An entertaining, true coming-of-age adventure about a courageous group.
College buddies decide to re-create Huck Finn’s trip down the Mississippi in Zalesny’s memoir.
Zalesny was a student at Loyola University in Southern California in the late 1950s when a professor wondered if anyone was interested in sailing down the Mississippi River just as Huckleberry Finn did in Mark Twain’s novel. An enthusiastic group of six came up with a plan for their summer break. Inspired by Twain and the recent documentary Kon-Tiki (1950), the friends built raft models and tried them out in the bathtub. Satisfied they could meet the challenge, the “River Rats” headed out onto Route 66, ending up in Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Mark Twain. The boys built their raft out of wood and oil drums, with a lean-to covered in a tarp for shelter. Barely floating but helped by an outboard motor, they set off on the treacherous river hoping to reach New Orleans, with storms, barges, and waves threatening the trip and their survival. They were also concerned about segregation and racism in the South; one member of the group was Latino and another Japanese American. Zalesny’s memoir captures the innocence and the sense of adventure of its young crew while always remaining aware of the difficulties of such an ambitious undertaking. With six egos on a small raft there was a lot of bickering, and in terms of the narrative, some characters aren’t developed as well as the others. But despite their slow progress, they were determined to succeed. Zalesny stays true to the realities of this excursion, which is a dirty, muddy, and dangerous affair. One of many involving passages highlights the infamous, cursed quasi-island that is the southernmost town in Illinois. (“Cairo was dying a slow lingering death; its prolonged death rattle was practically obscene.”) It didn’t all go according to plan, but their collective achievement is worth the read.
An entertaining, true coming-of-age adventure about a courageous group.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66291-916-9
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A brutally honest and evocative account of anxiety and depression in poetry.
A collection of poetry focuses on mental health struggles.
Marín, who holds a doctorate in African American literature, found inspiration for this book’s title in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” a short story that reminds readers that deep water and drowning are not synonymous. It is an apt metaphor for the poet, who has suffered from anxiety and depression for much of her life. In free-verse poems, she transports readers from her childhood in Málaga, Spain, to the adolescent onset of her symptoms and her challenging adulthood. She methodically unpacks the torment she experienced from the “demon in my mind,” her “tyrant” of a brain, and a “a mob of angry people yelling” in her head. She recalls being told her troubles were all in her head by a doctor whose only solution was Valium. Confessions follow regarding the “mask I wear to chameleon / my way through each day” and how a “list of mistakes I made this past year pile up in my mind like cars.” She examines the frustration of finding the right antidepressant and how she despairs at the drudgery of everyday life. She divulges the difficulties of maintaining a marriage and parenting children while experiencing mental illness. Marín boldly confronts her own and others’ emotions and behaviors. “Mom’s silence claims / its space between the ceiling, floor, / and four walls of every room, enshrouding / the house with a smothering cloak / of unanswered questions,” she writes in “Behind Walls.” Her descriptions are vivid and tactile; a compassionate teacher comforted the author with “arms like a blanket.” Marín poignantly depicts how mental illness feels in lines like “Fear kidnaps my nerves, / ties them with electric wire,” and “I’m tired of the iron ball, / stuck in my throat.” Though she does experiment with a handful of haiku, they don’t always resonate. The poet’s writing excels when it has more room to explore.
A brutally honest and evocative account of anxiety and depression in poetry.Pub Date: June 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73479-868-5
Page Count: 101
Publisher: Legacy Book Press LLC
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A penetrating work of family history and self-reflection.
In this memoir, a retired psychotherapist attempts to untangle a relative’s personal life as a way of understanding her own.
Cox first heard the story of her great-grandmother Elizabeth from her parents when she first got married—how the woman had borne two children out of wedlock and how no one, even their descendants, knew who the children’s fathers were. The story held a special significance for Cox, both because she shared her great-grandmother’s first name—Elizabeth—and because the author had gotten pregnant with her first child when she was an unmarried teenager. It was not until 2004, four decades later,in the aftermath of her marriage’s dissolution, a disastrous love affair, and a severe depressive episode, that Cox decided to try to find out the truth of her great-grandmother’s life: “I have a strong feeling that there is something in it I need to discover….In order to find myself today, I need to know where I have come from, who my ancestors were and what that means for me.” The retired author set about to understand the life of that other, earlier Elizabeth through research and travel; while doing so, she began to unpack her own difficult adolescence, which was further complicated by fears brought on by her parents’ poor health. Cox, a psychotherapist, uses her expertise to delve into her own psychology as well as that of her great-grandmother. Here, for instance, she speculates on how Elizabeth’s experience with her own father (an ill man, like Cox’s own) affected her: “Did Elizabeth shoulder more of the burden than a twelve-year-old girl should have to?...Children did work in the mills at a very young age and there would be no money coming in if William couldn’t work.” Overall, the author manages to excavate quite a bit from the historical record, filling in gaps with a novelist’s sense of narrative. Although there are no real groundbreaking revelations here, she manages to say quite a bit about the complicated dynamics of families—many of which seem to repeat themselves generation after generation.
A penetrating work of family history and self-reflection.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78864-933-9
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Cinnamon Press
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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