Today's Read: Trials of the Earth by Mary Mann Hamilton

Could you picture yourself as a pioneer woman? In 1884, at the age of eighteen, Mary Mann Hamilton moved with her new husband to the muddy wilderness of the Mississippi Delta to start a new life.

In the early 1880s my father brought his family from Missouri down into the wild country of Arkansas that was just beginning to settle up. The Kansas City and Memphis [Railway] was just being graded through, and trains were running only as far as the little sawmill town of Sedgwick, so there we stopped to wait until the road was completed into the prairie country near Jonesboro, where my father expected to buy a home. Within a week he took pneumonia and three days later died, leaving my mother and six children stranded and helpless in a strange country.

—Trials of the Earth by Mary Mann Hamilton (Little, Brown, 2016, p. 3)

Quick Facts

• Setting: Arkansas and Mississippi, 1880s on
• Circumstances: The true story of a pioneer woman
  
• Genre: autobiography
• Something to know: Hamilton wrote her book to enter a publishing contest in the 1930s. Although she didn't win, she kept the manuscript, which was discovered and published by the University of Mississippi Press in the 1990s. The writing contest that inspired Hamilton was sponsored by Little, Brown, which recently acquired the rights to the book that got away and republished it last month, giving this amazing story a wider audience.
• Thoughts: I'm still reading, but I can tell you that Hamilton holds nothing back--the brutal daily workload, the rough life of a logging camp, the violence of the backwoods, and the constant dangers. Hamilton's incredible physical and mental strength shine through this autobiography, though she is unassuming as she tells her story. Despite the rigors of pioneering life, she loved her children, admired the beauty of the natural world, and made deep friendships.
• Recommendations: This is an important and fascinating firsthand account of the waning pioneer days told from a woman's viewpoint and set in a region few Americans associate with homesteading. If you like true stories, autobiography, and/or history revealed from a personal perspective, you must add Mary Mann Hamilton's Trials of the Earth to your list.

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Stacked-Up Book Thoughts: Organizing My Reading List

It's the Olympics! What does that have to do with reading? It means that instead of reading I've been watching sports. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that books aren't top-most on my mind.

I've been taking advantage of Olympics coverage to take a journey through my bookshelves. I've talked about culling books a couple of times before (the pain, the hows), and I've also talked about book database apps (check this out).

Here's what I did last week and what I'll be doing this coming week: Culling books and changing my book database to Libib.

For several years, my dream has been to have my unread print books, eBooks, and audiobooks in a single, searchable place. (I'm not concerned about the books I've read because I have a record here on Beth Fish Reads, over on Litsy, and via various freelance reviewing gigs.) My trouble has always been that when it comes time to pick my next book, I have to check too many places to see my available choices.

Although it sounds incredibly painful, I've decided to give up on LibaryThing and GoodReads and commit to Libib. Yes, I'm going to rescan all my unread print books and enter all my unread eBooks and unlistened to audiobooks into a single private database.

Why do I like Libib? Two things: I can see the publisher's summary without a zillion mouse clicks and I can perform easy searches. It's all in the custom tags, which I can create based on the way I choose my next read: genre, audience, and medium (as well as publishing date and diversity issues). I love that Libib allows me to easily search my entire TBR based on my current mood, whether that's a contemporary YA audiobook, a middle grade fantasy print book, or an adult thriller eBook.

I plan to be done entering all my print books by the end of the Olympics. It'll take me another couple of weeks to add my eBooks to Libib, and by the end of September I should be done with my audiobooks. I hope all my book stack dreams will come true just as the weather changes, the nights become longer, and I'm ready to tackle my TBR with a vengeance.

Wish me luck.

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Weekend Cooking: Stir by Jessica Fechtor

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

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A few weeks ago my friend Kathy from the blog Bermuda Onion wrote about the memoir Stir by Jessica Fechtor. About 15 minutes after I read her review, I checked a copy out of my library's Overdrive service.

Oh what a story. In a nutshell, at the age of twenty-eight, while at a graduate school conference in Vermont, Fechtor had a burst brain aneurysm while on a treadmill. She was away from home and without her family, but fortunately, friends and colleagues acted fast and got her admitted to the local hospital, which immediately transferred her to a level 1 trauma unit in Stowe.

From there, Fechtor underwent repeated surgeries, battled infections, lost the sight in one eye, temporarily lost her sense of smell, and was required to wear a helmet on her head for almost two years. She underwent therapy, was forced to put her professional life on hold, was told she might not be able to have children, and had many psychological hurdles to clear.

Throughout it all, she was fortunate to have the never-ending support of her family, her husband, her in-laws, and close friends. The other strong element in her life that kept Fechtor motivated and helped her heal was spending time in her beloved kitchen, baking, hosting parties, and feeding those she loves best.

