WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“I’m really friendly but not quite tame.”

I’ve wanted to read Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths & Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes for a bit, I just never got around to it. As someone who has been drawn to reoccurring archetypes in legend and lores throughout the world (and someone who embraces a wildness), this seemed the perfect read to listen to while traveling. (I attempted The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*UCK and realized pretty quickly that I’m not it’s intended audience.)

Women Who Run with the Wolves is a bit of an interesting presentation as it stresses early on that only the so-called “wild women” are intuitive and creative, and they are born into the wrong families and don’t fit in. It discredits the passion and intuition that drives others who don’t seem to fit the same archetype that Estes believes fits that archetype.  And where it gets preachy and almost demeaning to women who were not outcast is where I found it lacking.  She walked that back a bit later, but it annoyed me.

I was familiar with the majority of the myths presented, but I disagreed with some of her take-aways.  I think it needs a more nuanced approach. I do think more folks need to read the section “The Fallacy of Relationship as Completion,” and there are some great sound bites on independence and finding one’s voice, but I’m not sure I would recommend it.

GOOD DIRT – Charmaine Wilkerson

“She is no stranger to keeping time by what she has lost.”

When I reviewed Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel, Black Cake, back in 2022, I remarked that it was a solid debut, but I wished the transitions between POVs and timelines had been smoother. Her sophomore novel, Good Dirt (Ballantine Books 2025), similarly jumps timelines and POVS; however, those clunky transitions are gone. I liked Black Cake a lot. I loved Good Dirt.

Good Dirt centers around a part of American history that I was wholly ignorant of, and that is not only the use of slave potters but the hidden literacy these slaves inscribed in their pots. It’s absolutely fascinating, and it gives us the most memorable character in the novel, “Old Mo,” a 19th century stoneware jar, crafted by an enslaved potter. The jar had been in the Freeman family for six generations and was a valuable and extremely cherished family heirloom.  When Ebby Freeman is ten, robbers break into her home, killing her brother and shattering the jar.  She watches Baz die, and her life is forever altered and scarred by this moment.  When the novel opens, Ebby is preparing to marry a rich, white man that she loves.  She intends to carry her brother’s picture down the aisle with her. She’s left at the altar, and the woman who was known for the trauma she’d been a victim to as a child is back in the media spotlight as the jilted fiancée of the Henry Pepper. She escapes to France to confront her ghosts and lick her wounds.

This is very much Ebby’s story of healing from her childhood trauma and her broken heart, but it is also a novel of generational trauma, resilience, and good dirt. Wilkerson dances across a timeline with ease, taking us to Kandia in 1803, a pottery woman, who is stolen from her people and carried to another land, her husband’s baby growing inside. Decades of stolen lives, stolen stories, stolen moments, forced labor, forced relations, and forced acquiescence follows.  Good Dirt traverses that landscape in a delicate yet unyielding way – the story is just beautifully crafted.

I don’t want to spoil this one.  Much like Black Cake, part of the magic is watching it take shape, like a stoneware jar under the hands of a talented artisan.

Read this book.

THE LOVE ELIXIR OF AUGUSTA STERN – Lynda Cohen Loigman

“For a moment, Augusta could remember what it felt like to believe – not in the magic of witches or fairies, but in the magic of women who knew how to heal; the magic of women in the quiet of their kitchens, who could sweeten a bitter woman’ s heart or soothe a man’s temper with a cup of tea.”

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman ( St. Martin’s Press 2024) has whispers of Remarkably Bright Creatures and Big Fish with the slightest hint of When Women Were Dragons and Lessons in Chemistry. It’s a historical novel of folk remedies, science, women in male dominated fields, second chances, and found families – and it’s all wrapped in magic that smells like chicken soup. It’s cozy and warm, but if I think about it too hard, I think it’s the saddest book ever, just wrapped in warm and fuzzy trappings.

