Discomfiting, but memorable.
“When it began to feel as though my life had become defined by a series of divides,” writes cultural journalist Busch (Geography of Home, 1999, etc.), “it seemed to be the time to take a swim.”
Divided from a close friend by death, from her twin sons by the impenetrable fog of adolescence, the pushing-50 author wanted to “find a divide that could be crossed.” So on August 29, 2001, she swam across the Hudson River. Less than two weeks later, the World Trade Center towers fell. After that, Busch explains, she decided “to begin each autumn by swimming across a river, some small, personal trial by water that could secure safe passage into the coming year.” By 2005 she had traveled to nine rivers and swum across eight, discovering along the way stories of transformation and renewal. Beginning close to home in New York, then moving west to the Mississippi, Busch captures the character and history of each river. She draws on the writings of Least Heat-Moon, Edward Abbey, Mark Twain and Bill Bryson, among others; the technical expertise of engineers; the practical knowledge of park rangers, campers and assorted river lovers, including Pete Seeger; and her own observations and impressions. We learn that the sweet-flavored Hudson flows both north and south, that the Delaware has swift currents, boulders and deep pools, that the Susquehanna is unnaturally warm. The beautiful Connecticut River has black silt; the busy Mississippi and the Monongahela rivers are brown and muddy; the Cheat and Current rivers are clear and green. Forethought, research and careful planning generally preceded Busch’s ventures, except for a projected swim across the Ohio, derailed by reliance on luck and happenstance. Her friend Onni was usually her swimming partner, and on heavily trafficked rivers a raft or boat accompanied her for safety. In the deepest sense, however, these were solitary journeys exploring an internal landscape as well as connecting to the natural world around her.
Discomfiting, but memorable.Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-59691-045-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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