. I waited a heartbeat, maybe two. ‘I’m not happy.’ ” It’s a sometimes-harsh, unsparing account of a rocky beginning, but Rueckert’s grappling with uncertainty yields courage and a luminous sense of hope.
An engrossing exploration of a hard but ultimately exhilarating trek toward love and commitment.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-948218-63-4
Page Count: 344
Publisher: By Common Consent Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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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