Augusta Stern, a pharmacist forced into retirement after lying about her age for a decade, relocates from New York to Rallentando Springs, a popular senior community in Florida that comes equipped with a pool.  (Her only requirement.) She moves in just before her 80th birthday and is still settling in when a blast from the past shows up in the form of Irving Rivkin, the boy who’d broken her heart six decades ago. (Augusta can hold a grudge.)

The novel, set in 1987, frequently jumps back to 1922. The reader gets some of the grief and struggles for Augusta and her sister when their mother dies, but the focus of the section is more on Esther, their father’s old-world aunt who brings traditional medicine into the home and butts heads with Augusta’s pharmacist father. Esther remarks that if she’d been a man, she’d have been called an apothecary; instead, she was seen as a witch.  Augusta finds herself determined to become a bridge between her great aunt and father, but also between the traditional medicines and the new. But Augusta makes a mistake, and Irving marries someone else, and Esther dies. She abandons the old and throws herself into pharmacy school, having to fight tooth and nail just to be acknowledged and respected.

Slowly, almost too slowly, the novel reveals what really happened back in 1922.  The writing is sharp – it’s funny and really quite cozy.  You’ll love Augusta, who is a spitfire from day one. But when I think about her life and how different it would have been, it guts me.  The ending doesn’t redeem that for me.  Not after all that time.  At least Irving had the twins.  And that’s why if I think about it too hard, it’s the saddest book.  (So, I just don’t think about it too hard.)

Read this book.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANNAH CRAFTS – Gregg Hecimovich

Nearly twenty decades now, I fancied myself a wannabe or soon-to-be scholar, and while my focus centered on South African literature, I liked to apply postcolonial theories and the concept of “the empire writes back” to African American literature and the use of canonical works in carving out stories.  I was also a person who regularly reread Bleak House.  For funsies. So, color me sold when a Victorian literature class taught by Gregg Hecimovich introduced me to The Bondwoman’s Narrative.  The final I wrote for the class, “Tulkinghorn Reborn,” while not the greatest, detailed how Hannah Crafts used Dickens’s Tulkinghorn for her villain, Mr. Trappe. I was fascinated by the manuscript that could have been the first novel by an African American female, and a novel by a woman who had lived not only in North Carolina, but the Chowan away from the place I called home.  A woman who was intimately familiar with Jane Eyre, Rob Roy and Bleak House, as well as with Biblical illusions when her very literacy was a crime. When Gregg told me he was going to find her, I knew I wanted to help. My investigation was short-lived, with an early theory involving John Wheeler Moore holding more significance. I graduated. I moved.  And while I never forgot Hannah and thought of her and her stolen literacy every time I crossed the Chowan, I never looked for her again.  But Gregg never stopped.  Last year, he published his findings.  The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative (Ecco) is part scholarship, part mystery, part resurrection, and part apology.

The Life and Times is really three different stories: the manuscript The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Gregg’s decades long search to identify the author and prove her to be an African American female who escaped slavery in North Carolina, and the stories unearthed during his search. To read this work, one must appreciate all three. To that end, I would strongly recommend reading Hannah Crafts’s novel.

The Life and Times is a bit piecemeal, a fragmented collection of following bread crumbs, circling back, and starting over to fit together broken pieces of stolen lives and stories and names.  Because this isn’t just Hannah’s story.  (I will call her Hannah.  It was her mother’s name.  The name she kept when she shed the shackles of slavery and fled North. A name passed down from forgotten and stolen matrilinear lines.  And so, I call her Hannah. Still.) Gregg recognized early on that Hannah intentionally choose fiction as her storytelling mode and that she incorporated the stories that had been passed down, the faces kept alive only by the stories, and that she breathed a life into them, an immortality in her words that wasn’t just for her.  And so, an entire community is given life in Gregg’s work.  Hannah Crafts very likely was Hannah Bond and later Hannah Vincent and this is the story of who she was, how she managed to write a novel, and her escape to freedom. But it is also the story of northeastern North Carolina and the prominent Wheelers and the bodies they bought and sold and used at will; the story they refused to write in their histories.

