Skipping Christmas by John Grisham *

SkippingChristmas was quickly released as Christmas with the Kranks. This trite and predictable novel became a disappointing movie reviewed with: “A mirthless movie as fresh as last year's fruit cake, Christmas with the Kranks is a coarse, garish comedy that promotes conformity.”

The story opens with CPA Luther Krank deciding to skip Christmas because his daughter Blair will be away and to use the saved money to take a Caribbean cruise with his wife. This follows with a series of slapstick sketches about reactions to this unexpected behavior.

The movie received a dismal 5% on Rotten Tomatoes to spite Chris Columbus writing the screenplay from a Grisham novel and stars like Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Dan Aykroyd.

The book caricatures the police, firefighters, neighbors. It is also racist. In addition to all the trivial complaints and inconveniences, Luther Krank worries that his daughter might marry someone with dark skin, leading up to his celebration that her fiancé is lighter skin than a tanned Luther.

Hard to believe John Grisham is the author.

Instead of reading SkippingChristmas, I’d recommend skipping Skipping Christmas.

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Educated by Tara Westover *****

Educated by Tara Westover could be the non-fiction companion to It by Stephen King. The parallels are striking. Both tell the story of children raised in horrific circumstances and their courageous, and unlikely, struggle to overcome their childhoods. Both recount brutal bullying, abusive parenting, misogyny, and the PTSD-like aftermath. If any readers of Stephen King’s novel imagine he exaggerated the humanity underlying his story, you only need to read Tara Westover’s memoir.

Tara makes the case that her father suffers from bipolar disorder. Whether this is true or not, she makes a powerful statement about how a parent’s behavior can affect the children. Regardless of the underlying cause, her father was controlling and misogynistic. When she needed protection from abuse, he supported her abuser. When she needed support, he attacked her. As a result, she suffered from years of insecurity.

When Tara was sixteen, she gathered enough courage to leave home to go to college. In college, she learned of a world beyond her family and began to see how her family had entrapped and endangered her. However, her early training in loyalty and obedience made her doubt these new views. As a result, she repeatedly returned home, only to be furthered abused, until she learned the lesson again.

 Alternately, this memoir is a stark testimony for alternative medicine. Her family avoided hospitals in favor of homeopathic tinctures, energy works, and faith. The family had plenty of chances to turn to medical doctors. Three severe automobile accidents, three head traumas, two serious burns, broken bones, and various other traumas. These were treated without traditional medical services. In all cases, people survived with home treatments.

Her family had seven children. Today three have PhDs and four have not graduated from college. Her parents founded and run the successful alternate medicine company: https://butterflyexpressions.org/welcome/story

I personally note how the impact of early childhood indoctrination is so long-lasting. In my personal life, after my divorce, my ex-wife took my daughter, refused visitation, and told the daughter that I was evil. By the time my daughter reached adulthood, now almost 50, it was too late to change her mind.

It by Stephen King comes to life.

This is an interesting review: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/millennial-media/201804/psychologists-take-tara-westovers-memoir-educated

Rebuttal by parents’ lawyers: https://www.hjnews.com/preston/news/educated-should-be-read-with-grain-of-salt-says-family/article_0583f217-6fd2-51de-a891-9ca32adb589c.html

For my expanded notes: http://1book42day.blogspot.com/2018/08/dreamers-of-day-by-mary-doria-russell.html

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It by Stephen King *****

Seven eleven-year-olds take on It, a mind-reading monster (from outer space?) who has been terrorizing the town of Derry for centuries (or longer?). Unsure if they have killed It, they swear to return if It returns. Twenty-seven years later, It returns, and so do they. Prior to the happy ending, there is violence, misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, bullying, child abuse, and animal abuse. Not for the faint-hearted.

The book has much to say about childhood. Children have more faith and trust than adults. Also, children are often invisible (ignored) to adults.

The book deals with ignoring and forgetting. The town ignores and forgets when the Legion of White Decency burns down The Black Spot, murdering the black soldiers who built and patronized the club. Teachers ignore bullies. The town forgets its history of violence. While It returns every twenty-seven years, the town does not remember from one incident to the next.

The book has a poor view of parents. Some parents beat their children. Other sexually abuse them. Some are more subtle, as the mother who convinces her child that he is sickly, and other parents that ignore their surviving child when another child dies.

The book also has a poor view of the town leaders. The people who rape the forests for personal gain. The police who turn a blind eye to It and the Legion of White Decency.

Almost everyone in the book is isolated, selfish, and psychotic. The notable exception is the Loser Club, the seven children who are good friends to each other.

It often appears as Pennywise, the clown, but also as whatever horror is in the mind of Its target.

It byStephen King. Eleven hundred pages of horror. (If anything triggers you, you have been warned.)

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The Tale Teller by Anne Hillerman ****

The Tale Teller by Anne Hillerman is book 23 of this series originated by her father Tony Hillerman. Leaphorn investigates a missing biil (dress) from a museum donation. When Leaphorn visits the museum, the lady who opened the donation package mysteriously dies. Bernie is at the flea market when someone discovers a vendor selling their stolen bolo tie. Also, when Bernie is jogging, she discovers a dead body which the FBI is very secretive about.

The book has three protagonists, all Navajo police. (Lieutenant) Joe Leaphorn (retired). In a previous book, he suffered a gunshot to his head and now has difficulty speaking English, though his Navajo is fine. Sergeant Jim (Cheeseburger) Chee is married to Bernadette (Bernie) Manuelito. Chief Manuelito and his wife Juanita are important 19^th-century historical figures and the biil belonged to Juanita.

Another book of Navajo traditions, crafts, and history. The mysteries are intertwined and the reveals surprising.

