Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
Beth Macy, 2016
Little, Brown
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316337540
Summary
The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back.
The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family.
One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever.
Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars."
Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back.
Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1964
• Raised—Ubana, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Bowling Green University
• Awards—Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism (more below)
• Currently—lives in Roanoke, Virginia
Beth Macy is an American journalist and author of two works of non-fiction: Factory Town: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town (2014) and Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South (2016).
Raised in Urbana, Ohio, an industrial town, Macy's mother was a line worker in an airplane factory and watched other people’s children while the parents worked. As Macy has pointed out, this was a time, back in the '70s and early '80s, when one it was still possible to raise a family on working wages and, with a little Federal aid, manage to send your children to college.
Macy attended Bowling Green University (on a Pell Grant) and graduated in 1986 with a degree in journalism. Following brief stints in Columbus, Ohio, and Savannah, Georgia, in 1989 Macy found herself in Roanoke, Virginia, where she began a 25-year career at the Roanoke Times. She won countless awards for stories that highlighted teen pregnancy, immigrant populations, and other often overlooked topics in the Roanoke area.
Journalism awards
Macy's 2006 series on immigrant families won several national honors, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, a Columbia University race reporting prize and inclusion in "The Best Newspaper Writing: 2007-2008."
In 2008, Macy produced a multi-media presentation about the challenges facing the area's seniors and caregivers. The series won a Documentary Project of the Year (from Pictures of the Year International), the Associated Press Managing Editors' Award for online convergence, a Casey Medal and, the Virginia Press Association's top prize for public-service reporting.
In 2010, Macy won a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. Her November 2010 story about cholera in Haiti won the 2011 Associated Press Managing Editors award for international reporting. (Author bio adapted by LitLovers from various sources.)
Book Reviews
[An] expert work of nonfiction…. Ms. Macy gives herself several objectives for the strange story told in Truevine. First and foremost, she wants to examine the story that members of the Muse family believed for 100 years, even though Ms. Macy could quickly tell that it couldn't withstand scrutiny. Second, at a time when Roanoke remains a city that "demographers still consider among the most segregated in the South" and racial tensions have been aroused throughout the nation, she means to provide an eerily resonant vision of the past. And last, though hardly least, she wants to try to understand what happened to the Muses…. Ms. Macy's…reportorial methods are inspiringly persistent.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Macy’s conscientious reporting (affirming the story's accuracy) and her vigorous storytelling make the saga of George and Willie Muse even more enthralling than fiction. It is also by turns infuriating, heartbreaking and, ultimately, inspiring in recounting a mother’s struggle, through daunting odds, to not only find her lost children, but to secure their proper treatment by the people exploiting them.
USA Today
There’s a page-turner buried in Macy’s meandering account, but multiple backstories—circus history, Roanoke history, Jim Crow life for blacks and whites, Macy’s personal memoir..., and snippets from scholarly writing—disrupt the reader’s focus.
Publishers Weekly
Macy's exploration of the long-hidden fate of two young African Americans and how that fate illuminates the atrocities of the Jim Crow South is as compelling as Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks...both are absolutely stunning examples of narrative nonfiction at its best...Certain to be among the most memorable books of the year. ―Connie Fletcher
Booklist
[S]ituates so-called circus "curiosities" firmly in U.S. history.... A rambling, colorful, and thought-provoking medley of human stories intersecting with one another...has much to offer. —Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Macy absorbed...individual (and often conflicting) interpretations of the Muse kidnappings...into a sturdy, passionate, and penetrating narrative. This first-rate journey into human trafficking, slavery, and familial bonding is an engrossing example of spirited, determined reportage.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act
Bary Yourgrau, 2015
W.W. Norton
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393352900
Summary
Hilarious and poignant, a glimpse into the mind of someone who is both a sufferer from and an investigator of clutter.
Millions of Americans struggle with severe clutter and hoarding. New York writer and bohemian Barry Yourgrau is one of them. Behind the door of his Queens apartment, Yourgrau’s life is, quite literally, chaos.
