Common Threads

Name: Common Threads
Author: Shellie Hipsky
ISBN: 978-1-5136-0422-0

INSPIRATION

by Shellie Hipsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 29, 2015

Moving examples of everyday courage and achievement, sure to motivate readers on their own personal journeys.

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Real-life stories of women who’ve triumphed over adversity and achieved personal and professional success.

Hipsky (Education/Robert Morris Univ.; The Missing Piece in the Law of Attraction, 2015, etc.), a radio show host and college professor, has interviewed numerous inspiring women over the years, including cancer survivors and successful businesswomen. In this volume, the first of a trilogy, she shares some of their life stories with the goal of helping readers to find their own inspiration. Different sections cover broad themes, such as identifying one’s purpose, finding one’s passion, overcoming life’s obstacles, and the power of faith. The women featured here are diverse, including Lisa Lakenan of the Goodwill Healthy Start House for homeless single moms; successful TV actress Brianna Brown; children’s book author Sheri Fink; food blogger Lisa Fetzko Kozich; and Mary Amons of Bravo’s Real Housewives series. Although each woman’s experience is unique, some common threads emerge. Many have experienced abuse at the hands of husbands or boyfriends, and a significant number have gone through divorces; others have started businesses or nonprofit organizations. Most have “beat the odds” and overcome significant challenges on their journeys to fulfillment. The stories are most engaging when Hipsky lets the women speak for themselves; when she occasionally inserts herself into the narrative, the effect is distracting, as when she brags that one woman “calls me her Fairy Godmother.” But for the most part, the personality of each woman shines through. The stories are brief but effective, and readers looking for doses of inspiration will definitely find them here. Most readers will be impressed by the likes of Mary K. Hoodhood, whose efforts to feed hungry children earned her a Presidential Citizens Medal; Tamara Fielding, a former refugee who spent three years in an Indonesian concentration camp during World War II; or Alicia Kozakiewicz, who survived a kidnapping as a teenager and has started her own organization to educate parents and kids about online safety. Whatever their personal histories, all of Hipsky’s subjects once doubted their own power, but perseverance and hope allowed them to thrive, even in difficult circumstances.

Moving examples of everyday courage and achievement, sure to motivate readers on their own personal journeys.

Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5136-0422-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: The Missing Piece Publishing

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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A CIVIL ACTION

by Jonathan Harr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1995

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A crash course in big-bucks tort litigation, as rich as any novel on the scene. In the mid-'70s, the small industrial town of Woburn, Mass., found itself afflicted with a plague of biblical dimensions: 12 local children, 8 of them close neighbors, had died (or were dying) of leukemia. The parents suspected the water supply, which was foul-smelling, rusty, and undrinkable, but they had no hard evidence of a link to the cancers. But in 1979, the accidental discovery of carcinogenic industrial wastes in the town's wells led the grieving parents to hire personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, new to the profession but intoxicated with the sizable damages he'd won so far. This is magazine journalist Harr's first book, but his complex portrait of Schlichtmann is the work of a master. Egomaniacal, quixotic, workaholic, greedy, altruistic, and naive, Schlichtmann is Everylawyer, and as he allows the Woburn case to consume his practice, he almost loses his license and his life. Harr wisely downplays the dying-children angle, focusing instead on Schlichtmann's case against the two corporate Goliaths who dumped the waste: Beatrice Foods (represented by Jerome Facher of Boston's Hale & Dorr) and W.R. Grace (represented by William Cheeseman of Boston's Foley, Hoag & Eliot). Despite their white- shoe lineage, Facher and Cheeseman play dirty, withholding evidence and repeatedly seeking Schlichtmann's suspension for having filed a ``frivolous'' lawsuit. But the real villain of the story is Federal District Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose personal dislike of Schlichtmann (and camaraderie with Facher) leads him to grant the defense's motion to split the trial into two protracted phases. By the time Judge Skinner submits four incomprehensible questions to be bewildered jury, Woburn's young victims have been forgottenand the whole legal system has suffered a tragic loss. A paranoid legal thriller as readable as Grisham, but important and illuminating. (Film rights to Disney)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-394-56349-2

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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ABSALOM, ABSALOM!

by William Faulkner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1936

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There's a Faulkner market — no question of that. But for those on its outskirts, watching eagerly for growth, development, maturity in his work, there is disappointment, here as in Pylon. There is more in the sinister, sultry atmosphere to recall Sanctuary. But the story is indirect to the point of artificiality; the style marred by hyphenated words, manufactured words, until you lose the sense in the glut of verbiage. A depraved story of degenerates in a Southern family gone to seed — of Colonel Sutpen building his tribe by incest, perversion, miscegenation and lust. There is tragedy here, but the drawing is so out of scale that the effect is weakened. — In spite of all this, the book — on Faulkner's name — will sell, and rent.