Book Review
Caught in the Turmoil of History
by Meg Nola
Moving at the engrossing pace of a novel, "Caught in the Turmoil of History" is an illuminating family biography. With a timeline sprawling from the late nineteenth century to the Cold War, Ivana Caccia and Maroje Mihovilović’s...
Book Review
Cigar Box Lithographs: Volume VI
by Meg Nola
A significant resource for collectors, "Cigar Box Lithographs: Volume VI" focuses on cigar box label depictions of Native Americans. Written by a collector of cigar boxes since the 1950s, Charles J. Humber’s "Cigar Box Lithographs...
Book Review
Heart-work
by Meg Nola
Eloquent, nuanced, and containing wry and poignant humor, the short story collection "Heart-work" illuminates Northeastern lives across the decades. About intimacy and interconnection, Roberta Silman’s short story collection...
Book Review
They Call You Back
by Meg Nola
Tim Z. Hernandez’s "They Call You Back" expands upon his prior documentary novel All They Will Call You, about the deaths of twenty-eight Mexican nationals in a California plane crash. In January of 1948, a plane carrying Mexican...
Book Review
The Propagandist
by Meg Nola
In Cécile Desprairies’s disquieting historical novel "The Propagandist", a woman reflects on her mother’s experiences as a World War II collaborator. Coline, Lucie’s youngest daughter, contrasts her mother’s duplicitous past...
Book Review
The Half-Life of Guilt
by Meg Nola
In Lynn Stegner’s novel "The Half-Life of Guilt", a couple’s personal and professional relationship is tested as they protest the endangerment of a whale population. Clair is a biologist and botanist who grew up on her family’s...
Book Review
Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions
by Meg Nola
A commanding short story collection, Caribbean Canadian Nalo Hopkinson’s "Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions" blends ecological awareness, cultural heritage, and fantastical happenings. In the mordant story “Clap Back,” Wenda, an...
Book Review
Adventures on Land and Sea
by Meg Nola
Impressionistic and enthusiastic, "Adventures on Land and Sea" is an exuberant travelogue set in Southern France. The fourth volume of the Savoring the Olde Ways series, Carole Bumpus’s travelogue "Adventures on Land and Sea"...