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: "Daughter of the Mountains" by Fatimah Asghar

Daughter of the Mountains by Fatimah Asghar
Published July 2026 via One World
★★★★

Poems of homeland and family and love lost.

This is a fairly wide-ranging collection, drifting from mountain yearnings to observations on history and homeland to more maybe more expected reflections on relationships that have seen better days.

My favourite pieces here are about homeland and history, my favourite lines about yearning for the mountains. The poem [the women in my family] talks about names lost to time: women's names, that is; only the winds & only the mountains / keep them. we've forgotten the names, writes Asghar (24*). This year I sat down with my in-laws and asked for as much family history, as many names, as they could tell me; the men's names stretched back generations, but the women's names (many of which had been changed in marriage, anyway) had been lost to time. (One of those things that transcends culture, I think: Men's names hang on and women's names drop off the page.)

Another poem, [other life], tells itself in reverse, and if I'm going to pick apart one of these poems on my own time it's going to be this one—I love a bit of structural play in poetry, a bit of the unexpected. The poems about romance (and romance lost) didn't work as well for me, less because of facility with language and more because those are themes I see a lot of in contemporary poetry, but the range here means that a lot of readers will find something of interest.

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

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

Review: "The Acrobat" by Wisława Szymborska

The Acrobat by Wisława Szymborska
Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak
Published July 2026 via Ecco
★★★★

I like maps, / because they lie. / Because they give no access to the vicious truth. / Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly / they spread before me a world / not of this world. (loc. 369*)

Szymborska was an award-winning (Nobel-winning, in fact) Polish poet, and it's easy to see why. This collection pulls together some of her works, translated in English.

I haven't read any of Szymborska's poetry before, but honestly, these are poems I'd like to return to. I don't always understand them, but that's my preference in poetry; they're accessible enough that I could take something from each poem and complex enough to make me think, and think again.

He made himself a glass violin so he could see what music looks like. (loc. 564)

I don't speak Polish and can't comment on the translation, but I loved the introduction—for all that I enjoyed Szymborska's wit and sly commentary, I think I would have gotten less out of it without having read the introduction, written by one of the translators, first. Cavanagh spends some time talking about how they chose to approach the poetry, including rhymes and neologisms and alliteration. It was something I came back to again and again as the book progressed. How might this look in the original Polish, for example?

So much world all at once—how it rustles and bustles! / Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels, / the flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather— / how to line them all up, how to put them together? (loc. 497)

You can see that the translators leaned hard into rhyme and alliteration, presumably at the expense of literal translation. I imagine this is a judgement call for anyone doing translation work, not only but especially of poetry: When do you go for precision, and when do you go for vibe? I take no issue with the choice to go with vibe, but I'd be dead curious to see a translation that went for something directly literal, too.

Look at the happy couple. / Couldn't they at least try to hide it, / fake a little depression for their friends' sake! (loc. 687)

A high four stars and one I'm likely to return to.

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

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

Review: "Glasses" by Adam Geczy

Glasses by Adam Geczy
Published July 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

Back to my favorite nonfiction series! This Object Lesson is about (you guessed it) glasses, an object that I know both quite well and not as well as I ought to. Did reading this inspire me to figure out where my poor neglected spectacles are and tote them with me to an evening class? Yes. Did they help? Arguably. Did I then immediately put them aside and go back to my glasses-less life? Yes.*

But I digress. In Glasses, Geczy traces the phenomenon of four-eyed life, delving a bit into the physical history of glasses (which, all things considered, haven't been around that long) and quite a bit more into the cultural history—who has historically worn glasses in TV shows and movies, what the implications are for character development, etc. It will probably surprise nobody to hear that glasses are often a stand-in for nerdiness or undesirability, though Geczy also discusses the role of sunglasses as symbols of mystery and privacy.

A couple of missed opportunities here. Geczy says that, looking at Pixar films, he can find only two uses of glasses, in "Inside Out" and "Turning Red." But...what about "The Incredibles"? Edna wears glasses, and the entire family wears masks at various points (not glasses but might be an interesting discussion point). I haven't seen most Pixar movies, so I took a quick scan of a Wikipedia list and immediately turned up "Up" and "Soul" as well; there might be others. Now, the inclusion of Edna would not weaken Geczy's broader point about the portrayal of characters with glasses, and I'm guessing that neither would the inclusion of the characters in "Up" and "Soul" and whoever else a more detailed look at Pixar movies turned up. That said, I tend to want more research than vibe in this series, and when I can so easily refute something the author says, I'm disappointed. (I also hoped for significantly more about glasses and the Khmer Rouge—it's something that Geczy brings up late in the book, but only in passing, which is too bad when it's something that makes such a strong point about the assumption that people with glasses have an intellectual bent.)

Although this isn't memoir, Geczy also tends to extend his own (unhappy) experience of wearing glasses as a child to what he assumes glasses-wearing is like for all children. I don't know that there's anywhere where more kids are impressed than unimpressed by glasses, but as someone who was very excited to get her first glasses at the age of eight (and for whom they were, socially, a nonevent), I think there's more nuance there, probably tied to location and gender and generation, among other things. I'm resisting (valiantly) the urge to poll my college alumnae about their experiences wearing glasses (or not) as children, and I'm only hanging on to that resistance because it would be an extremely unscientific poll (mine always are), but...this might have been a good opportunity for a more scientific poll.