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SPOILERS Gull Gone by Donna Andrews ***

Gull Gone by Donna Andrews is the 21^st Meg Landslow mystery. This time her grandmother Cordelia has opened a craft center in the mountains of rural Virginia. Four generations of family, plus students, teachers, and staff assemble for a summer of classes, fine dining, relaxation, and summer camp for the kids. Everyone is happy until the local police get called to investigate a spate of petty vandalism. This is shortly followed by the murder of a teacher and another of a student.

***Spoiler Alert***

Motiveless murders.

Once the murderer is revealed, the motivation is barely plausible. Meg herself didn’t believe the murder’s story. “This might sound plausible if I hadn’t known Prine was stabbed in the back.” The second murder had even sillier motivation. “I figured another death would make them look less closely at the people who had motives to kill Prine.”

The reader can’t be expected to suspect someone without a plausible motive.

Red herrings of another color.

Red herrings can not be considered misleading if all the red herring suspects are guilty, just not of the murder.

Confession before detection.

The murderer is not suspected until the murderer commits an additional act which reveals their role. The detective and investigators accomplish little until the culprit reveals their intentions.

The subplot and title involve Meg’s grandfather looking for a long-thought-extinct-seagull.

A lighthearted mystery that solves itself in spite of the efforts of Meg and several law enforcement agencies.

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Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate *****

BeforeWe Were Yours by Lisa Wingate tells the story of a girl whose siblings were kidnapped to be sold to families willing to pay top dollar for blonde orphans and a privileged woman who stumbled onto the aftermath of this commerce in stolen children. A moving story of courageous women, abuse of the powerless, and indifference of the privileged.

In the present day, Avery Stafford, daughter of a powerful political family discovered an unexplained connection between her grandmother and May Crandall, a lady confined to a nursing home after she was found living with her dead sister and abandoned by her out-of-state children. Avery set out to explain this connection and, in the process, uncovered a family secret.

In 1939, Rill Foss, the oldest of five siblings, was kidnapped by Georgia Tann and her Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Unsuccessfully, she did her twelve-year-old best to protect them all from abuse, murder, and being sold into adoption. This part of the story was based on actual events.

In 1939, the Foss family included Briny and Queenie, the parents, and the five children: Rill (12), Carmellia (10), Lark (6), Fern (4), and Gabion, the only boy, (2). They lived on the Mississippi River in a shanty boat called Arcadia.

Avery was engaged to an old family friend, Elliot. His mother Bitsy, and Avery’s mother Honeybee were pressing them to set a date. When Elliot learned of Avery’s quest to uncover the truth, he did his best to convince her to stop her investigation. When he justified his pressure to halt her efforts declaring, “And that’s because I love you and want what’s best for you,” the reader knew this relationship was doomed. It took Avery bit longer to figure this out.

The story ended with happiness, mirroring the author’s observation that when the scandal broke, it did not generate a public outrage. “The general public sentiment was that having been given over from poverty to privilege, the children were better off where they were, no matter the circumstances of their adoptions.”

Geography: Memphis is on the western border of Tennessee on the Mississippi River. Aiken South Carolina is in the middle of the southern border of South Carolina (850 miles from Memphis). Augusta Georgia is about 35 minutes south of Aiken. Edisto is a South Carolina beach community about three hours east of Aiken.

Do not start this book until you have sufficient time to quickly finish it. The middle is horrific and will give nightmares.

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Wish You Well by David Baldacci *****

When a car accident kills their father and leaves their mother in a coma, Lou and Oz leave NYC to go to live with their great-grandmother in the mountains of Virginia. Wish You Well by David Baldacci is a paean to the simple life and polemic against logging and mining. It is also a story about miracles. “Maybe the wishing well did work. Or perhaps it was the unwavering faith of a little boy.”

Lou, great-granddaughter of Louisa Mae Cardinal is twelve when she moves to the remote mountains of Virginia (no electricity, no phone) with her brother, Oz. As educated New Yorkers, conflicts arise, but they are outspoken, willing to work hard and fight if necessary. The first day at school, Lou beats up the class bully, and in court, when the evil corporation wants to steal great-grandmother’s land, Oz yells, “It’s wrong. That man is a liar.”

As might be expected in a morality tale, Lou, Oz, and great-grandmother always take the high road, and the forces of evil never do.

Lou looked angry. “That’s not fair. [The evil neighbor] sells his crop and makes money, and we feed his family.”

“What’s fair is a momma and her children eating good,” answered [great-grandmother.]

Most problems in the book are solved from outside, not by the direct efforts of the protagonists. In this book of faith and miracles, the protagonists lead virtuous lives and providence takes care of them. This includes being attacked by wild animals, barn burning down, and mother’s coma.

Great grandmother Louisa Mae Cardinal is a strong and savvy woman. Pretty much everyone is afraid of her. She is no one’s fool, nor does she suffer fools. When a nurse arrives with the two children and the mother in a coma, she expects to be accommodated. “I suffer from…allergies… I have certain specific dietary needs… I will also require free reign in overseeing the children… Now you can show me to my room.”

Great-grandmother replies, “Fact is, we ain’t got room for you.”

When the nurse protests, the point is reinforced with, “Now, I’m too old to waste time firing a warning shot.”

David Baldacci broke away from his genre to write this autobiographical-inspired novel in 2000. The following year John Grisham did the same (The Painted House]. In 2014 John Grisham wrote a similar polemic [Gray Mountain] against the coal companies, where a female protagonist moves from NYC to the mountains of Virginia. The two men are close in age, from the South, and friends.

A story of good vs evil, poor farmers vs greedy companies and neighbors. Not a spoiler: good triumphs.

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