The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry

Review by Sandra Sanchez

The Kitchen Daughter
byJael McHenry
Gallery Books
ISBN#978-1-4391-9169-9

Promotional materials say that the central question of this novel is “what does it mean to be normal?” As someone who doesn’t have a clue what “normal” means I was pleased that the author seeks to define “normal” in a manner that includes all kinds of people. The primary character, Ginny Selvaggio, takes a little getting used to but she grows on you.
The premise is that she is afflicted with a “syndrome” known as Aspergers but when asked by others what she “has” she responds : “A Personality.” Go Ginny.

The book deals with how people, namely Ginny, her sister Amanda, family friend Gert and Gert’s son Daniel deal with the untimely deaths of loved ones. For Ginny coping means cooking.  Ginny loves to cook. She likes the structure of recipes and has an obsessive compulsive’s attention to minute details that help her identify and savor every taste combined within them. The other thing that begins to happen in the kitchen after her parents are killed in a car crash is the appearance of ghosts. When Ginny follows the recipes left by dead people, mother, grandmother, an unknown woman  named Evangeline, and follows them perfectly, the smells of the foods bring forth the ghosts, briefly and apparently only once, so as she figures out how this works she realizes she needs to  have her questions ready.  No small anxiety there!

Ginny also seeks recipes for “being normal” in a book she calls “the normal book” with clippings from newspaper advice columnists and she checks it from time to time as a guide to how best to assess her own behavior. She also does research online and in her parents’ library where she sometimes goes to escape interpersonal encounters she knows she cannot handle.  In a book titled: An Anthropologist on Mars which she discovers is a collection of essays about people damaged in various ways, she reads an essay by a woman who has invented for herself a hugging machine, something to crawl into to feel loved. Ginny is jealous, averse to touch, she nonetheless needs it. To feel loved, to calm down, she frequently goes into her parents closet to feel surrounded by their clothing. So, yes, Ginny suffers but she also has a get real sense of humor. She looks up a definition of Aspergers on an online site  which lists various symptoms including this one:
A tendency to obsess on particular topics that may not be of interest to others,  she is reminded of  “everyone I have ever met” and remembers a boy in kindergarten who always talked about caterpillars, a girl in 4th grade obsessed with butterflies and the girl in college who only talked about beer and sex.

Eventually Gert, A Romanian Jewess from Cuba  who came to Philadelphia where she met Ginny’s mother,  manages to get Ginny out of the closet and out of the house to help her cook at the Jewish Temple for families who are in mourning. So cooking does indeed become the way she connects to, instead of escaping from, other people.

This book could be labeled “heartbreaking” just as Ginny could be labeled “damaged” but in truth the book was also uplifting with a realistic blend of sad and happy endings, and Ginny often made me smile. She definitely has “personality.”

Interview with author Uyen Nicole Duong

Uyen Nicole Duong, author of Daughters of the River Huong  interviewed by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

 After her fabulous review of Daughters of the River Huong, Sandra felt there was more to the story of author Uyen Nicole Duong.


Enjoy!

"As an attorney and fiction writer myself I am very interested to know how your legal practice has influenced your writing."

From reading about you, I see that we have a lot in common. I admire you for having successfully combined law and art, especially when you started your law career late in life.   The law practice has affected my creative writing in two concrete ways: 1) It keeps me from writing fiction full force (I don’t even have the time to seriously look for a literary  agent, so  I have never had one); and 2) My protagonists are female lawyers because that's what I know best. There is usually a “law setting” for my novels.  In "Daughters of the River Huong," the description of the international practice in a developing nation is authentic. In  "Mimi  and Her Mirror," the facts imported from the big-firm practice are also authentic, and the legal and ethical dilemma faced by the protagonist are grounded in real law.   I think that life experience coming from the law can become a rich texture of factual background for fiction writing.  But, as a fiction writer, I subscribe to the theory  of creative writing advocated and  taught by Pulitzer-winner Robert Olen Butler, who opines that great creative writing must be subconsciously driven.  Yet, in a law practice and in persuasive legal writing, nothing can be subconsciously driven.  Everything must be planned and carefully gauged.  So in my fiction writing, I have to watch against the tendency of the legal mind to rationalize and plan. I think that in so many ways, the two fields are incompatible. I wrote about this incompatibility in an essay titled "Law is Law and Art is Art and shall the two ever meet?"  published by the University of California.  If I had not been an immigrant, I might not have chosen law as a career, but since I did, I seek beauty in the pursuit of justice the same way I pursue art.

