Author Archives: Andrea Sigetich

State of Terror

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Hilary Clinton & Louise Penny

Fiction 2021 | 512 pages

four-hearts

Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny team up to create this geopolitical thriller, State of Terror.  As the novel opens, bombs explode on buses in London, Paris, and Frankfurt.  Who is responsible, and will the United States be next?  Ellen Adams, Secretary of State for the new president, Doug Williams is thrown into international relationships, intrigue, and negotiations in the Mideast, in an attempt to discover who is responsible for more than 100 deaths, why, and where there are bombs placed ... nuclear, it seems ... in the United States.  There is no love lost between the President and Secretary of State, and she works incredibly hard and smart to eliminate the terror, gaining competence and respect in the process.

Blame falls to the to the ineptitude of the former President, Eric Dunn, who is not at all veiled as a reference to the United States' former president. He is presented as bombastic, mean, and an idiot, licking his wounds after he lost reelection, and playing golf in his Florida retreat. Even his closest associates called him “Eric the Dumb.”

The women reign in State of Terror.  Not only is the Secretary of State a feminist, but her adviser and counselor is a lifelong friend, Betsy Jameson, and is a tribute to Clinton's actual lifelong friend, Betsy Ebeling.  The media mogul is a woman, as is the person who receives an email with the first clue about the Frankfurt bomb.

While the plot is clearly Clintonesque, the character development, emotional sense, and relationship depths can be attributed to Louise Penny.  Louise Penny fans will revel in a special treat in the latter pages, as the tiny Quebec town of Three Pines plays a role in the denouement.

I vacillated between giving this compelling mystery three hearts or four.  I believe it is a bit overwritten, and the character list is long and can be difficult to follow, especially among the Mideast players.  I finally landed on four hearts because, not only is the story intriguing, but there is a special feeling, aside from politics, in reading a collaboration by two famous women of our time.  Yes, pick this up and enjoy the fun, the terror, the political intrigue, and the delicious characters.

April 2022

 

The Seed Keeper

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Diane Wilson | Fiction, 2021

372 pages

three-hearts

In its 19th year, the Deschutes County Public library is the largest community reading program in Oregon.  Every year I read, enjoy, and discuss the current community read.  This year's selection disappointed me a bit.

Rosalie Iron Wing, our primary character and narrator, grows up in the woods with her father, learning the stories of her Dakota people, the plants in the woods, and the stars.  Many years later, after two decades married to a white man, she returns to the family cabin, a grieving widow and a mother, and begins to search for her family and her community.  She comes from a family line of trauma, and the stories of Native children who were stolen and moved into boarding schools infiltrate Rosalie's family, neighbors, and this novel.

The narrative is multi-generational as Wilson weaves into Rosalie's life story, her friend's life, Gaby Makespeace; her great-great grandmother, Marie Blackbird; her great Aunt, Darlene; her deceased mother; and numerous other family characters, male and female, alive and dead.  We learn important – and often untold – stories about the treatment of indigenous peoples on this continent.

The diction is wonderful.  Strong, poetic, beautiful, interesting, descriptive words.

The message is important.  It is to be read, contemplated, and understood.

However, I found the story boring. I do not quite know how to expound on my opinion ... the important message was told in a manner that did not capture my enthusiasm, my imagination, or my interest.  It starts out slowly and tenses shift oddly.

The title, on the other hand is perfect, and hearkens back to what I think is the most interesting theme in The Seed Keeper ... learning the value of selecting, drying, storing, and keeping seeds from the food you grow.  When there was a fire, a crisis, or as sudden departure, the first item that Rosalie's family took with them was the basket or box or bag of seeds. Seeds are the heirloom that ensures that people can feed themselves after their move, in the next few years, and from generation to generation. They represent, quite literally, the heritage of earlier generations.

I think many of my readers will enjoy this novel more than I did.  Yes, I do recommend it.

April 2022

 

 

The Lincoln Highway

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Amor Towles

Fiction 2021 | 576 pages

A green object is shown in this image.

