The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin ****

The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin is her latest book on ASD – Autism Spectrum Disorder. Dr. Grandin is the poster child (now 70) for successful treatment of people with ASD. In this book, she covers the latest research on the causes, diagnoses, and treatment of ASD.

“Well, she certainly is an odd little girl,” [the doctor] told mother.

Dr. Grandin is a high-functioning person on the “spectrum.” For example, she is verbal. Some people on the spectrum, never learn to speak. However, she has a very non-typical brain anatomy. She has had many brain scans with different technologies. This is practically a hobby of hers. She believes and argues that ASD is a brain problem; nature first, nurture second.

She is an advocate for discovering what autistic does best and emphasizing that, not to try to make them fit into the neurotypical track.  The is really good advice to everyone. However, she also emphasizes learning turn-taking, manners, and self-control. She says,

“Boys who cry can work for Google. Boys who trash computers cannot.”

Anyone with an interest in ASD should certainly read this book. She has lots of (good) advice for autistics and their parents/teachers

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr *****

At the start of World War II, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind adolescent. She lives with her father in Paris. Werner Pfennig is also an adolescent. He lives with his younger sister in a German orphanage.  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr chronicles how the war affects their lives and how they respond. Both children are highly intelligent. Their intelligence guides them through the challenges they face.

Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris as the German army takes over. They end up with an uncle and a housekeeper in Saint-Malo on the north coast of France. When the Germans advance to Saint-Malo, questions of survival and resistance challenge Marie-Laure and the others who share her sanctuary. In the interim, she lives in a world of sounds, smells, Braille books, and music. She is curious and concerned, but never terrified.

Werner has a natural talent for math and electronics. He fixes all kinds of electronic equipment, especially radios. This talent opens one opportunity after another. He is enrolled in an elite school and from there he joins the conflict locating resistance transmitters. Given the war, this is a relatively safe and comfortable assignment.

From humble beginnings, both children end up in positions of privilege and make decisions of privilege, sometimes choosing individual advantage and sometimes more altruistic alternatives. The author, using the metaphor of a frog in a cooking pot of cold water, makes the case for the gradual corruption of good people.

“Some people are weak in some ways, sir. Others in other ways.”

“Everyone is trapped in their roles: orphans, cadets,…,the old Jewess who lives upstairs.”

A third thread concerns an invaluable stone, Sea of Flames, which Sargent Major Reinhold von Rumpel searches to steal for a glorious German museum.

The book is full of beautiful descriptions, especially from the point of view of blind Marie-Laure.

“She walks. Now there are cold round pebbles beneath her feet. Now crackling weeds. Now something smoother: wet, unwrinkled sand. She bends and spreads her fingers. It’s like cold silk. Cold, sumptuous silk unto which the sea has laid offerings: pebbles, shells, barnacles. Tiny slips of wrack. Her fingers dig and reach; the drops of rain touch the back of her neck, the backs of her hands. The sand pulls the heat from her fingertips, from the soles of her feet.”

 The book is a beautifully written exploration of the conflict between innocence and intelligence on one side and brutality and survival on the other. The author does not allow simple responses to complex situations but still allows for some optimism, at least for the thoughtful and clever.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.

Trail of Tears by John Ehle ****

Trail of Tears by John Ehle is a non-fiction account of “The (19^th century) Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation.” Ehle makes extensive use of primary documents, often with extended extracts from contemporary letters and newspaper accounts. 

The Trail of Tears narrowly refers to the final forced removal of the Cherokees from the southeastern United States to eastern Oklahoma in 1838. The Cherokee called this “the trail where we cried.” More broadly, it refers to the decade following the passage by Andrew Jackson of The Indian Removal Act of 1830 including both voluntary and involuntary migrations of the “five civilized tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole).

The Cherokee were the final group to complete the migration and had the most organized and best-documented resistance, including two supreme court cases. The Cherokees were divided into a group that argued for negotiating the best treaty and moving, and those that argued that they not leave the land that was rightfully theirs.

In the end, the group that argued for the treaty ended with the best outcome, but it is easy to see how reasonable people in the 1830s expected otherwise. Those reasonable people with their faith in the federal government and the courts failed. The federal government failed. The government would not challenge the South until twenty years later and on a different issue.

The Proud and The Free by Janet Dailey is a fictional account of the same history (http://1book42day.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-proud-and-free-by-janet-dailey.html). Take your pick.

 Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.

Seven Up by Janet Evanovich *****

Janet Evanovich will release Look Alive Twenty-Five: A Stephanie Plum Novel in November 2018. I just reread Seven Up where Stephanie Plum again juggles her love life between Joe Morelli and Ranger, while solving several mysteries and murders. I started it after dinner on one day and finished it before dinner on the next. These novels are best sellers for a reason. Cozy mysteries with a little sex and a lot of laughs.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.

The Last Odd Day by Lynne Hinton ****

The Last Odd Day by Lynne Hinton is a story of loss and love. Jean Witherspoon’s life is full of death and disappointments until she is left all alone. Like the others in her life, she perseveres, mourning and grieving, but never quitting. Acceptance.

Jean introduces her parents as an example of love.

“If you’d seen my parents…they appeared…all wrong for each other. You likely have dismissed their marriage. …However, what I learned of love and marriage came swiftly and gently from the relationship I witnessed between them. Though our time together as family was brief and even laden with sorrow, here is the place where I learned how good it can really be.”

This sets the tone for the book…sorrow, persistence, acceptance.

Another example is a folktale where the village has an isolated cabin for when a mother loses her child. The mother spends six weeks in the cabin. Afterward, the village ladies burn the cabin giving to mother a choice to stay in the cabin or escape to rebuild the cabin for the next grief-stricken mother.

The lesson here is clear. Get over, get on, and get to work.

If you are in the mood for a quiet love story without passion or joy, but with care and tolerance, this is your book.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.

The Proud and the Free by Janet Dailey ****

 The Proud and The Free by Janet Dailey (historical fiction) follow two Cherokee families through the 1830s, The Trail of Tears. The novel open with the luxurious live on wealthy plantations with large manor houses, fancy furnishings, and black slaves. Over the course of the decade they are in denial of the serious efforts to remove them from Georgia until the army shows up. The ones that survive the ordeal start over in Oklahoma.

This is a brutal story. While the injustice is well represented. The mistreatment and abuse is mostly reported, but not shown. For example, when a young Cherokee girl is raped by a couple of soldiers, the aftermath includes observations and discussions, we never see the crime or anything from the girl’s point of view.

The action follows the two families. Their individual issues generally take precedence over the larger issues of the treatment of the Cherokee.

The book follows the history closely and repeats the apocryphal quote by President Andrew Jackson when the Cherokee won their case in the Supreme Court: “John Marshall has made his decision m let him enforce it if he can.”

An engaging novel which combines the Trail of Tears history with the lives and loves of these two families. Dailey is a romance author, but this book is more history than romance.

Interesting observation: the Cherokee were stuck on the wrong side of the Mississippi because the ice was too thick for the ferries to operate, but too thin for the wagons to cross.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.