  

"Your writing is filled with beautiful visual imagery so, even if I didn't know, I'd guess you were also a painter. What was your inspiration to begin painting? Who are some of your favorite artists?" 

I have never studied art or art history, although I read a lot, and I am completely self-taught. My visual art has never been "cooked" through the art schools or the galleries. 

My favorite is Henry Matisse.  Initially, he studied law. I construe his art to be both a rational depiction of life and a subconscious pursuit of beauty.  Matisse’s world was  spontaneous, bright, and animated.  He was also bold and vivid with colors.  Matisse brought the decorative style of the East to European art, and he also broke traditions in making drawing and painting on a flat surface accepted in Europe. Painting on a flat surface (i.e., no multi-dimensional perspective or depth) has traditionally been "the way" for Eastern art.  I think that without Matisse breaking down conventions, all of the experiments such as my self-taught style would have been thrown in the trash by the visual art establishment.   

I never imagined myself as a painter growing up.  In contrast, writing has always been there since childhood. But painting came naturally because I have always liked colors and shapes. In  1975, fresh to America from the fall of Saigon, I considered a career as a fashion designer and then changed my mind because I did not want to study the sewing machine (first lesson for a freshman in fashion design then.)   I started painting more seriously in the late 1990s, when I took a break from law in order to write full time for a year (a luxury!).  My "Vietnam" trilogy of novels was written during this period of time. The huge novel of more than a thousand pages was then broken down into 3 books during my LLM residence at Harvard Law School and the year after (when I was senior counsel for Locke Liddell LLP in Houston).  In writing, once I have an impulse to follow a plot, I see images, colors, and shapes in my head as well as hearing sounds. I then write what I see and hear in my head. So I am not sure which started first: writing or painting, during the period of time when I wrote the trilogy. 

As an  untrained visual artist,  I just do it and never worry about the results. In the beginning, I used watercolor, and that was natural.  I also avoided dilution of  watercolor in  order to achieve the texture similar to oil or acrylic.  That means I used watercolor coming straight from the tube.  Yet, I diluted acrylic with so much water and did acrylic on paper, such that the color and the lack of thickness feels and looks like silk painting.   In the early 2000s, I attended a private lecture on "L'art Brut" ("Raw Art” or “Art  of  the Untrained") and  realized that this form of outsiders' art seemed to be what I had been doing.  Since then, I have come up with something called "Art in Frugality."

"Art in Frugality" means that, in addition to traditional media (oil, acrylic, canvas, etc.)  I use whatever I can put my hands on when I have the urge to paint in the middle of  the  night or during breaks from my law work:  I grab  pen, pencil, markers, crayons, even fingernail polish (a form of  enamel) left-over eyeshadows (a form of pastel chalk), or lipstick (a  form of soft crayon). I use artists’ brushes, fingernail polish brushes that come with the bottle  (a terrible brush),  or my fingers to create images on typing paper, cardboard and sometimes magazine or  newspaper pages (where the printed words  become the texture for the newly created piece.)  The creation is unplanned and spontaneous.  I usually limit the creation to about less than an hour and often do not what what I want to paint until at least about 20 minutes into the process.  Then I will use the remaining time to develop it and will stop before the hour (This is also the result of working in the law full-time--no time to paint otherwise!)  I think the Italians have something analogous,  called "Alla Prima" or direct painting, although it is much more elaborate and part of formal art training, not my “Art in Frugality.” 

  

"I know you started writing at a young age. What inspired you to start? Who were your favorite authors?"

 

Born to Vietnamese parents who were professors of literature and languages, I had no choice but to fall in love with Vietnamese poetry as I learned how to read and write. At our house, my mother had tons of notebooks in  which  she copied, in her own handwriting, famous Vietnamese poems of her time (i.e., her high school and college days).  My father also introduced me to French and English at the same time, around age 6.  I learned "this is a table," "this is a chair," "C'est une chaise," "c'est une table," etc.  And then I proceeded on to memorize lines from Alphonse Daudet’s “The goats of Mr. Seguin” because my father – my tutor – had a “flight of literature.”  With that kind of upbringing, so early in life, I did not need any inspiration or a 'breaking point" into writing, although I remember I began writing “free style”at the age of 6  (i.e. writing whatever I wanted to write and not as an exercise from school).   

