Mother's Day Special - 2012

For the Month of May, you can purchase the Kindle version of Motherless Child - stories from a life for 99 cents.

Imagine you gave a baby up for adoption forty years ago, and after years of trying to find her, she finds you. Now come the hard questions. She's healthy, beautiful, and successful, but she wants to know why you gave her away and why you didn't marry her father. And there is also the unspoken question of "What kind of black woman gives her baby away?" How do you explain to her that giving her away was the best gift you could offer?

This is my first published work, a coming-of-age-in-the-sixties-single-black-pregnant-and-on-the-way-to Germany, memoir.

Click here to purchase.

The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Josie Henderson is a black marine biologist in a profession dominated by white men.  She's a free spirit held back by the bonds of a dysfunctional family, and a loving (white) husband who wants children.  She married him because he understood her passion for marine life.  Yet she is afraid to trust him with her family conflicts  because she thinks he doesn't "get" being black. 

Then along comes a black male marine biologist whom Josie thinks understands it all, the black thing, the sea and diving thing.  In trying to get everything she wants, Josie loses what she once thought was important. In the end she must return to family to restore meaning to her life.

Martha Southgate carries us through the lives of Josie, her brother, and parents, a loving family torn apart by alcoholism.  I found that I cared about all of the main characters even as I could see the worst was coming.  It's the kind of story that stays with you for a long time.



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Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I should have paid attention to how long this book was before I started reading on my Kindle, I might have paced myself better.

It's a wonderful epic that spans lifetimes across continents. The story is told by one of twin brothers born to a nun who dies in childbirth and to a surgeon who runs away. The title "Cutting for Stone" comes from the Hippocratic Oath which says in part, "I will not cut for stone," meaning a physician will not practice surgery. (The practice of medicine was different in ancient times.) The title also refers to the runaway surgeon, Thomas Stone.

Two physicians become foster parents to the twins and raise them at Missing (Mission) Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Ghosh, the foster father told the boys their birth was a mystery to Thomas Stone, "like Joseph, clueless about Mary and the baby."

The author is a physician who fills the story with medical details. Just when I thought I had read more about obstetrics and gynecological surgery than I every wanted to know, the story moves on to volvulus and fistulas, and transplants, Oh My! Throw in a failed coup against Emperor Haile Selassie, and you have a really fast-paced page-turner of a story. Did I mention a plane hijack and an escape to the USA.

There is so much in this book about family devotion, betrayal, and forgiveness, it took my breath away.



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The Hunger Games (movie)

I couldn't get Sweetie to go with me to see The Hunger Games. He hated the last two movies I took him to, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Even a sci-fi post-apocalyptic young adult story couldn't lure him.

I am one of many adults who loved reading the Hunger Games trilogy. I attended the 11:45 AM showing at a suburban theater. The public schools in the area are on a year-round schedule so that some students are tracked out, when others are tracked in. There were enough young people 12 - 18 years old, along with a good number of retirees like me to fill the theater.

The movie is 2 hours and 22 minutes long. Even with that length much of the action from the book was abridged. The backstory of Katniss' mother and father was only briefly implied, and the Katniss/Galen relationship was condensed. Otherwise I found the movie was true to the book. The point of view of the book was all in Katniss' head, not something that would work well in this kind of movie. The movie gave us more of a global view, so we could see the actions of the game makers at the Capital, and their cool technology.

I wasn't expecting any of the main characters to be black, except I had seen enough previews of Lenny Kravitz as Cinna. I didn't remember any references to ethnicity in the book, so I expected a white author to portray white people. After I saw there were two of the tributes played by black actors, I went home and searched the book (thanks to the Kindle "search this book" function). I really missed the references to brown-skinned people. That was a pleasant surprise.

I loved this movie. Some of the "Team Galen" girls were probably disappointed, but Galen is likely to get more action in part two.

I give it four stars.