Review: "Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter" by Katya Suvorova

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter by Katya Suvorova
Published September 2026 via Alcove Press
★★★★

When Suvorova was three, her mother took her from their home in Russia to Mexico and then across the US border. I will never go back home again, she writes, but I don't know that yet (loc. 135*). What followed was a desperate chase for the elusive green card: men who promised stability; men who said they were looking for love; men who dangled the promise of a green card application as a carrot always just out of reach; men who threatened to turn Suvorova and her mother in to the authorities.

I didn't know it then, but there will be many, many men opening their arms in front of their apartments, town houses, homes, and saying the exact same thing. Have you ever seen anything this nice before? Only Joe will be able to say it in Russian, but we will understand. (loc. 177)

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is Suvorova's story of growing up undocumented and on unstable ground, not only with the men who fell in and out of her mother's life but with her mother herself. And it is a gripping story. I read half of it in one day and then slowed down (a bit) so it would last a bit longer. The story is told in two timelines, with the majority taking place during Suvorova's upbringing and a later timeline discussing her finding her biological father in adulthood. But the strongest material, by far, is about Suvorova's relationship with her mother.

With time, I will realize how scared she was. I will realize that my mother knows desperation in a way I never will. (loc. 240)

My grandmother often tells me how she begged my mom to leave me with her, but my mother refused. I think regularly of what a life in Russia would have looked like for me, who I would have become had my mom left me. Would I be someone I like more? I also never got to know the version of my mom who grew up in her home country. [...] I wonder what direction our relationship would have grown if she hadn't taken me with her to this country. (loc. 560)

This is complicated, messy material about complex, real people. It's so clear how many layers Suvorova's understanding of her mother has: someone who was smart and resourceful and determined; someone who missed her own mother; someone who took the limited options available to her and ran as far as she could with them; someone who perhaps never understood and perhaps never tried to understand her daughter; someone who looked the other way when her daughter was abused; someone whose desperation changed her irrevocably. Suvorova sees this, and she loves her mother; she sees this, and she knows that a relationship under these terms cannot be healthy for her. There's both compassion and clear-sightedness here, a difficult and delicate line that Suvorova treads well.

I'll leave out the nitty-gritty of the story, but the subtitle alone should tell you that this is an interesting one, and often a difficult one. A high four stars; recommended to anyone who is interested in complicated families or who has been thinking about immigration lately.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "What the Ancestors Say" by Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau

What the Ancestors Say by Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau
Published September 2026 via Broadleaf Books
★★★★

It strikes me as strange that Indian boarding schools are always referred to as schools. The focus of these institutions was hardly ever education. That word was just a fancy bow, designed to hide the fact that the US government was eager to exterminate Indigenous people in any way possible. (loc. 158*)

Nadeau was working on a news story—the remains of hundreds of children who attended one such school had just been found—when she stumbled across the last thing she expected: the names of family members, ones who had attended one of those schools. Nadeau knew about the Indian residential schools, of course (more detail on them in a moment, if you're not familiar); surely there is nobody in her community who does not know about them. But she didn't know how close to home that history came.

I must be missing something, I think. No one in my family has ever spoken of Indian boarding schools. No one has mentioned that entire generations of our family attended one of the largest institutions that operated in Michigan. For decades. (loc. 233)

I've been making an effort to read more from Indigenous authors lately, for a number of reasons but not least because these are voices that (still) too often go unheard. As Nadeau notes (loc. 570), the Indian boarding schools are not really about Native history; rather, they're about the history of colonization and colonizers. And yet they're part of a history that had (has) a devastating and ongoing effect across generations. These schools operated across the US and Canada, and the aim was simple: take Native children away from their culture and instruct them in the ways of the White people; teach them to be maids and cleaners and laborers so as to build a servant class while erasing entire civilizations. Some parents sent their children to these schools voluntarily (or more or less voluntarily), hoping they'd get an education, but authorities also forcibly removed many others. Mortality rates at the schools were shockingly high (I read a report recently that referenced one school, in Canada, that had a mortality rate of 47%), and those children who survived were often not allowed to go home for years at a time.

What Nadeau was able to find out about her own family's history with the residential schools is limited. Most of what she finds is then more general; some stories of individuals who survived these schools or whose family did, but much of this is broader history. I cannot fault her or the book for not including more about her family, because erasing stories was one of the things the boarding schools did well, and anyway, even if they hadn't, nobody should be required to trade on their family's pain. Personal stories do tend to resonate best with me, and because I recently did quite a bit of fact-checking on Indian boarding schools for a work project, much of the general history was familiar to me already. So...didn't learn quite as much as I might have hoped, but I'd very much recommend this to those looking to learn more on the subject.