 

My favorite authors are:  1) Graham Greene; 2) Albert Camus; 3) Pat Conroy; 4) Isabelle Allende; 5) Vladimir Nabokov (I adore  his prose; and I kind of like the prose of Anais Nin, but I do not adore her fiction or diary; I just find Nin’s work  to be almost pointless, despite her beautiful prose.  I have to say John Steinbeck as well. Interestingly, from my parents, in war-torn Vietnam of the 1960s, I learned to love Mark Twain's Tom Sawyers. The adventure tales of Mark Twain fascinated me and I used to day-dream that I would go with Tom and Huckleberry Finn and that I would cook rice under the wind, on stormy water, while they did their thing.  My brother was named “Tom” after Mark Twain’s character, but of course we never cruised the Mississippi river or anything like that. But, we had real-life adventures with the Vietnam War during the Tet Offensive.  As children, we were not capable of understanding the danger of war.  We took it as part of life like any other Vietnamese.  I brought this “life adventure” experience into my novels.  I grew out of Mark Twain as I grew up.    

I also like a Vietnamese writer named Khai Hung (his pen name) who wrote in the 1930s and 1940s).  Nobody  has heard of him here,, except the Vietnamese of certain generations (such as my parents).  I love Khai Hung’s romanticism and idealism and his gentle prose, which also contained ideas that could change the entire way of life of his time. In some way, Khai Hung reminds me of Beethoven – how can the tender, lyrical nature of something like “Fur Elise” be authored by the same person who wrote those dark and grand sonatas, and those heroic,  majestic symphonies and choruses that could move you to tears or  shake up your entire being into a frenzy of… revolution!  One day, I will sit down and translate for the American public a short story and a novel by Khai Hung, although translation of literature is what I fear and dislike the most.

  

I read that you have some ideas about combating the global problem of human trafficking. Can you share some of those ideas & how you would implement them?"

I did not just have some ideas. I worked on the “anti-human trafficking initiative” for five years as a one-woman project. There were a few University of Denver law students who assisted me, piecemeal.  During the fall of 2010, when I was researching comparative education in Europe (another one-woman project), I received an email from the student editor of the Seattle University’s Journal of Social Justice. She solicited my article – an ongoing draft about my anti-human trafficking initiative, summarized and posted on the SSRN.  Unfortunately, my research boxes could not be located at my home institution, so while in Europe I ended up rewriting the draft into a different form, this time as a “speech paper” based on a seminar presentation  I conducted in Washington, D.C. for law students of Franklin Pierce who took a field trip to D.C.for an overview of international criminal justice.  The “speech paper” will be published this month, in the Journal’s special issue on child prostitution.

In the article, I propose 9 measures to help eradicate human trafficking.  There are 8 legal solutions to be implemented, together with explanation of the legal theories in support thereof.)  I then present a non-legal solution based on the reality that domestic and/or international non-governmental organizations (NGO/INGO) are currently shouldering the mission of fighting human trafficking.  To share those proposals with you and the internet readers now would be to repeat what’s in the article, which is about 84 pages long, supported by about 180 end notes. I would rather just refer you and readers to the Journal’s summer edition.  I like to use the time and space, instead, to comment on the Journal and the state of legal advocacy in academia.

I can’t say enough about the Journal. It is not your typical law review. For example, the Journal features social justice artworks on the cover, and partners with writers to bring forth articles that respond to society.  The editing done by law students is quite intense like that of a peer-review journal, yet the format is flexible. It is the type of place I would want for the publication of my legal writing and advocacy, especially if the Journal will also reach non-lawyers and relief workers, because my article is about people and their plights.  The project started because I cried over a TV network story showing Vietnamese children in Cambodia, known today as the “land of child prostitution.”  The project, or the resulting article, is called the Southeast Asia Story as the typical manifestation of this global ill -- the sexual use of children in international tourism, which  brings “consumers” to the “Third World.”   

 I think we need to more legal publication like this Journal to  break away from what I view as the rigidity and eliticism of traditional law reviews, in order to get more readership in society.  I think that overall, traditional law reviews do not have that much influence on the law and the judicial process in daily life.  In busy trial courts, judges don’t always care what law professors have to say when the court takes care of the docket. I used to be a judge presiding over a very busy, very close-to-life courtroom at the lower echelon of the justice system, where real people are seen in the hundreds daily.  For for the first two years right after law school, I clerked for the federal district court, the trial court of the federal system.  I think I know what judges do.  When a judge sends his/her law clerk out to look for authorities, if there isn’t anything else, then a law review may be used.   At the Supreme Court level, I doubt if justices make decisions because of a law review. 