Confronted by his exasperated girlfriend, a globe-trotting food critic, he embarks on a heartfelt, wide-ranging, and too often uproarious project—part Larry David, part Janet Malcolm—to take control of his crammed, disorderly apartment and life, and to explore the wider world of collecting, clutter, and extreme hoarding.
Encounters with a professional declutterer, a Lacanian shrink, and Clutterers Anonymous—not to mention England’s most excessive hoarder—as well as explorations of the bewildering universe of new therapies and brain science, help Yourgrau navigate uncharted territory: clearing shelves, boxes, and bags; throwing out a nostalgic cracked pasta bowl; and sorting through a lifetime of messy relationships.
Mess is the story of one man’s efforts to learn to let go, to clean up his space (physical and emotional) and to save his relationship. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1948-49
• Where—South Africa
• Raised—U.S., Europe
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA; Istanbul, Turkey
Writer and performer Barry Yourgrau is the author of the 2015 memoir about clutter and hoarding, Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act. His books of short fiction include Wearing Dad's Head and The Sadness of Sex in whose film version he starred.
He's appeared variously on MTV and NPR.
He's also written for NY Times, Paris Review Daily, Vice, Spin, The Independent (UK., Salon, Artforum, and elsewhere.
Born in South Africa, he moved to the US as a child. He lives in New York and Istanbul, and travels widely with his girlfriend, Anya von Bremzen, a food writer.
Book Reviews
A fascinating read by a hoarder about the psychology and culture of hoarding.
Melissa Clark, food writer - New York Times
In this hilarious memoir, Yourgrau regales readers with tales of his tendency to collect objects and keep them.... Eventually, as he explains with wit and honesty, he begins to deal with the clutter...as he makes space for himself and [the] girlfriend he shut out five years earlier.
Publishers Weekly
This isn't a how-to book.... Yourgrau shares histories of famous hoarders, psychological theories about clutter.... [The author] provides engaging company..., but the actual decluttering in the book might have taken less than a chapter.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The following questions for Mess were generously submitted to LitLovers by Jennifer Johnson, Reference Librarian, at Springdale Public Library in Arkansas. Thank you, Jennifer!
1. What are the author’s goals for the book? Are these goals clearly defined or ambiguous?
2. Do you think the book has at least some level of therapeutic value? Who would this book most benefit?
3. Did you notice that slowly throughout the book the author reveals all of the emotional and physical triggers for his depression, mental illness, and hoarding? What are some of those triggers? Can we relate to his situation?
4. After reading it, do you think the author is guilty of oversharing? Are there some areas where he overshares information that is not related to the focus of the book?
5. Does the author, after going through and completing his "project," truly grasp his mental illness and emotional baggage? If he does not, does he have the right to write a memoir that timidly walks the line as a self-help book?
6. Consider the relationships depicted in the book—are they healthy relationships? Think about the relationship he had with his parents, "Cosima," and himself and the role of transitional objects. Do you believe he truly had no idea that there was a relationship between his emotional baggage, childhood, inability to have healthy relationships, and the stuff?
7. Considering transitional objects, do you think we are all guilty of some type of hoarding? Do we save items that have an emotional trigger?
8. What stereotype(s. does this book show that is reflective of our current society? How is hoarding viewed in society and culture?
9. Does society have expectations for hoarding? How do reality shows depict hoarding and other mental illness issues? Is there a level of voyeurism in the commercialization and authorship of hoarding?
10. What coping skills does the author exhibit? Have those skills benefitted him or hindered him?
(Questions by Jennifer Johnson for LitLovers. Please feel free to use, online or off, with attribution to both. Thanks.)
Live, Love, Explore: Discover the Way of the Traveler, a Roadmap to the Life You Were Meant to Live
Leon Logothetis, 2016
Reader's Digest
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781621453239
Summary
Part travel memoir, part self-help book, Live, Love, Explore is a guide to finding meaning and adventure in your everyday life and discovering the road you were always meant to walk.