I think of the homesick ones, the traumatized and terrorized ones, the angry ones, and those who longed to burn it all down. (loc. 1826)

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Beyond Limits" by Shelley Sella

Beyond Limits by Shelley Sella
Published June 2025 via Beacon Press
★★★★

Sella was an abortion-care provider for decades, in Kansas and then in New Mexico, though her interest in reproductive health long preceded her specific calling to third-trimester abortion care. In Beyond Limits, she follows six patients—three with fetal indications for abortion, and three with maternal indications—through the paths that led them to her clinic and then through the steps of a third-trimester abortion.

Third-trimester abortions are rare, but the situations that drive women to seek them are not. What really differentiates third-trimester patients from those in the first and second trimesters is the degree of desperation they feel. (loc. 158)

I'll keep this short: This book will not change the minds of people who believe that third-trimester abortion (or abortion in general) is never acceptable; Sella herself nods to this in the book. What it can do, though, is speak to people who simply want to know more, and to those who have ever wondered why someone wouldn't just get an abortion earlier, or go the adoption route, and so on. Sella does discuss these things, directly and in detail, but also:

There are better questions to ask instead of why did she wait so long? And the answers to these questions should inspire compassion rather than judgment. What were the barriers to abortion care the patient faced when confronting an unwanted pregnancy? What were the life circumstances that compelled her to seek an abortion in the third trimester? (loc. 2390)

Wholly recommend to anyone looking to learn more.

Review: "Becoming the Ocean" by Erin Russ

Becoming the Ocean by Erin Russ
Published September 2026 via Twenty Fourteen Press
★★★★

Upending their lives and taking to the seas was supposed to solidify their marriage. Instead, what became clear was that something had to give.

We had never sailed alone together on the ocean, and never overnight. [...] Neither of us had ever stepped foot onto a sailboat until we owned our own, so we had to learn everything: from how to raise and lower the sails, to how to avoid hitting rocks and capsizing. (loc. 304*)

Despite an irrational dislike of boats (I am an excellent swimmer, but there's just something about the idea of being out beyond the sight of land and knowing that you're too far out to swim to safety if need be), I have a thing for "packed up my life and sailed away" sorts of books. Russ went into the sailing adventure with limited (though, for their purposes, adequate) boating experience and even more limited confidence.

Brian oozed competence—it's what had drawn me to him all those years ago. He had all the qualities I desired and wanted to attain for myself: he was confident, capable, and knew who he was[...]. Initially, I'd hoped some of his confidence might rub off on me. But over the years, I'd ended up hiding behind it at the expense of my own. It was easier to let him take the lead than to risk making a mistake. Now, I couldn't see past him. Everything I knew about myself—from my likes and dislikes, to my sense of who I was—had taken shape within the confines of our relationship. And I only knew how to be the person Brian wanted me to be. (loc. 332)

So it's a sailing story and a relationship story and a self-discovery story. It's evident early on that the status quo of the relationship suits Russ's husband well, but Russ less well; the question becomes what to do with that, and what their relationship will look like when all is said and done. The events of the book took place some number of years ago, which for book purposes is great; it means that Russ has had the time to think it over and process and figure out how the pieces fit together. The emotions are still there but not the same kind of raw that can come across when the story is still new. I'm curious about more of the what came after, but I also understand why it's out of the scope of this book.

Readers looking for more along these lines might like Love with a Chance of Drowning.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "When I Fell from the Sky" by Juliane Koepcke

When I Fell from the Sky by Juliane Koepcke
Translated by Ross Benjamin
Published 2011 via Titletown Publishing
★★★★

In December 1971, Koepcke got on a plane with her mother in Lima to return to their home in the Peruvian rainforest. It was a trip they'd made many times before and one that should have been uneventful—except that the plane crashed, and when Koepcke regained consciousness, she found herself alone among the trees, with a broken collarbone and nobody else in sight. Eventually she heard search planes circling—but she understood almost immediately that the vastness of the forest and the density of the trees made her chance of a rescue next to impossible, and so she set about rescuing herself.

Later I will learn that at that time the entire river was uninhabited. If I had simply lain down somewhere and stayed there, I would never have been found. (98)

I've had this book on my radar for some time (Wikipedia rabbit holes and all that), but I recently read a middle grade take on Koepcke's story, and it seemed absurd to have read someone else's take but not her own. Koepcke shifts back and forth throughout the story, between her time in the rainforest and the time after she made it back to safety. What I most appreciate is that she talks about the long-term process of moving forward as well as the immediate impact. There's just no way for this to not change your life immediately and totally; in addition to being the sole survivor of a terrible accident, Koepcke lost her mother and in some ways emotionally lost her father, who was of course devastated by the loss of his wife. And yet although it turned her life upside down, it doesn't sound like it turned the trajectory of her life upside down, at least not overall.