I think it’s very easy for legal academia to turn into an “ivory tower” with many of us wanting to see only the mirror of our own image. The world of traditional law reviews may just center around that ivory tower.  Many of us have not practiced law, at least not substantially.  I think that law professors who teach subject  matters that require practical skills and practice-oriented reasoning  need to practice law before they take the podium, and that law reviews must aim to gain non-lawyer readership. 

Having said that, I must say that I have met, in legal academia, some of the most wonderful activists, humanists, and dedicated teachers  who step out of the “ivory tower”  to stand up for what is right, who have helped me grow, and have confirmed my belief in the goodness of humankind.  Without them, my law teaching career would have been much less meaningful.  Just to mention a few:  Among those few scholars that have helped change legal academia in the past decades is University of Denver reknowned international law scholar Ved Nanda.   Among  those who are never  afraid to take on  something unpopular is my colleague Thomas Russell, a historian as well as a lawyer-practitioner.  Among those who truly train future litigators by giving them substantive skills through practice-oriented curricula like clinical or mediation programs is my senior colleague Jeff Hartje.  Who else? The Denver public interest community must all  know the kind-hearted professor Howard Rosenberg, who, in his 80s, is still taking care of the school’ clinical program.  I must also mention the eloquent professor Julie Nice,  who won  teaching awards, and who supported me fully  during the early stage of my career by giving me a sample of the kind of teaching style that helps law teachers connect  to students with special needs and esoteric viewpoints.  

Among my DU former students whom I will remember for life are Don Toussaint, Lucky Vidmar (graduating first in his class), Jeremy Atencio, Nha-Tran Tran, Daniel Kim,  Alexandria Yun, and Connie Wang , to mention a few. These were remarkable students who have represented, in different ways, both the strength of diversity and the success of the student population and alumni.  I am proud if I have made a difference  in their lives and careers. 

Thank you Sandra & Uyen for this in-depth interview!

All The Wrong Places, review by Sandra Sanchez

All The Wrong Places

By Rebecca Fisher

rebeccafisherbooks.com

ISBN #9780615418292

To call a  semi autobiographical novel about escape from an abusive relationship  a “fun” read will probably sound irreverent but All The Wrong Places truly is a lot of fun to read.  The narrator, Casey, is vulnerable but proud and determined, the bad guy, Jerry, is really bad but not unrealistically so, the good guys (in the mortuary) are caring, smart and often absolutely hilarious. The plot is just bizarre enough to be real, in fact some of it is based on the author’s own experience.  The structure is easy to follow and all questions are answered  in good time. I can’t think of a better book to make a reader feel good about the possibilities in life.

The promo materials say that the book is a “courageous, emotive account of the struggles that so many American women encounter” and I’d have to say that most American women who find themselves in abusive relationships are not so lucky as to crash their cars on the grounds of a mortuary with a resident savior, but it is more than heartwarming to follow this protagonist’s unlikely, bizarre but believable rescue. I did myself work in a shelter  for battered women thinking I’d pursue an MSW to do counseling, when it occurred to me that most victims of domestic violence were in greater need of legal assistance and I made a  last minute decision to apply to law school instead.  So I can say from years of experience that the courtroom scenes and the scenes with the court appointed G.A.L were spot on accurate and could certainly have transpired just as the author described them.  Also completely authentic and insightful was how Casey reacted to winning her custody and property battles in court: she knew that, with nothing to lose, Jerry would be that much more determined to take vengeance so she was not being over dramatic to fear for her life.  I realize I have just revealed quite a bit of the plot but it doesn’t matter because it is not so much suspense that keeps a reader turning the pages, as the absolute joy of hanging out with the Golden Oaks mortuary gang.  You definitely want to meet these fine folks.

Rebecca Fisher is clearly up to turning any kind of real life circumstances into literature that combines seriousness with the out loud laughter that so often saves us from despair, gritty realism with the magic of dreams and psychic insights.  And if  happy endings after these kinds of opening circumstances might seem a stretch, well she makes this happy ending not only plausible but a true celebration.  Read and rejoice!

Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

author of Stillbird, Three Novellas, A Mile In These Shoes

www.thewessexcollective.com

https://secure.digitalcontentcenter.com/shop/627321/products

Sandra Sanchez Review of Shadow of Schizophrenia

Shadow of Schizophrenia

by Francin Pinto

Body and Soul Books

ISBN 9789381115008

This slim but courageous 86 page book is a multi layered look at economic and social decline in Mumbai. The introduction lists all the technical advances of 21st century life before pointing out that 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in India live on an average of 20 CENTS per day, 7 out of 10 children under the age of 14 years do not finish school but must go out to work to help support their families. At the same time 1,3% of the population forms the "iconic super rich billionaire class", 10% are millionaires and 33.7 form the country's middle class. the other 55% have no idea where tomorrow's meal will come from.

She raises the question: "Do material comforts such as cars, laptops, jet planes, close circuit cameras, malls, national ID programmers, computerizations of every necessary system from railway booking to banking, internet, emails, SMS', maids at our beck and call, best designer brands, 7 star hotels with excellent ambiance, IGSE, ICSE, MBA degrees, etc. make us better human beings?"  She then points out that India still has 1200 tribes who live "as their ancestors lived without bank balance, without any clue about the future, without stress. . . " and describes how living on the barter system, conserving natural resources and respecting their elders is how they teach their younger generations to live in harmony with nature (i.e social sanity). She laments the loss of times when children had a childhood with the freedom to fly kites, climb trees and people shared with one another.  When writing about the loss of better times and lamenting the ills that have come with so called "progress" the author falls into a rthymic pattern of speech that is like a chant, a pure cry to the heavens to hear her plea.

In the midst of all this, her character, Jessica, a young suburban woman with an interest in scientific study moves into the field of management in order to reap the rewards of more prevalent livelihood opportunities but is still obsessed with her interest in scientific study. Jessica decides to make a study of the effects of mental illness on productivity (as a management tool) and takes a look at three families: the "control"family and two familes who respond differently to the influence of having among them a family member who suffers from schizophrenia. 

It appears to be the author's intent to draw an analogy from an individual's insanity to an entire society's insanity. Certainly the statistics in the introduction point out a society that is not functioning in a sane manner. Jessica seeks to make comparisons from animal behavior (which was her field of study initially as a scientist)  and human evolution to the evolution of mental disorders in individuals, what is it that goes wrong and detours the individual (or the society) onto the path leading to extreme dysfunction? And how do individuals and societies find happiness despite the presence of insanity? 

The author is a social worker dedicated to working toward social improvement and this book is the first of what may be several books raising questions about how best to do that and including the answers she discovers along the way. 

Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

www.thewessexcollective.com

Dino's Story, Review by Sandra Sanchez

Dino’s Story, A Novel of 1960s Tuscany

By Paul Salsini

iUniverse, Inc.

978-1-4502-1080-5

Having lived in Tuscany (although not in Florence) the summer & early fall of 1966  and having fond memories of harvesting grapes during the day and sitting around the dinner table at Il Mullinaccio Della Strega trying to follow several conversations in Italian and two kinds of English (British and American) I looked forward to this book with eager anticipation and it did not disappoint.  I was, as I had hoped to be, transported to Italy in the sixties.

The book opens with the leisurely pace and cadence of the small Tuscan village of Sant Antonio and lays the foundation for Dino’s journey from boyhood to manhood. The pace picks up when he moves to Florence to study art and at the end moves along at the same fast and furious pace as the torrential rains and flooding Arno River. In this way the story builds in intensity like a symphony.

Dino (short for Aldebrandino) is at the hub of several heartwrenching stories. It is his task to find a long missing uncle but when he does he wants to shelter his mother from the sad truth of the man’s alcoholic and impoverished life. He meets an urban priest who does his best to help the poor of the city, working at a soup kitchen and providing shelter and inspiring Dino to want to do the same. Dino can’t decide whether or not to mail letters he writes to a young girl back home who also writes and hides letters to him. He tries to understand other young women he meets in Florence. He discovers that in addition to his talent for painting he has a talent for music.  He works various jobs and thereby meets a future friend and mentor with his own mysterious story, a gentle giant of a football player who is the beloved of a wealthy, oft married and widowed  principessa who hosts “salons” for working people as well as sophisticated art collectors in her palazzo promptly at 7:38pm (a reason is rumored).  