A green object is shown in this image.

Amor Towles’ writing is once again, superb.

Emmet Watson, 18 years old and just released from a juvenile work farm in Salina, Kansas, returns to his Nebraska home, driven by the warden.  There, he is reunited with his delightful and precocious brother, 8-year-old Billy, and faces the foreclosure of his family farm, as his unsuccessful father has just died from cancer.  Going through their father’s belongings, Billy discovers a packet of postcards sent from their mother to the boys as she traveled west … this is news to both the boys!  Billy and Emmet decide to travel the Lincoln Highway to San Fransisco to find their mother, who abandoned them years ago.

Except, once the warden drives away, much to everyone’s surprise, they learn that Wooly (a medicine-addicted young Northeastern boy from money) and Duchess (the son of a vaudevillian, with his own significant cadre of questionable judgements and reckonings), two of Emmett’s compatriots at the work farm, stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car and were now ready to travel wherever Emmett’s adventures were to take them.

But California is not in the picture.  Indeed, not only do Emmett and Billy never make it there, they don’t even advance one westward mile. In fact, they travel about as far away from California as is possible in the continental United States, to New York City.  But only after Emmett’s Studebaker is stolen, and relatives need to be found and visited, Billy meets Ulysses and Abacus Abernathe, and Duchess’ orphanage needs strawberry preserves, to name just a few of the side trips.  “Detours beget detours” (NYT review).

Amazingly, we witness ten days and 600 pages of adventure, youth, and remarkable characters.  The tone is mostly light, though some darkness shows up at the end.

The only aspect of this book I did not like is that the characters never ever manage to travel west on the Lincoln Highway!

Yes, I surely recommend this novel by a fine author.

March 2022

 

Bewilderment

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Richard Powers

Fiction 2021 | 278 pages

A green object is shown in this image.

A green object is shown in this image.

I am shocked to discover that there exist people who did not like this book! I think it is nothing short of brilliant.  Theo Byrne is raising his neurodivergent, undiagnosed, nine-year-old son Robin, after his mother’s accidental death.  This, all alone, is the making of a challenging story.  But add to it, in true Powers’ sentiment, a dying planet, climate change, and species extinction, and you reach a deeper level of sorrow.

Theo is an Astrobiologist.  His work is searching for other planets, perhaps planets that sprout life. He tells Robin numerous bedtime stories about made-up planets, where something unique is occurring In the ecology or with the inhabitants.  These are great stories, fueled by a vivid imagination.

Meanwhile, Robbie becomes a patient in an experimental neurofeedback treatment program.  He learns to use his mind to move a dot on a page, and then he and the artificial intelligence (AI) take off from there. Eventually the researchers invite Robbie to witness a similar treatment, done a few years earlier, with his mother, and Robbie begins to experience his mother Aly more clearly his life, including her knowledge, her values, her sensibilities, and her love.  It is quite amazing what happens for him, and how he improves in managing his fear, anger, confusion, and neurodiverse behavior.

While the story line is intriguing and compelling, the real reason why I fell in love with this book is the writing.  It simply is beautiful writing.  Clear.  Dynamic. Sensual even.

Read this.  Do not hesitate to read it as soon as you can get your hands on a copy.

March 2022

 

Go Tell the Bees I am Gone

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Diana Gabaldon

Fiction 2021 | 903pages

A green object is shown in this image.

A green object is shown in this image.

(TRYING FOR THE TENTH(?) TIME … PERHAPS, JUST PERHAPS, WE HAVE SOLVED THE WORD PRESS ISSUES.  SORT OF.)

This is the ninth book in the luscious Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  I carried the 903-page 2.2 pound brick with me on airplanes and throughout my week at beaches and infinity pools at Puerto Morales.  It was a constant, but heavy, companion! Drawing me into the American Revolution and entertaining me with the lives of the Frasers, MacKensies, and many (many!) other characters.