One thing of note: The world is a terribly cruel place sometimes. I mentioned this when I reviewed Follow the Water, too, but it bears repeating in Koepcke's own words:

Later I was accused in the press of simply leaving selfishly, without worrying about the injured. In other newspapers it was even written that the survivors were wandering around in the forest, screaming and crying, and I ran off on my own. The truth is, I found no survivors. I don't know what I would have done if I had actually found injured passengers and possibly my mother. Probably I would have stayed with them and we would have perished together. (78)

Hopefully this wouldn't happen today, but man, the cruelty of making this sort of thing up about a child (Koepcke was 17), and one who had just survived something horrific and lost her mother no less, just to sell some papers.

At any rate, the book is an interesting and measured read. Koepcke was so terribly unlucky in some ways, but so terribly lucky in others—to have injuries that she could still walk with; to have her mind push her pain away until she was safe; to have grown up learning to navigate the rainforest and thus to be at home and knowledgeable in her environment when so many others would not have known what to do (and, as she notes, when in a different environment she also would not know what to do). Well worth the read.

Review: "Suffer a Witch" by Joy McCullough

Suffer a Witch by Joy McCullough
Published August 2026 via Dutton Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Admit it, the priests told you, and twelve years was old enough for you to know you must listen to church authorities. Old enough to know the truth didn't matter anyway. Old enough to know someone had to pay for a boy's wounded pride. (loc. 669*)

McCullough was a young teenager, a preacher's daughter, when a new youth pastor was hired at her father's church. That is not the point she describes as the tipping point, the moment when things could have been different—but fundamentally, this pastor who groomed her and sexually assaulted her tipped her life upside down. And: He was not subtle. And: Nobody spoke up, not when it was McCullough and not when it was her sister and not when it was the next girl behind closed doors with the youth pastor.

The story is devastating. McCullough is so clear about what happened and the ways in which she was silenced, both then and later; also the ways in which it affected her, then and later. (I won't get into the family parts of things here, but...if she's not still angry, she's a more forgiving person than I.) Her story comes in conversation with women accused of witchcraft—in Salem, in Sweden, in Scotland, beyond. (See the quotation up top.) It's also in conversation, at times, with itself: I do say that, in a previous draft, in a poem my editor says / isn't quite landing (loc. 855).

I had some trouble with the story format—verse works best for me when I can't just read it as sentences flowing one into another with extra line breaks, and when I have to slow down and reread to get all of the nuance and wordplay. While there is some play of structure and word choice here, for large parts of the book I was able to just read straight through. This is more personal preference than anything, but I probably would have found this a better fit for me in a different format (more prose, or a different style of poetry, or maybe a play). That said, maybe also worth noting that the formatting wasn't quite right on my Kindle (I read an ARC and assume this will work better in the final version, so not something to worry about), and if I'd realized earlier I would have switched to reading on my phone, where things like page breaks came across more clearly. And if you like your poetry on the more straightforward side, this is likely to be a better fit for you.

3.5 stars; structure wasn't for me, but the story is powerful and important, and I love the tie-ins to history. At one point McCullough mentions a previous book being called "timely" when it came out in 2018, and she notes that it was timely then and now and in the 1970s and in the 1610s and in so many years in between, and this feels the same way. It's a timely book, published now when so many stories have been told about abuse within churches and religion (and when restrictive evangelical religion is doing its best to take over the US), but it also would have been timely five years ago or ten or fifty, and I expect it will be timely still some years from now.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Beyond Borders" edited by Sue Averill

Beyond Borders, edited by Sue Averill
Published 2016
★★★

A short collection of essays about nursing in humanitarian contexts. I picked this up because I'd read a longer collection by the woman who edited Beyond Borders and found it engaging; also because humanitarian work (while not without ethical problems, sometimes significant ones) is interesting to read about, so I probably would have picked this up anyway.

In many ways, I knew it would be like this, but I don't think it is possible to viscerally feel the depth of this challenge without actually being inside it. (Heather Starshine McLeod, "Burst Wide Open," loc. 207)

Beyond Borders is short, coming in at well under 100 pages by Kindle estimation. There are ten essays, and several writers contributed more than one; I suspect One Nurse at a Time (the organization through which this book was published) was quite a small outfit, and judging by its website, which was last updated in 2023, it may since have closed its doors. The writing quality here is variable (some proofreading would not have gone amiss) but overall decent; for the most part I really just would have liked longer essays, and more of them. (Interestingly, a number of the essays in this book seem also to be in Nurses Beyond Borders, which was edited by one of the contributors to this book and published a few years earlier; I may have to see if my library has that one.)