Stir is an emotionally strong memoir with four interwoven paths: Fechtor and her husband's families, their courtship, her accident and recovery, and food and cooking. This is not your typical food memoir. Fechtor didn't travel the world discovering new flavors and ingredients. She didn't find god, love, or miracles in the kitchen.

Stir is, however, ripe with the deep significance of food and cooking: the idea of food as the symbol for life, for moving forward, for growing; the act of cooking as solace, as nurturing, as giving; and the way people are bound together over something as small as an almond cookie that comes in a fancy orange tin.

Get out your tissues because you'll cry with Jessica Fechtor -- sometimes with joy and sometimes with sorrow. Then wash your hands and head to the kitchen and be kind to yourself and your loved ones.

The food: Fechtor included a handful of recipes in Stir and all look wonderful. Many of them can be found on her popular food blog Sweet Amadine, which she started when she was still trying to teach herself how to reenter the world after she was released from the hospital. In 2009, a friend of hers told her to create a food blog to help fill her days, and so Fechtor did. You'll find her story and a ton of delicious recipes there.

I'll leave you with a passage from Stir I love -- one that might change me.

Being sick, it turns out, is an education in the art of guesting. I didn't see it that way at the time, likely because I didn't know that there were important things still to learn. . . .

A good guest allows herself to be hosted. That means saying, "yes, please," when you're offered a cup of tea instead of rushing to get it yourself. It means staying in your chair, enjoying good company and your first glass of wine while your host ladles soup into bowls. . . . To allow her to take care of  you is to allow your host her generosity. I'd always been too distracted by my own desire to be useful to understand this. I got it now.

Published by Avery, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781594631320
Source: borrowed (see review policy)
Copyright © cbl for Beth Fish Reads, all rights reserved (see review policy)

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Sound Recommendations: 4 Summer Audiobooks

Catching up with some short reviews today, all in my current summer favorites of fantasy and thriller.

Parents, Watch Your Children

• What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan: I'm not sure why I held off on reading this much-buzzed book. It is a very well done thriller about a young boy who goes missing after getting permission from his mom to run ahead to a playground. The story is told from multiple viewpoints and different times. Macmillan did a good job with how both traditional media and social media can quickly move from sympathetic to vicious. I was particularly drawn to the male detective and how the case affected him. The audiobook was read by Penelope Rawlins and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, who kept my attention throughout; I had a hard time turning off the book! (Harper Audio; 12 h, 2 min; print: William Morrow, December 2015)
• The Couple Next Door by Shari Lepena: I didn't realize when I started this audiobook that it was going to be another missing child story, although the circumstances here are different. When Anne and Marco's baby-sitter cancels last minute, the couple decides to have dinner with the neighbors anyway. They set up the baby monitor and take turns checking on the baby every half hour, but when they get home at 1:00 a.m., their daughter's crib is empty. This is a good twisty thriller with a small cast. I was completely caught up in working out exactly who did what and why. I didn't really like any of the characters (except maybe the detective), but I don't think we are meant to like them. The audiobook was read by Kirsten Potter, who set the mood and picked up on the characters' personalities. (Penguin Audio, 8 hr, 40 min; Pamela Dorman, August 23, 2016)

Visit a Fantasy World

• Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson: I loved Pearson's Jenna Fox dystopian books, so decided it was a safe bet to try her fantasy series (the third installment is out this fall). The story features Lia, a princess who doesn't want either the position or the arranged marriage that goes with it. She runs away to start a new life as a peasant girl, but two boys are tracking her. One an assassin and the other her intended husband. For the first two-thirds of the book, neither Lia nor we know which boy is which--very clever.  I give the book 4 stars for characters and world building, but the audiobook, read by Emily Rankin, was only so-so. I have no real complaints, I just wasn't wowed. (Listening Library, 13 hr, 31 min; Henry Holt, July 2014) 
• Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan: Why oh why haven't I read Sullivan before? I loved, loved, loved this book and its creatures, people, and politics. The story has many familiar epic fantasy elements, but there are enough twists so not everything is predictable. Excellent world building and relatable, flawed characters plus a terrific mix of fantasy and reality (including war and racial tensions). I can't wait for the next book, but in the meantime I'm going to read Sullivan's other books set in the same world but in a different time period. It took me a little bit to get into Tim Gerard Reynolds's performance of the audiobook, but then it clicked, and I devoured it, enjoying his pacing and expressive narration. (Recorded Books, 16 hr, 35 min; Del Rey, June 2016)

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Wordless Wednesday 406

August Sky, 2016

Click image to enlarge. For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

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