All the characters, no matter how brief  their sojourn in these pages,  have complex background stories that explain so much about them. This is masterful writing. And even better the book serves an important social function in its graphic description of how the poorest of the city are affected by natural disaster. It is very timely given the recent floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes that have similarly destroyed the lives of the poorest residents where these disasters have occurred.  In the wake of the flood, Dino and his friend Tomasso Nozzoli come up with a plan that will help a lot of people in a lot of ways.  Were Paul Salsini to run for a place in city gov’t I’d want to vote for him.   Meantime, I recommend  Dino’s Story  to lots of readers whether you are interested in Italy, the 60s, music, art, love, politics or all of the above.




Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

author of Stillbird and Three Novellas, A Mile in These Shoes

www.thewessexcollective.com

Daughters of the River Huong, review by Sandra Sanchez

 Daughters of the River Huong

By Uyen Nicole Duong

AmazonEncore

P.O. Box 400818

Las Vegas, NV 89140

9781935597315 $13.95

            “As a young girl, I did not feel the need to learn the mi origin of my name. It did not help solidify my sense of aesthetics, decorum or the business of the soul. I thought, instead, of a note on my piano.  Mi-mi-mi-mi. I equated the mi sound with pure, vibrating sounds that began with the closing and opening of the lips.  When the lips were gently brought together and then opened upon a breath, the air brushed slightly outward, and the sound was delivered with the softness of a caress.

            From the beginning of my existence, I was a child in love with sounds.” (p.152)

            As a reader in love with the lyrical qualities of language I found this book to be a feast of earthly and heavenly delights, a series of impressionist paintings, a symphony of sounds. Even when the tragic sacrifice of a deep and passionate love to the exigent circumstances of war and politics caused me to indulge in a vigorous cry, I rejoiced in the beauty of the story.  For life is like that, both brutal and sweet.  The author retells a portion of Vietnamese history from the perspective of four generations of women: women who are beautiful, women who sing, women who dream and see spirits, women who fight like warriors and a girl who dances the twist, sings Beethoven, plays Chopin on the piano and eventually studies law in America. On a business trip for her American law firm the narrator eventually returns to her homeland where she learns some harsh truths, confronts the magnitude of her loneliness and finds, where she least expects it, the promise of redemption for herself and the souls of the generations that went before her.

            The plot is complex and the author reveals it in layers, creating then relieving suspense in a rhythmic pattern. Her characters are both real and ethereal. She lets us see their faces, hear their voices and smell their fragrances. She lets us into their dreams. She also describes the land itself in a way that transports the reader to the time and place of each chapter.  I recommend the reader begin this book with plenty of time ahead for once you begin you won’t want to put it down  and there are portions you will probably want to reread.  Also after you’ve finished you’ll need some time to recover from the emotional impact, the feeling that you’ve just lived through something both beautiful and tragic.

 Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, reviewer

www.thewessexcollective.com

Sandra Sanchez review of Sherry and Narcotics by Nina Marie Gardener

Sherry and Narcotics

By Nina Marie Gardener

Future Fiction London

www.futurefiction.co.uk

ISBN# 978-0-9827928-2-7

As the mother of women roughly the same age as the protagonist  Mary, I found this novel both a compelling and a heartrending read.  It opens with  graphic narrative scenes of Mary, drunk and drugged,  participating in sexual acts with random partners. Later there is a flashback to an actual rape and beating. Throughout I wondered what was the childhood history that propelled this young woman to put herself in such danger.   

The novel soon moves into a pattern of dialogue carried on via emails and texts between Mary and  her new, sweet love, Jake. Mary is a playwright so carrying the story forward this way makes sense and the author is extremely good at it. The emails and texts between Mary and Jake bring a smile to the face and a flutter to the heart.  The time spent waiting for those emails and texts inspires anxiety.  The reader feels each moment along with the character. There is also the undercurrent of tension between Mary and her mother.  A brief telephone conversation between them is particularly poignant, giving the reader a hint of a painful and complex history in very few words. In fact, the entire book moved along like a film in my mindâ•˙s eye and  I think it could be easily  transformed into an excellent film.  

