Apparently, this is the week where I am posting pieces everywhere on the Internet except this blog.

Earlier this month I mentioned reading Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice by Sylvia Bell White and Jody LePage, an oral history by a woman who grew up in the segregated south then migrated to Milwaukee at 17. I also had a chance to interview Jody LePage about the book for a story that was published this week in The Cap Times in Madison (a newspaper I interned for in grad school and still do some writing for now).

The reason Bell White is, perhaps, more well-known in her community than the average person is because of an incident in 1958. Her 22-year-old younger brother, Daniel, was murdered by a Milwaukee police officer after a traffic stop. After the officers involved realized they couldn’t justify Daniel’s shooting, the planted a knife on his body and made up a story that Daniel was a fleeing felon. It took decades for the truth to come out, and Sylvia was one of the more vocal advocates for her brother and her family.

There were a lot of fascinating things about this book, some that I got to mention in my review and some that I didn’t. The structure, for one, was really cool. Every chapter opens with some historical details that LePage provided as context for the sections that Sylvia narrated in her own voice. It gives you this wonderful sense of who Sylvia was — her sense of humor, her tenacity, her bright spirit — in a way that you don’t get in books that mix quotes and context together.

When I interviewed LePage, one of the things we talked about is the similarities between Daniel’s murder and Trayvon Martin’s death. She pointed out that Martin’s murder reinforces one of the main ideas of the book, understanding the subtle racism that still pervades the world and how it influenced Sylvia’s own quest for social justice. I didn’t get to write about that much in the review, but it really does give this book a hook that is hard to ignore.

Anyway, I hope you’ll take a minute to check out the review over at The Cap Times. It was a difficult piece to get right, especially for a book that I think is an important read and that I wanted to do justice to. I’m proud of how it turned out (and even more appreciative of the smoothing that my editor did that really made it better).

If you have any more specific questions about the book, please leave them in the comments here and I’ll try to answer them!

One of my favorite ways to find new-to-me nonfiction writers (particularly writers who do journalistic nonfiction) is to read the long stories or profiles that get featured in major newspapers and magazines.

I fell in love with journalist Katy Butler’s writing because of a 2010 New York Times Magazine piece called “What Broke My Father’s Heart,” a look at medical interventions and our path to death. She has a book out next month that expands on the piece, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, that I’ve been reading rather slowly over the last few weeks. It’s equally as wonderful, and a book that probably wouldn’t have gotten on my radar without first reading her NYT piece. 

That’s a roundabout way of getting to the reason why I read Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President by Eli Saslow. In June, Saslow wrote a beautiful and, truly, heartbreaking profile of Mark and Jackie Barden, parents who lost their seven-year-old son Daniel in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It’s a remarkably detailed and devastating piece that I couldn’t get out of my head hours after I read it.

Because I loved Saslow’s writing so much, I went online to see if he had written any books. I was glad to find Ten Letters, a 2011 book that explores the relationship between citizens and their president through the written word.

Every night, an aid delivers a briefing book to President Barack Obama. Included among the policy memos and scheduling details is a purple folder that contains 10 letters to the president. Every day, specific staff members at the White House sift through the thousands of letters and e-mails that arrive to choose these letters — 10 voices that presidential aides say help inspire the president and guide him towards that is happening across the country.

In Ten Letters, Saslow profiles 10 of the people who wrote to the president in late 2009 and early 2010. The subjects range in age, ethnicity, location, political affiliation and economic status. Yet all of them felt compelled, for one reason or another, to write directly to the president to have their voice heard. Most didn’t expect to hear back from him, but some did, and their reactions are part of this story too.

I started the book the day that it arrived in the mail and absolutely flew through it. It features exactly the same kinds of things that I loved from Saslow’s profile of the Barden’s, yet brings the stories together in a way that provides context about issues that still matter — health care, the economy, immigration, education. Saslow is able to use these individual stories to give context to Obama’s presidency and offer a snapshot of what it meant to be American at this specific moment.

Honestly, I’m getting the shivers just thinking back to how much I loved this book. Beyond admiring what great journalism it is, I felt inspired by these stories in a way that I don’t often expect from political writing. Saslow is a generous and talented writer who I hope will be writing more. Ten Letters is an amazing book and I hope that you will get a copy to read soon.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of guest posting for fellow blogger and pen pal Julie over at JulzReads. Julie is currently lakeside in Wisconsin celebrating her 10 year anniversary with her hubby — she asked several bloggers to share their bookshelves while she was gone.

You can get a sneak peek at one of my favorite bookshelves at the left — my read nonfiction shelf. I just recently culled, dusted and rearranged that shelf, I love looking at it and remembering some of my favorite reads over the last several years.

I hope you’ll pop over to Julie’s blog to read the rest of the post and join a little discussion about the benefits of separating your read and unread books on different bookshelves. Enjoy!

Title: Son of a Gun: A Memoir
Author: Justin St. Germain
Genre: Memoir
Year: 2013
Publisher: Random House
Acquired: From the publisher as part of a TLC Book Tour
Rating:

Review: In early September 2001, 20-year-old Justin St. Germain arrived home from class to find out that his mother, Debbie, had been shot and killed and his missing stepfather, Ray, was the most likely suspect. Her murder in Tombstone, Ariz., home of the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, was dismissed as “a real-life old West murder mystery.” At 27, after trying to put Debbie’s murder and his “white trash” life behind him with a move to San Francisco, St. Germain realizes that he hasn’t let his past go. In Son of a Gun, St. Germain chronicles his attempt to understand his mother’s life and death by revisiting the public records related to her murder and by confronting the menaces of his past.

Son of a Gun is a fascinating mix of a book — mostly memoir, with a dash of true crime and historical nonfiction thrown in for good measure. St. Germain uses the history of Tombstone, a town consistently marred by the threat of gun violence, and the investigation of his mother’s death to give context to her murder and to his story of being a poor, troubled kid in several make-shift, working class families. It’s sad and gripping and tense all at the same time.

Debbie, as she is explored and explained by her son, is a fascinating woman. After serving as an army paratrooper, she moved to Arizona with one of her first husbands and owned a series of small businesses along Tombstone’s main street. But she also never stayed in a relationship long, constantly uprooting St. Germain and his brother when a relationship would go awry, never standing up for herself and choosing bad men every time. Yet in the end, her relationship with Ray seemed harmonious up until she was killed.

One of the things that struck me while reading is how universal parts of this story can be. We all reach a point at which we can finally see our parents as people — as flawed and uncertain as we are, but just with a few more years of experience to draw on. St. Germain never really gets answers to all of his questions; they are too big, and many of the people who could answer them aren’t around to do so. But he does succeed in painting a loving, frustrated and honest portrait of a family that is hard to put down.

Other Tour Stops: Jenn’s Bookshelves | The Best Books Ever (Aug. 14) | Patricia’s Wisdom (Aug. 19) | The Relentless Reader (Aug. 20) | A Bookworm’s World (Aug. 21) | Tiffany’s Bookshelf (Aug. 22) | River City Reading (Aug. 26) |  WV Stitcher (Aug. 28) | From the TBR Pile (Aug. 29) | Reviews by Elizabeth A. White (Sept. 3) | Book Chase (Sept. 4) | BookChickDi (Sept. 5) |

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!