“As writers, Wheeler and Moore must have seen themselves as the state’s chosen ‘sons.’ If so, Crafts was an illegitimate daughter.”

With the mind of a scholar and the heart of a poet, Gregg takes us on his journey to find the identity of an author. Because that is what Hannah is. An author.

Remember – reading is political. Literacy is resistance.

It always has been.

AMERICAN VISA – Juan de Recacoechea

“We’re all rotting in this country. Only the dead are saved.”

Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re still in the Bs.

Country: Bolivia
Title: American Visa
Author: Juan de Recacoechea
Language: Spanish
Translator: Adrian Althoff
Publisher: Librería-Editorial Los Amigos Del Libro, 1994; English translation, Akashic Books, 2007

My journey to read books from every country continues, and this time, we find ourselves in Bolivia with a  kafkaesque tale of Mario Alvarez, a high school English teacher trying to get a tourist visa to visit his son in America.  Raymond Chandler influence is seen in both the author and the character. The seedy underbelly of bureaucracy and crimes quickly exposes itself in Recacoeachea’s “crime” thriller that is less heavy on crime and more absurdity and the struggle of the “everyman.”  The novel reminded me a bit of Gary Shteyngar’s Absurdistan.

Mario’s papers are forged, like most, but his are good forgeries. When he finds out that they actually investigate the validity of the submitted paperwork because of the forgeries, he ducks out of the consulate office. He’s unsure of what he’ll do, but suicide is something he’s considered. What unfolds is the story of a man who self-sabotages at almost every turn, but who also seems largely to just go along with the flow. He starts a relationship with a “heart of gold” prostitute, develops relationships with an older man who is slowly selling his books to survive, a former soccer player, and a transvestite named Alfonso or Gardenia, “depending on the circumstances.” Mario puts together a plan to rob a gold dealer and pay $800 to have a travel agency “fix” the visa issue.  Here comes the “crime” part of this novel, but by this point, the reader knows it’s not going to work out for him.

Everyone seems a caricature in this tragicomedy that takes us through the dark alleys of La Paz – full of lies and cheats, dollars and danger, lust and longing, the novel takes us along with Mario as he tries to realize his American dream, by hook or crook.

It’s a fun ride. Read this book.

PS: I HATE YOU – Lauren Connolly

Lauren Connolly’s PS: I Hate You (Berkley Romance 2024) is absolutely stinking adorable.  It reminded me a little bit of Abby Jimenez’s Just for the Summer, especially as it related to the mental health aspects and the general goofy smile reading the novel left on my face, and I loved it.  Long story short – it’s the story of a sister traveling cross country with her dead brother’s best friend (and the man who’d broken her 19-year-old heart) to spread her brother’s ashes in the eight locations he’d provided in his final wishes.  He’d insisted they do it together, so as much as Maddie hates the idea, she knows Dom will insist on following the rules.  She’s stuck with him for eight states, but with each state will come another letter from her brother, allowing her to hold on to him for just a little longer.

Dom had loved her brother to, something Maddie realizes the more time they spend together.  She realizes her’s isn’t a singular loss and that maybe her brother had thrown them together to honor his final wishes for a reason.  Maybe he was playing matchmaker?

Despite the years and heartbreak between the pair, there’s still quite a bit of sexual tension betwixt the two.  This where the book gets a little weird; I’m no prude but the word choices in the sex scenes are, let’s just say, interesting.

In addition to heartbreak and sexual tension and the grief of losing her brother to cancer, Maddie’s dealing with a lot of childhood trauma in the form of her mother, a social media influencer who consistently uses her children, and her son’s cancer and death, as a means for “engagement” with her followers.  Parts of the novel are extremely heavy, but there is a humanness in the dark humor that defines Maddie (and her brother), and this novel has some pretty funny parts.  (And I may have cried over the tattoo scene.)

It’s a charming read.