More pressingly: Geczy makes several comments about eyewear sometimes being used to hide deformities or facial oddities, not just for the sake of the wearer but for the sake of the viewer. His comments about this are generally tangential (he doesn't go into this in any depth), or perhaps just flippant, but the implication throughout is that it's a good thing for people to not have to see people's disabilities or differences, and...well, it did not sit well. It reminds me of ugly laws, and surely we have come beyond those? It's a small part of the book but brought the whole thing down for me.

All told them, some interesting points and a lively voice, but since these are short books maybe not enough room to go into depth on all the things I would have liked to see. Not my favorite of the series so far, but I'm excited to see what else the series brings.

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

* The eye doctor told me that they were my driving glasses. I don't drive, I said. Then they're your not-reading glasses, he said. But that's never, I said. He thought I was joking, so I still don't really know when I'm meant to wear them.

Review: "70,000" by Lenna Jawdat

70,000 by Lenna Jawdat
Published July 2026 via Central Avenue Poetry
★★★★★

In 1948, alongside the other events that comprised the formation of the Israeli state, some 70,000 books were removed from Palestinian homes and libraries. Some 6,000 are now in Israeli libraries, where most Palestinians cannot access them; the remaining 64,000 have presumably been lost to history. Jawdat, herself a poet of Palestinian descent, set out to illustrate this loss in the simplest of ways: by writing out the numbers 1 to 70,000.

The numbers start out simply—columns on a page. The columns tighten as Jawdat seeks to fit more numbers on each page, pens change, the columns expand and contract and fit themselves into and around art, interspersed with history (family history, Palestinian history) in the form of poetry.

I ask my partner to help me write numbers, notes Jawdat. He wrote less than 20 before tiring. (168*)

This is an inherently political book—there is no way for it not to be—and it is sharp and pointed and painful. Palestine is for Jawdat an abstraction to a point, a place her forebears fled and a place she does not know if she will ever be allowed to visit. And it is also, to her, an intensely real place, one tied up in family and scent and memory and war. And still a place she does not know if she will ever be allowed to visit.

What I like in poetry is sometimes idiosyncratic, but I like poetry that asks me to work for it, that asks me to think, that do something interesting with form. And this delivers in spades. My favorite poetry collection that I've read in a good long time.

*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: "A Hard Freedom" by Dan Chung

A Hard Freedom by Dan Chung
Published July 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

Years ago, Chung got involved with an organization dedicated to supporting North Korean refugees and defectors who have made their way to China and, sometimes, beyond. A Hard Freedom tells some of his stories, and some of the stories of the people he's met along the way.

I read Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy more than a decade ago, and it's stuck with me enough that I take a second look whenever I see a book about North Korea. To be fair, I am curious about most places I've never been (exceptions include Delaware and Tampa), but North Korea is of course unique for its closed-off nature and secretiveness.

A Hard Freedom wasn't really what I expected. Based on the description, I thought this would be largely about defectors' journeys through China (where detection by authorities can mean deportation back to North Korea, and consequently imprisonment in a labor camp) and into third countries (including South Korea). Maybe some anecdotes, but a few people's stories told in full throughout the book. I didn't expect so much of this to be about religion—it turns out that Crossing Borders, the organization Chung is involved in, is a Christian organization, and a lot of what they do centers on religion. Chung says early on that the point of the book is not to proselytize, but that religion is part of his story (and I suppose the organization's), and so he's included it. I do think he tried to limit how much he talked about religion, but it feels like perhaps religion is so ingrained in his life that even limiting how much it comes up in the book makes for...well, quite a lot more than I expected, when I thought I was just going to be reading a book about North Korea.

The book itself was a bit of a mixed bag for me. There's some interesting research and some devastating stories. Crossing Borders works mostly with women, many of whom were sold as wives or slaves when they crossed into China, and many of whom have suffered the sorts of hardships that should be unimaginable. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the demographics of people who try to get out of North Korea, but Chung notes that, for various reasons, it's often women of low social status. And again for various reasons, they're incredibly vulnerable in China, and even if they make it to South Korea, it can take a long time and a lot of work and support to reach any kind of emotional and physical stability.

The structure of the book felt disjointed, though, with a fair amount of repetition. Chung talks about a number of women he and Crossing Borders worked with, and returns to some of their stories throughout the book, but I found myself wishing he'd worked with a journalist who was used to teasing out stories and digging deep for details. There are also some odd things, like an out-of-left-field quotation from Elon Musk talking about how much better it is to be a prisoner of war in the US than in North Korea, and like...while I don't doubt that, there's also, like...Guantanamo...and everything the US is currently doing to immigrants...and if someone is going to be quoted on the subject, I'd prefer it to be an expert than it to be an egotistical billionaire.

With all this said: I'd likely still have read the book if I'd known that it was about the experiences of a specific, religious organization, but I'd have adjusted my expectations accordingly. And I'm curious now about the book Chung's former colleague wrote—but I'll go into that one with my expectations a bit clearer, and then I'll go read something a bit more academic on the subject.

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.