Jake, not a bad guy but an indecisive one, ultimately lets Mary down and I donâ•˙t think Iâ•˙m spoiling the story by disclosing that since the end of their sweet affair is skillfully foreshadowed throughout.  Then, when it seems Mary has hit bottom, two miracles occur at the very end: she rescues a dog from a cruel and  brutal death and two strangers turn out to be kind and help her in this endeavor. Of course she is overwhelmed in a good way by this kindness from strangers who in the past she had learned to fear, so the book ends on an upbeat note that begs for a sequel.  In fact, since the details of  Maryâ•˙s family and childhood history are never explained and given the enticing nature of this book,  I would like to see both a prequel and a sequel because the author made me care deeply about what past moved Mary into this particularly painful present,  as well as what her future holds: hopefully sobriety, self awareness and appreciation, and the unconditional love of dogs. I recommend this book be read when the reader has time to read it start to finish, you wonâ•˙t want to put it down.

 

Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, reviewer

http://www.thewessexcollective.com

https:secure.digitalcontentcenter.com/shop/627321/products

My Sisters Made Of Light review by Sandra Sanchez

My Sisters Made Of Light

By Jacqueline St. Joan

Press 53

PO Box 30314

Winston-Salem , NC 27130

www.Press53.com

9781935708063 $19.95

My Sisters Made of Light is a brilliant book made of beauty and an honest look at brutality, deep insights and soaring lyricism. It is fiction based on the harsh realities of the culturally and socially accepted  honor crimes against women in Pakistan .  We watch in horror as a father lights a disobedient daughter on fire. We read in disbelief as a mother escorts a hired assassin to a meeting with her daughter and watches as he shoots her child dead. We hold our breath as a Muslim woman escapes her family to marry a Sikh man whom she adores. Theirs is a love of historic significance.  The author encapsulates a long and bloody history into unforgettable images:

        In 1958 the air was still sour with the stench of the slaughters that had occurred eleven years earlier when the British ran like dogs and India cracked. The blade that slashed the map also partitioned the bodies of the people, etching fear in their bellies and revenge in their hearts. . . . . . If a trainful of Hindus was murdered by Muslims from Lahore (and they were), then a trainful of Muslims would be murdered by Sikhs and Hindus from Amritstar (and they were).  Entire families were butchered and their body parts were delivered by horseback to their villages. The people emptied baskets of breasts and pails of penises onto the ground  - even the stubs of baby penises with scrotums like tiny figs. The soil was soaked with all the lost futures and when it was done, when the trauma finally subsided to abide in the bodies of the people, they had to plant seeds in and eat the fruit of that same earth. Sikhs and Muslims alike knew the taste of each other’s blood well and they kept to their own.

        Kulrag and Nafeesa in London . Romeo and Juliet in Verona . A Muslim and a Sikh in Pakistan .  All of history conspired against them, but no matter. They would find a new way.

This book is about the courageous women who risk their lives to teach a new way to the young women of Pakistan .  Interspersed in the rich mix of their stories are passages of pure poetry:

I knelt before the shrine for long periods. I read no textbooks. Poured no oil on the doorstep. Took no milk in my tea. No tea. No dusty sandals. No laundry. No letters. No toothbrush. No prayers. No songs. No memories. No soft sisters. No tough sisters. No purpose. No me. For days and days I faded away.

The author has sought and achieved recognition and success in the fields of law and literature in order to further her agenda of making the world safer for women. She donates half the proceeds from sales of the book to a grassroots organization building a safe shelter for women and children escaping abuse. Even if it were not a great read, buying this book helps people in need. The bonus to you is that it IS a great read.

  

Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, reviewer

http://www.thewessexcollective.com

Reviewer Sandra Sanchez joins Page Readers!

I’d like to introduce all of you to a new member of Page Readers.  Sandra Sanchez will be sharing her positive reviews of books from authors of her preferred genre(s).  I hope you all find her reviews informative and will take a moment to welcome her!

The best way to get to know someone is to let them tell you their story.  So Sandra, start us off by telling us a little about you. 

I am one of those baby boomers, born May 16, 1946. My parents were divorced when I was six and this was a sad time for me. I had learned to read early and it has been a comfort for me my entire life. After my Dad read me one of those alphabet books: A is for Apple, B is for Ball, etc. I figured it out from there. I was reading adult books by the time I started first grade although I kept that a secret and tried to act like a kid. I did attend one year of college at St. John's (the "great books school") in Annapolis but met and soon thereafter married my first husband whom I persuaded to go "back to the land" in the early seventies. We lived in a shack with an outhouse and grew our own food in a West Virginia holler for three years before he persuaded me to go "back to civilization" after our second daughter was born in the back seat of the car en route to Roanoke Community Hospital. Sara has been in a rush ever since! Not long after the move, we divorced, I finished a BA in Psychology with a minor in Women's Studies at University of Md. and then moved back to Colorado. After a year working as a hostess in a fancy restaurant I decided to go to law school. I was all set to change the world for women. That did not happen but I did manage to change a few women's lives for the better. I married Ed Sanchez in 1994 and we moved up to the mountains in 2005  

Tell us about your writing - why you write, the genre you prefer, what started your journey into being and author.