One interesting thing: Sue Averill writes in "T Girl" that Children in my world don't play with other kids one day and die the next. [...] Children in my world don't die in my arms, with me impotent to offer more than mumbled assurances that she was among friends. (loc. 732) It's a poignant moment, but it is not lost on me that her cowriter for the previous essay in the book, "Susy" (and also her cowriter for On a Mission), writes in yet another essay in this book ("Mae Mae"), about the premature death of her own son. It's not in and of itself contradictory; Averill is writing about her own experience, not about Elizabeth Coulter's. But that disconnect could be the starting point for a book all its own.

Review: "On a Mission" by Sue Averill and Elizabeth Coulter

On a Mission by Sue Averill and Elizabeth Coulter
Published 2017
★★★

Averill's work as a nurse has taken her around the world, and On a Mission focuses on various trips she took to places in dire need of more medical care. This is organized as a set of essays, most (not all) covering experiences during those trips: to Darfur, to Sierra Leone, to Uganda; to Pakistan, to Ethiopia, to the Philippines (though the Philippines chapter has a somewhat different focus...).

It's a fast and interesting read, if at times a difficult one; there's so much loss and devastation and senseless violence. Averill's experience is both wide and deep, and this kind of work calls for an innate ability to think on one's feet and come up with creative solutions.

Most of the book is told from Averill's perspective, but a couple of chapters/essays pull more from her coauthor's side of things (Coulter being a nurse and writer). I didn't love those chapters—there wasn't enough context for me to understand immediately who was talking and why, and the extended "joke" about pretending that a (fictional, mercifully) new nurse was a sexual predator was...not actually funny. Shockingly. On the whole I probably would have preferred a longer-form memoir to these largely disconnected essays, but then, I always prefer a longer-form memoir to largely disconnected essays, so there's that.

There are a couple more books published by the volunteer organization that Averill seems to have worked with (though the actual trips were, as I understand it, through Doctors Without Borders), and I'd be interested to pick those up too.

Review: "Tales of Tanzania" by Hamish McGlashan

Tales of Tanzania by Hamish McGlashan
Published May 2015
★★★

McGlashan was a young doctor in 1960s Britain when he decided he wanted an adventure, and also less medical red tape—so off he went to Tanzania, where the salary was better and the opportunities broader (assuming you were White and British and male, of course).

It must have been a fascinating time in Tanzania, which only (with the exception of Zanzibar) gained independence in 1961. McGlashlan was, as he notes, the last of the breed (90); the British of course only trusted themselves to provide medical care, and so he was in Tanzania in the last years of Britain sending medical staff down on colonial business. It is worth noting, incidentally, that McGlashan readily acknowledges the racism inherent in his appointment; he says, among other things, that I was still underqualified and underexperienced for the role and there must have been many Asian doctors in the country who could have claimed precedence (90), had they been allowed or trusted to do so. (He says earlier that there were no African doctors in Tanzania in the 60s, which I assume is why he specifies qualified Asian doctors here; I'd be curious to know more about the state of medical education for Africans before and after independence.)

So by and large it's an engaging book. There's a certain amount of cowboy-ing, of course (common in memoirs discussing medical work in underresourced places...especially if those memoirs are written by men), and I imagine that practicing medicine in Tanzania now is a very different ballgame. The book could have used a final polish, as there's a certain amount of repetition (I didn't need a third mention of using rotting bananas to attract butterflies!), but if this is the sort of thing to interest you, it's not a bad addition to the subgenre.

Review: "Stepping Up" by Kiara Valdez, illustrated by Diana Tsai Santos

Stepping Up by Kiara Valdez, illustrated by Diana Tsai Santos
Published August 2026 via HarperAlley
★★★★

Andover was an opportunity Valdez couldn't pass up—an excellent education, a bit of breathing room from a sometimes complicated home life, the promise of future opportunities. It was also a place where she did not fit the mold, and where students who did fit the mold kept reminding her of that...and a place where, eventually, she found her people.

There are relatively few boarding school memoirs out there (though plenty of fiction!), and even fewer written by people who were minority students. For Valdez, Andover represented a certain amount of culture shock—her family and friends did not have the money to go to Broadway shows, or buy the new iPhone, or take fancy vacations; Andover was also way Whiter than she was used to. (Wikipedia says that Andover is more racially diverse than Massachusetts generally, but still very different from Valdez's New York.)