Read this book.

WARBREAKER – Brandon Sanderson

“But time burns away behind us, leaving only ash and memory. That memory passes from mind to mind, then finally to my lips.”

After finishing The Way of Kings, someone recommended that I read Brandon Sanderson’s standalone Cosmere novel, Warbreaker (Tor 2009), before proceeding any further with The Stormlight Archives.  Color me intrigued (do you see what I did there?!?) so I ordered the book and added it to my Sanderson stack. Two Sanderson’s a month might be a little ambitious, but Warbreaker isn’t nearly the behemoth of the Stormlight epics. I would have made quick work of it, but for some general blahness (me not the book), and then when I was fully hooked, cross-legged on the bed, hungrily devouring each word, I reached the end.  Huh, I thought.  Everything stopped abruptly, and I was thoroughly confused. Then I realized I WAS MISSING THE LAST 30 OR SO PAGES. Annoyance quickly replaced confusion. Colors! What’s a girl to do?  This girl promptly ordered a new copy and waited, nose pressed to the glass, for it to arrive.  (Yes, I know the full text is available for free on his website, but I need to hold books, smell books, feel books.  It’s a me thing.)

Warbreaker is another example of excellent world and character building where the plot never dwindles while the world is built up around us.  It opens with a jail break and murder and colors, magical and fantastical powers.  And a sentient sword named Nightblood.  (Two books in, and I’ve a lot to say about Sanderson’s powerful prologues!) What follows is the tale of two princesses, one who has spent her entire life training to be sent to marry the God King as per the treaty between her homeland Idris and Hallandren, the land she is a true heir to.  And the younger sister, often disregarded as insignificant, is ultimately sent in her place. The decision by their father baffles and hurts them both.

Siri marries the God King, and her sister, Vivenna, steals away from Idris to save her sister but also to find a new purpose.  There are stunning lesser gods with witty banter and bumbling mercenaries with secrets. There are colors, powerful and magical.  There’s an army of Lifeless awaiting their commands. There are secrets.  There is political upheaval and secret passages and “awakened” disruptive rodents.  And then there’s Nightblood and the man who carries it.  There’s romance. There’s power.  And there’s Hoid, a character from The Way of Kings that I suggested (and still believe) is Sanderson putting himself in the text.

My only complaint was with Siri and Vivenna’s father.  I felt like he deserved a bit more – his treatment of his daughters was a bit unrealistic, especially after the reader was given a little glimpse into his head.

All in all, solid read. 

Read this book!

WE WILL BE JAGUARS – Nemonte Nenquimo & Mitch Anderson

“laughter was jaguar medicine.”

In 1956, Nate Saint and four other missionaries, were killed by the Waorani people of the Amazon. His sister, Rachel Saint, felt some sort of connection to the location and the people, and made it her life’s mission to “save” them.  This is the still shielded world Nemonte Nenquimo was born into in the 1980s.  We will be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People (Harry N. Abrams 2024), cowritten with her husband, Mitch Anderson, is her story, the story of her people, and the story of colonization and destruction. Every so often, I read a book that makes me long to sit cross-legged on Gay’s floor, surrounded by stacks and stacks of books, and talk about the “Three C’s” of colonization – Christianity, Colonialism, and commercialism – and how Nenquimo beautifully and brutally captures a childhood marked by all three.

When Nemonte is a little girl, all she wants is a dress.  A beautiful dress that falls past her knees and billows in the breeze.  The dresses are handed out to the children who attend church.  When her brother becomes ill, her family reaches out to Rachel Saint and the church. Nemonte gets a dress. She eventually gets a “Christian” name – becoming Inez. She craves the things of the modern world – their clothes, their teeth. Her innocence is repeatedly taken by a missionary, her voice nearly forever stuck in her throat when she realizes his wife knew. What follows is a young woman struggling with identity, forever stuck between her people and society.  In time, she finds her way back.  She hears the jaguar and finds her voice, her history.