Loving to read as much as I did I think it was inevitable that I would one day want to write. When I was in 6th grade I read Wuthering Heights and was transported to that time and place. When I read the last page I turned back immediately to the first and started all over again. I was not ready to leave the Yorkshire Moors. I think I had this vague idea that I wanted to write like that: transport myself and others to another time and place, but I didn't actually start writing stories until I was a senior in H.S and took a creative writing class. My teacher loved my stories, read them to ALL his English classes, and by the end of the day, kids were coming up to me to say they'd heard my story in class and really liked it and soon everyone was telling me "do something with your writing."  I had an opportunity because of a contest to write for Seventeen Magazine and I did write a column about books. By the time they were ready to run it and called me to say they needed me to cut it down to 800 words, I had started college and didn't take the opportunity with sufficient seriousness and didn't follow through. Needless to say I am sorry now. One funny thing is that I read adult novels when I was a kid but didn't discover fairy tales until I was an adult looking for Jungian undercurrents. I had discovered mythology however as a child in the Book of Knowledge. And my mom used to talk to me about dreams and dream interpretation. So it made sense that I would write magical realist fiction although when I first started doing it I didn't know that was what it was called. Gabriel Garcia Marquez did not influence my writing but reading his work validated my writing. It gave me a way to describe it. 

Now that we know how and when you started reading and writing, tell us about your work.

I write very short novels or very long short stories. Well I think it would be fair to say I write novellas with a very wide range. I feel like the story dictates the length. So my first novel, The Nun, published by Plain View Press in 1992 was only 127 pages and some of those filled with poems as the 20th century character is a poet. It is in two parts: a 10th century Nun who becomes a recluse and a sculptor and a 20th century incarnation of same character as a poet who also becomes a woodland recluse. My second novel, Stillbird is 124 pages and has been called "an epic in less than 200 pages". StillbirdStillbird with the help of Peter Burnham, the editor of The Long Story these past thirty years. We started The Wessex Collective together in 2005.  During this time I wrote a few short stories and have collected the ones I consider the best into a collection titled A Mile in These Shoes.  I also wrote novellas and collected my three favorites in another Wessex book: Three Novellas. My last novel (so far) The Road Home, a magical realist historical novel about crypto Jews in the southwest is supposed to be released by Floricanto Press in California this year but business is bad and they are not in a hurry to "rush to market". I am hoping to raise some money to publish a collection that would include a 2nd Ed. of The Nun, Stillbird, two of the three novellas and two of the nine short stories. In the meantime Three Novellas is still available as a real book (email me at sansan542000@yahoo.com if interested).  I have about a dozen copies left of Mile in These Shoes and Stillbird is available as an e-book at:

https://secure.digitalcontentcenter.com/shop/627321/products

as are my other two Wessex books plus 17 titles by 10 other authors. Since we don' t have to pay to reprint e-books once they are out there in the cyber world (although we do have to cover commissions), we are all agreed that we will donate $3 for every $5 download to various charitable organizations. Different authors have different preferences. Mine will be donated to people doing dog rescue.

When did you start writing reviews?

I used to write reviews for the Boulder Daily Camera when they ran them: I'd be paid $50 per review plus of course getting free books. I started doing reviews for Book Pleasures after one of their other reviewers reviewed my book Three Novellas. Initially it was a way for me to get our Wessex link out there but of course it is wonderful discovering so many fine books by fine authors. Norm Goldman sends out the requests for reviews with the descriptions of the books and I only request those that I am pretty sure I will like. I did get one book that I thought I'd like based on the hype (published by Simon and Schuster) but after 60 pages I realized I wasn't going to have anything positive to say about it so I wrote the PR person and just told her in all sincerity I could not give this book a good review. I see no point in posting a negative review. Someone else will like it and apparently a lot of people are already fans of this author so she doesn't need my opinion.

Good to know!  

I'm so happy to welcome Sandra and her positive input here at Page Readers!