For the most part, Valdez writes Andover as something that was for her a good experience—she made close friends and tried things she wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to do. (And, well, my own boarding school was very different from the prep school environment of Andover, but boarding school is an experience that is really like none other.) There are few big dramas here, and certainly not any involving Valdez directly. This isn't always exciting as far as book plots go, but I can't object because 1) that's certainly better for Valdez! and 2) honestly, I'm still looking for a boarding school book that echoes my own experience, and while this isn't it (for myriad reasons, most of which I knew going in), this does feel like much more a reflection of, well, a normal experience of boarding school. What Valdez did experience, over and over again, were microaggressions—sometimes unthinking ones and sometimes, ah, they were not unthinking. (And not so micro.) I can imagine this being a really valuable book for a teenager who is changing environments in the way that Valdez did, not necessarily to boarding school but...things along those lines.

As an aside, I loved the inclusion of step here—it's something I haven't seen performed in a very long while, and it was so lovely to see as an important part of Valdez's experience at Andover. I don't know that much about step, so I'd have loved a bit more history here, but it's a nice plot point. A bit more about Valdez's family also would have been interesting, though that may not have been somewhere she wanted to go for any number of reasons, which is of course entirely fair.

3.5 stars; this is one I'd like to see in a lot of high school libraries.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "A Midwife in Africa" by Mona McAlpine

A Midwife in Africa by Mona McAlpine
Published October 2023 via Looderhorn Books
★★★

In 1969, McAlpine and her new husband set off for South Africa. It was meant to be a two-year stint—her husband had gotten a job in Johannesburg, and they figured they'd give it a go. And instead of two years, they stayed for thirty.

It's an interesting look at a turbulent time. McAlpine immediately set about finding herself a nursing job, and she ended up with much more diverse patients than I suspect your average nurse in Apartheid-era South Africa saw. (Though: Worth noting that although McAlpine was rightly appalled by Apartheid, enough so to consider bailing on the country altogether, they gave their car a deeply racist nickname that McAlpine repeats with no apparent realization that something is off.) There were also some hair-raising episodes, including a kidnapping and a (different) abandoned child, so it makes for a very lively read.

It's a fairly short book, and I would have liked more individual stories, but I appreciated that McAlpine keeps her focus on medical things—for example, there's a point when she took some time off to be a stay-at-home parent, and she neatly sums that up in a few lines and then gets back to the focus of the book. I'd be interested to read her earlier memoir about working in the remote wilds of Scotland earlier in her career; what a change it must have been to go from the Shetlands to Soweto!

Review: "Soviet Ghosts, European Dreams and a Bag of Onions: Moldova" by Lady Anna

Soviet Ghosts, European Dreams and a Bag of Onions: Moldova by Lady Anna
Published February 2025
★★

A brief look back at an upbringing in Moldova. I read this out of curiosity about the country—if memory serves, the only thing I've read even partially set in Moldova is The Geography of Bliss, which (again, if memory serves) talks about Moldova in the context of countries where people are generally unhappy or dissatisfied. Nothing from authors actually from, or having lived in, Moldova.

As a book, though, this is a disappointment. Although billed as a memoir, there is virtually nothing to tell us about the writer; much of the book is more general, in a "This is what life was like for people in Moldova" kind of way rather than a "Here are specific things that I experienced" kind of way. The author might be a woman, based on the name "Lady Anna" on the cover, but that is about all we learn.

Numerous anecdotes are repeated, and not in a way that feels intentional. But more to the point, there's this story: My father was a veterinarian, which meant that in theory, he had a stable government job. In reality, he worked for four years without a single paycheck, which led to some creative solutions in our household. [...] With no salary, he turned to bartering. Need a sick cow checked? That'll be two sacks of potatoes. [...] Meanwhile, my mother took up sewing, selling handmade clothes in the market for bread. (24)

It's an illustrative anecdote. But it's followed, immediately, by this: My father had once worked a stable job. Then, suddenly, he didn't. The factory shut down, and he, like thousands of others, had to improvise. First, he tried selling cigarettes at the market, trading them for sugar, oil, and whatever else he could barter. My mother, ever resourceful, sewed clothes and sold them for bread. One day, I saw my father swap a pack of imported cigarettes for an entire bag of potatoes. He beamed as if he'd just struck gold. "Dinner for a week!" he declared triumphantly. I didn't have the heart to remind him that a week in our household usually lasted three days. (25)

I have to surmise that the author decided that one version sounded better than the other, truth be hanged. And I don't even mind if not all of the details are exact—whether the author's father was a veterinarian or a factory worker is no skin off my nose, and although I don't advise it, this author wouldn't be the first to fudge memoir details for the sake of the story. But the blatancy of the change here (or, the lack of editing) makes me doubt the veracity of the rest of the story.