Unfortunately, I think Gabaldon has run out of things to say and stories to tell.  Her tales of life on Fraser’s Ridge amidst the families … Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, and Quaker … who have come to build homes, feed their families in the 1770s, add many children to the growing generations, survive and even thrive in the western mountains of North Carolina; were engaging, interesting, and built upon the extremely well-developed characters of Claire, Jamie, Brianna, Roger, and numerous natural and adopted offspring.  However, her stories of many men, negotiating their way through the politics, loyalties, and very confusing family lineage in the war, were often confounding and difficult to follow.  And I found little tension in her story … little mystery to uncover.  I seldom cared what might happen next.

For diehard Outlander fans, Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone, is a book to read out of loyalty and curiosity, but not out of a sense of “it is compelling, and I can’t put it down” commitment.  So yes, continue the saga, and read it.  For non-Outlander fans, you MUST go back to book one, Outlander, and start there!  Yes, if you begin and become hooked, you have 8047 pages of reading ahead of you, and Gabaldon is writing book 10 of the series as I type!  I do love the series, I just don’t feel this is her strongest work.

March 2022

Not a new post. IGNORE!

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bell hooks

Nonfiction 2001 | 238 pages

A green object is shown in this image.

A green object is shown in this image.

testing again.

 

I am lost. WHY are we reading this book in my Decolonization book club? It is a diatribe on everything that is not working. It begins with multiple chapters that point fingers at parents who lead dysfunctional families and do not teach their children how to love, and it goes downhill from there. I kept reading, seeking for when she might turn positive, and found a bit of redemption in the chapter on spirituality. I was hoping there might be more “new visions” (this book’s erroneous subtitle) in the chapter on romance, but she begins “Romance†with the assertion that we all have not been “schooled” in love, and therefore don’t know how to do it. It isn’t that hard, Ms. hooks. You open your heart and make a choice.

Plus, she quotes the Bible about 27 times more often than I am comfortable with.

A depressing book … I can’t come up with any reason to recommend it. She has written 39 (or so) books. I am not putting any on my reading list. This ranks near the top of my “books I struggled to finish because I sincerely disliked them” list.

February 2022

 

The Book of Longings

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Sue Monk Kidd

Fiction 2020 | 432 pages

A green object is shown in this image.

A green object is shown in this image.

Writing this post feels like a sacred act.  For centuries biblical scholars have debated whether or not Jesus married.  The scholars have convened on “no†as the most likely answer.  However, Sue Monk Kidd has wondered all of her life if perhaps there is another story to tell.  She writes this novel from the perspective that Jesus did, in fact, take a wife.  Her name is Ana, and this is her story.  Fully immersed in the stories, fables, truths, realities, and parables that appear in the bible, Kidd adds a layer that will cause you to think, wonder, and enjoy the possibilities.  This is a truly engaging piece of art!

We see Judas (Ana’s brother), Lazarus, Mary and Martha, John, who baptizes new Christ-followers, Herod, Pilate, John and Joseph, Jesus’ mother Mary, and more.  All the context we would expect.  And yet this additional perspective retells the story of Jesus on this earth in a new light, especially the years that bible does not address at all, Jesus between the ages of 12 of 30.

I am not a Christian, and so I wondered how I would engage with this tale.  I found it delightful!  First of all, it is a love story.  A profound, beautiful, enduring love story.  Second, is a magnificent statement on women at the time of Christ … an entire gender we hear little about in the bible.  The women in this novel are surprisingly strong, delightfully self-knowledgeable, intriguingly active.  Ana, of course, portrays a strong and powerful woman who finds her voice, her destiny, and her passion for writing.  And her Aunt Yaltha, her mother-in-law Mary, her sister-in-law Pamphile, Chaya (Ana’s cousin) and numerous other women are not as we might picture them from reading the bible alone … where they are often depicted as chattel, powerless, demure, hidden.  So, in truth, this is also a feminist novel.  Actually, it is an intriguing and useful accompaniment to the bible.

I highly recommend The Book of Longings and look forward to your comments.

March 2022