Nemonte turns to activism, focusing on how drilling for oil has decimated her people and the land. How lands and stories and lives had routinely been stolen from the Waorani and other tribes.

We will be Jaguars prowls and pounces, never skittish.

Read this book.

CALL AND RESPONSE – Gothataone Moeng

Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re still in the Bs.

Country: Botswana
Title: Call and Response
Author: Gothataone Moeng
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Viking 2023

It’s been a bit since I’ve done a “Tommi Reads the World,” but I’m back and we are STILL in the Bs. Call and Response is a collection of stories that really reads more like a love letter to Botswana.  The stories feature characters who are both clinging to tradition and longing to escape, as well as those who have returned after leaving.The title of the collection comes from “Dark Matter” and evokes an almost religious experience in Nametso returning home after years in the states.  The severe HIV/Aids epidemic is touched on in Botalaote, as a young girl cares for her dying aunt, whom she just calls the “patient” while she wants to enjoy a wedding. My favorite story was likely “Small Wonders,” about a woman dealing with the untimely passing of her husband, the traditional grief process, and her continued grief.  “Early Life and Education” is the longest story in the collection, and it seems as if this was intended to be a full length novel that never got the flesh on its bones. It was my least favorite.

The collection is a powerful one of girlhood and womanhood, but also simply of “home.” 

Read this collection.

REAL AMERICANS – Rachel Khong

“Every book I’d read led me further away from her, from the life we once shared.”

Rachel Khong’s Real Americans (Knopf 2024) is a beautiful but frustrating novel, frustrating because of the missing parts. Divided into three sections, into three generations, the novel halts every time it starts to dig into the meat of the matter.  It is heavy with potential, but those story lines slam shut in favor of starting all over with someone else and some other, but related, moral dilemma. At its heart, the novel is about gene editing, including prenatal, and the bioethical issues that stem from it, but discussions of gene editing are cursory at best. The writing is beautiful, but it is fragmented and sometimes forced. Just give me May’s story.  And all of it.

Lily is the American-born daughter of two geneticists. Her parents had fled China, but they never talked about it. She was raised “American” – eating American food and speaking only English.  The novel opens with her as an unpaid intern, trying to make it in New York. Kismet has her meet Matthew, gorgeous and lucky, at a company party. In time, she learns he is Matthew Maier of Maier Pharmaceuticals.  She learns they have shared childhood experiences of living in the same area. Kismet indeed. They get married, struggle with pregnancy, and eventually welcome baby Nico. The section slams shut when we learn that not only had her parents known his before she was born; she’d been “treated” by his father.

The next section follows Nico, now Nick, in high school. Nico does not appear even a smidge Chinese.  His father, Matthew, is an unnamed and empty figure. This is one of the more unbelievable parts of this story – that with all the money and all the “scientific data” in Nico, they’d let him go. He’s been told his grandparents are dead.  A DNA test leads him to the Maiers and the truth, and they hide their relationship from Lily. Nick leaves the west coast for college on the east, hoping to study biology, seemingly the perfect heir to the Maier empire. He is the exact image of his father, who was the exact image of his father. Unlike Matthew’s other son, Nick has work ethic and a powerful drive reminiscent of his grandmother. This section hurtles forward, covering a lot of time and information in a brief space, before we find Nick reconnecting with his mother’s mother, the woman he thought was dead.

We finally then get May’s version of events, which starts in the southern basin of the Yangtze River when she’s a young girl.  Here is where the novel finds its heart in the story of young girl who advances to college, despite the cards she’s been dealt, and who ultimately flees China by making a choice of survival over love. Her passion and drive in her study of genetics secures her employment and a life in the US. Science is her first love, evidenced in everything she does. But once again, we have huge gaping holes – what happened after Lily learned what her mother did.  What happened in the years between the end of Lily’s section and the start of Nick’s? And where is the clear battle between science and maternal instincts? Whispers. Cursory statements. Missing pieces.

I wanted more.