A few interesting moments (e.g., hadn't thought before about the complexity of deciding what language to use—Russian or Romanian—after the Soviet Union dissolved), but overall I can't recommend this; I'll have to look for something else from Moldova.

Review: "A Ghost in the Middle Kingdom" by Anna Keibler

A Ghost in the Middle Kingdom by Anna Keibler
Published July 2025 via Black Rose Writing
★★★

Keibler was teaching English in China when she fell into an unlikely romance: Her paramour was a yak herder, and there were significant cultural and financial barriers to them being together. But Keibler believed in their romance, and she was determined to make it work—even if that meant putting her passport up as collateral to get the money Alimu needed to buy a truck so that he could earn more money and they could more easily be together. Even if that meant believing him when all the evidence suggested that he wasn't truthful. Even when...well, some things are better left for the book.

I felt better after hearing Alimu's explanation. [...] I wanted to believe Alimu, so I did. (112)

I went back and forth (and back and forth) on whether to round up or down from three and a half stars. It's a fascinating read: Keibler is a good writer, and more than that she's wide-open about the many bad decisions she made; no apology, no regrets, just "here's my experience" and keep moving. I had to take a break from reading midway through, because—and this is not criticism, just statement of fact—my own decision-making process is so different from Keibler's that I spent much of the book wanting to read with my hands over my face, peeking through my fingers.

I will say that the way she portrays things in the book is not the same as what the book description indicates. For example, the description says Not only does Alimu convince Anna to barter away her passport—rendering her ensnared in his embrace, but the way she tells it in the book, she made that particular deal on her own, and Alimu said after she told him that it was a bad idea. (This is about the only time in the book that I agreed with Alimu—terrible idea! Don't use your passport as collateral!) The overarching point is still the same, mind; it was a deeply problematic relationship and a precarious situation that got more precarious over time.

So, very much one in which no one person is making all the bad decisions—there are plenty to go around. (Also maybe worth noting that Keibler had a safety net in the form of her parents; she acknowledges this but also didn't want to ask them for help. And I get this, though it sometimes adds to the fingers-over-eyes sense.) Your enjoyment of the book might depend somewhat on your own personality; it's a compelling read, and there's a lot to learn about expat life in China, but whether or not it's relatable (and it doesn't have to be!) really comes down to the reader.

Review: "Dancing with a Demon" by Valerie Foster

Dancing with a Demon by Valerie Foster
Published July 2026 via Black Rose Writing
★★★

Foster's daughter Jenna seemed to be sailing along—until she stopped eating, and things got hard, fast. Suddenly conversations turned from college decisions to residential treatment programs, and everything about the future became uncertain.

Dancing with a Demon was first published in 2017, though even then it had been some years since Jenna's illness. This is helpful in terms of the telling of the story; though Foster clearly still remembers the fear and anguish of that time period, and remembers it viscerally, she also has enough distance to take a step back and look at the broader picture. (There are also excerpts from Jenna's own journals; previous editions of the book credit Jenna as a cowriter.) I do wish that this updated edition had removed weights from the book, as there are other ways to convey the seriousness of illness without including details that will be harmful to some readers.

Overall, though, there are some excellent points, including the very real limits to conversations with other parents in Foster's position and the inadequacy of many treatment programs. This thousand-dollar-a-day program was all about weight, and with our insurance covering it only on a week-by-week appeal, in-house treatment was very regimented. They could not keep a patient once he or she reached a certain number on the scale, whatever they determined as a reasonable weight for maintaining life, regardless of any real progress, mentally or emotionally. (loc. 659*) This is not an exception—insurance so often dictates what treatment somebody will get, as very few could afford that kind of out-of-pocket cost. Can you imagine the same thing for cancer? "Well, radiation has shrunk the tumor to a manageable size, so we're not covering surgery or chemotherapy, even though the tumor will almost certainly regrow without them."

A good addition to something of a sub-sub-genre.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Our Knives Will Save Us" by Nephi Craig

Our Knives Will Save Us by Nephi Craig
Published July 2026 via Penguin Press
★★★★

Growing up, Craig had dreams of being a professional skateboarder—it was something of an accident (literal and figurative, I guess) that landed him in culinary school instead. It was culinary school that would get him out of the hole he'd found himself in...but it was a new look at traditional, Indigenous cooking that would ultimately pull him out of the holes that followed.

