The day of her mother’s funeral, Harriet Brown was five thousand miles away. For years they’d gone through cycles of estrangement and connection, dramatic blow-ups and equally dramatic reconciliations. By the time her mother died at seventy-six, they hadn’t spoken at all in several years. Her mother’s death sent Brown on a journey of exploration, one that considered guilt and trauma, rage and betrayal, and forgiveness.
Shadow Daughter tackles a subject we rarely discuss as a culture. Family estrangements—between parents and children, siblings, multiple generations—are surprisingly common, and even families that aren’t officially estranged often have some experience of deep conflicts.
read more
In this warm collection of personal essays and recipes, best-selling author Ann Hood nourishes both our bodies and our souls.
From her Italian American childhood through singlehood, raising and feeding a growing family, divorce, and a new marriage to food writer Michael Ruhlman, Ann Hood has long appreciated the power of a good meal. Growing up, she tasted love in her grandmother’s tomato sauce and dreamed of her mother’s special-occasion Fancy Lady Sandwiches. Later, the kitchen became the heart of Hood’s own home. She cooked pork roast to warm her first apartment, used two cups of dried basil for her first attempt at making pesto,
read more
From the New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir on her life as a writer, her childhood, and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory
In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer.
read more
For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking such questions as “Whaddya know?” and announcing “Party time!” when guests showed up at Brett’s farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim as a pet, he gradually realizes the enormous obligation he has to the bird and learns that the parrot is a lot more complex than he thought.
Simultaneously a biography of this singular bird and a history of bird/dinosaurs and the human relationship with birds, Tuco also explores how we “other” the world—abusing birds,
read more
From Mary Pipher, the New York Times bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia, Women Rowing North is a guide to wisdom, authenticity, and bliss for women as they age.
Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be.
In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age.
read more
This Atom Bomb in Me traces what it felt like to grow up suffused with American nuclear culture in and around the atomic city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As a secret city during the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge enriched the uranium that powered Little Boy, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The city was a major nuclear production site throughout the Cold War, adding something to each and every bomb in the United States arsenal. Even today, Oak Ridge contains the world’s largest supply of fissionable uranium.
The granddaughter of an atomic courier, Lindsey A. Freeman turns a critical yet nostalgic eye to the place where her family was sent as part of a covert government plan.
read more