I didn't learn any of this in culinary school. During my formal education as a chef, the subject of Native foods never came up. The message I received from teachers and mentors, again and again, was loud and clear: When it came to cooking, all things French reigned supreme. (loc. 149*)

I'm perennially curious about stories and backgrounds that are not my own, and I have a growing list of books by Indigenous writers that I'm gradually working through (mostly while visiting my mother, whose library is much better for this than mine). Conveniently, Our Knives Will Save Us overlaps with another reading interest of mine, food memoir—the hook was baited, and this reader was caught.

This makes for a complicated story about family, heritage, addiction, loss, and coming home again. I love how much discussion of traditional foods Craig includes, as well as how clearly he calls out the ways in which Native cooking has been erased from history (or rather, appropriated by other cultures). I'm a rather disinterested cook (to the eternal dismay of my spouse), but I would cheerfully pore over a full book of recipes from Craig, ideally with even more history and context. (Would I make these recipes? Uh...I'd give the book to my mother, who is a much more interested cook than I, and then I'd hope she chose to make something with neither meat nor tomatoes.) I also love how straightforward he is in telling his story; when he makes excuses, it's in the context of coming back around and realizing that the excuses are just that, and gradually moving forward to make the changes he needs to make. A good one for those interested in memoir, Indigenous voices, food, recovery stories, and history.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Tadpoles in the Milk" by Mildred Roseman Gackle

Tadpoles in the Milk by Mildred Roseman Gackle
Published November 2018 via Wasteland Press
★★★

In 1950, Gackle set off for rural Kenya. She'd taken a position as a missionary nurse, and she stayed for the better part of a decade, until persistent illness took her home.

I didn't realize the time frame when I picked this up—I hadn't clocked the author's name, which might have given me a clue, and I guess I assumed that this was a much more recent experience. I was interested in the book for the medical-care-in-a-different-context aspect (what can I say, I like medical memoir), but the time frame ended up being one of the more compelling aspects.

Some things fascinated me: At one point some women in the community were scared by a streak in the sky, and Gackle writes that Fortunately some of the missionaries returning from the States had told us about these marks and the new planes that made them (96). To think how recent that was! I mean—Gackle was in a different generation (she died in 2024 at the age of 100), and this was literally a lifetime ago, but still.

Later, she describes an event where the missionary doctor came in and said we were going to have to do something we had never done before, and we needed to get started right away. [...] We had never done a blood transfusion. (102) A blood transfusion as the height of modern medicine! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised—if I remember correctly, there's a Cherry Ames book from roughly the same time period that I think also discusses blood transfusions in very basic terms—but it's just...a reminder of what limited means they had, I suppose. To add to this, the mission hospital had electricity but not plumbing, so (for example) scrubbing in for surgery involved washing with water that had been hauled in and boiled.

Other things horrified me: During the Mau Mau Rebellion, the colonial government issued guidelines to protect oneself...and those guidelines included things like "do not let Africans walk behind you" and "be suspicious of all Africans" (28). Again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but really! What rot! Fortunately Gackle realized pretty quickly that that wasn't a way to live, and she writes about the locals with respect and affection, but it was striking to read.

Or this (Ernie being the lone doctor): Ernie's habit was to pray with each patient before surgery. He briefly explained the plan of salvation, asked if he or she would like to accept Jesus as Savior right then, and followed with a short prayer for health and recovery for the patient and for wisdom and guidance for us. (105) I understand that this was a mission hospital, and conversions were paramount (perhaps more so than medicine, as we'll discuss in a moment), but this troubled me. Here the doctor was in a position of significant power—a white man in a colonial setting, presumably the most educated person for miles around, the only person for miles around who was capable of performing surgery, the patient's life literally in his hands. The pressure to accede to the doctor's request must be immense in that context, no? Whether or not you fully understood what he meant, and whether or not you wanted to.

This story is told in the context of those blood transfusions, and—mild spoiler, sorry—the patient survived the surgery but ultimately didn't make it. What he did do was tell his wives that they were Christian now, and so his story is treated as a success: What to include when I had an opportunity to speak [in the States, about mission work] was easier this second furlough. [...] The story of Arap Segem, his three wives, his blood transfusions and his conversion was a good way of demonstrating the value of having a doctor at Tenwek. (111) Now...I understand that I'm coming at this from a different context and background and so on, but oh gosh. If I'm ever in hospital, I really don't want it to be a hospital where the medical staff will consider it a success if I die so long as they manage to convert me to their religion before that happens.

With all that in mind...Gackle's telling makes for a lively book, and she seems like a good person to know. The obituary I found said that she'd written this with her grandchildren in mind, and I do hope they'll keep copies in her memory.

Review: "In the Garden" by Amber Stewart

In the Garden by Amber Stewart
Published June 2026
★★★★

The writing had been on the wall for some time when Stewart and her wife pulled the plug. They'd never wanted to leave Tennessee—but it was no longer safe to stay.

I've heard so many people have conversations about this: not just about the US, but these days, in particular, yes, it's about the US. It's one of those things you only think about, or think about seriously, if you're in certain populations, but those populations are vast. For most, the question is ultimately theoretical, but for Stewart and her wife, it was a lot more than that: They had a plan, and they executed that plan. Put a pause on garden plans. Acquired visas, found an apartment, learned Spanish.

Uruguay never would have occurred to me as a haven country in these circumstances, not because I have preconceived notions about it but because I really know almost nothing about it. That's a big part of why I picked up the book; I'm perpetually curious about places I've never been, and of course this has the added bonus (if we can call it that) of involving issues near and dear to me. This is ultimately more about those issues, and the emotional process of upheaval (in many ways this is a refugee story, though Stewart rightly notes the difference in who gets called an immigrant and who gets called an expat, and the same applies to the word "refugee" here), than it is about Uruguay. I did wish at times for more place-specific details; it was fascinating to learn that Uruguay has such strong social protections for LGBTQ people (up there with Iceland and Norway), but I'd also have been very curious about just...more of the daily-life things.

A solid 3.5 stars, and a good one for anyone who has spent time thinking about immigration and human rights, for recent political reasons and for many others.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Gutted" by Maide Korte

Gutted by Maida Korte
Published June 2026 via She Writes Press
★★★★

Korte was a city person through and through—but her husband dreamed of life in the country, so they compromised with a rambling old Victorian house in a smaller town. They were better qualified than most to take on a house Project: Korte's background was in interior design, and her husband was a contractor. So she had the vision, and he had the know-how to make it happen...once they got past the structural issues.

I have a longstanding love of house-restoration books. It's not a project that I particularly want to take on—keeping a one-bedroom apartment clean is enough for me!—but to me reading about house restoration is the real estate equivalent of armchair traveling. Bring on the floor plans, the unexpected termites, the dithering over which tile to use, the walls torn down to reshape the space...

Gutted is partly a house-restoration memoir, but more than that I'd say that it's Korte's story of growing up and finding a place for herself, and then finding a new place when things changed. It's a quick read but a fairly quiet book: The basic house restoration took years, and if I had to guess I'd say that the finer details are ongoing; Korte doesn't chart the process from beginning to end but rather dips in and out, highlighting certain areas (my mind was boggled by the idea of a space that may have been designed with pre-burial casket viewings in mind) and leaving others untouched. 3.5 stars for me (predictably, I would have liked more house details), but will be higher for those looking for something that is more about family and figuring oneself out.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "The Rise and Fall of the Non-trad Wife" by Natasha Ansari

The Rise and Fall of the Non-trad Wife by Natasha Ansari
Published June 2025
★★★

I recently went down a rabbit hole that started with a tradwife murder mystery and kind of...went from there. This came up in my search, and I couldn't tell whether or not it was about, well, tradwives (women voluntarily staying at home and, like...being 1950s housewives, but in the 2020s?). But it was on Kindle Unlimited, and I make questionable reading choices when I temporarily have Kindle Unlimited, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Now: This was not the sort of tradwife story I was looking for. That's just as well (because tradwife life sounds terrible, and I wouldn't wish it upon Ansari or almost anyone else), but I'll just put that up front in case the title raised questions for anyone else. But this is a story of expectation vs. reality: Ansari got married in part because that was the societal expectation, and over time she found that what she wanted and expected out of marriage was not what her marriage looked like, and not what it was going to look like. And: that she was going to feel more like herself if not in this marriage.

This is one for readers who have followed convention and then realized that convention isn't, or isn't entirely, for them. It wasn't what I was looking for, but that's not a fault of the book (I was looking for something pretty specific!), but it's a very fast read. Here's hoping that Ansari's life looks more like one that she wants now.

Review: "My Childhood Experience of Anorexia Nervosa and How I Recovered" by Clare Purkiss

My Childhood Experience of Anorexia Nervosa and How I Recovered by Clare Purkiss
Published November 2022
★★

A very short memoir. The writing is solid, but there just isn't enough here—though Kindle put this at 83 pages, I'd put it closer to 30 (double-spaced) pages. I wouldn't usually track something so short, but I like to have an account of my Kindle Unlimited reads.

So more of an essay than anything, tracking Purkiss's experience through illness at a young age but simply without the space for a complex story. Might be a fit for younger readers who find themselves trying to recover and looking for a "been there, done that" (though: I will note that it isn't really a "how I managed" book, again simply because there isn't space for real interrogation of experience and thought), but not really the book for me.