Leon Logothetis’s life was well plotted out for him. He was to do well in school, go to university, get a job in finance, and spend the next fifty years of his life sitting behind a slab of wood, watching the rain-slicked streets of London from thirty floors above.
For a long time, he followed that script, until one day, he finally realized he was living someone else’s life—a good one—but not one of his own choosing.
So he walked out of that life, and discovered the one that took him around the world. Since then, Leon has driven a broken-down English taxicab across America, offering people free rides; ridden a vintage motorbike around the world, relying solely on the kindness of strangers; and followed a fellow traveler through India without ever knowing where he was going.
He has visited more than 90 countries on every continent.
Along the way, he learned something about the human spirit and about the heart of this world. He learned that he needed to shed his old ideas about who he was supposed to be in order to feel his soul rise to the surface and become the person he always longed to be.
The wisest words he heard, and the greatest lessons he learned, came from everyday people he met on his travels. He became their accidental student, and after years of sharing those lessons through TV shows, college tours, books, and in the media, he realized that he had also become an accidental teacher. His experiences are more than a collection of stories, they have become a way of life—the Way of the Traveler.
So, what is the Way of the Traveler? It’s a roadmap to living your best life, loving with all your heart, and exploring the world—both the great and adventurous one waiting outside your door, and the even greater, more adventurous one waiting within your soul.
Weaving together Leon’s hilarious and heartwarming stories of his misadventures on the road with simple but profound exercises to help you uncover your true path, Live, Love, Explore will teach you how to live fully and without regrets.
It’s not to say that everyone who reads it will have to go to the ends of the world. Because you don’t have to go to Mongolia to discover the truths that lie inside. No, those life lessons can just as easily be learned from the people all around you—the chap serving you coffee at Starbucks, the woman sitting next to you on a plane, your co-workers, family, and friends.
There’s an entire world of people willing to teach you their lessons if you’re willing to learn.
And by opening yourself up to new adventures, by recognizing that you have the freedom to choose your own road, you’ll find something else that has been hiding in plain sight: you’ll find the life of which you have always dreamed… and the curiosity and courage it takes to make that life happen. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Leon Logothetis is a global adventurer, motivational speaker, and philanthropist.
Formerly a broker in the city of London, he gave it all up to travel and find real human connections. Author of The Amazing Adventures of a Nobody and The Kindness Diaries, Leon also hosted television series of the same names, which have aired in more than 100 countries.
He has documented his travels for numerous media outlets including Good Morning America, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Outside, and Good.
In addition, Leon is the founder of the Human Interaction Project (HIP), which provides interactive learning opportunities for youth and adults alike by combining volunteerism with self-growth. He lives in Los Angeles, California. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
It took me at least ten years to understand the connection between my travels and the life lessons that got me through tough times. Live, Love, Explore gets you there quicker to celebrate the wonderful, frightening, unexpected journey of life.
Samantha Brown, Travel Channel host
[A] bona fide page-turner—full of inspiring personal stories, charming anecdotes, and thought-provoking questions. You won’t want to put it down!
Light Watkins, Founder of the Shine Movement
[A] must-read for anyone searching for their true purpose in life. Inspiring and insightful, it outlines the lessons of the Way of the Traveler, a way of life to which we can all aspire.
Mark Divine, Commander, US Navy SEALs (ret.), founder of SEALFIT, and bestselling author of The Way of the SEAL
[An] instant classic. It reminds all of us that the big dreams we have in our hearts are within reach.
Shane Jeremy James, Founder of Actions of Compassion
[D]eserves my highest high kick! Leon's book has helped me find the adventure in my crazy life and can help you too!
Fredrik Eklund, Star of BRAVO’s Million Dollar Listing New York and bestselling author of The Sell
The life I was meant to live has always revolved around travel and media. To read real tips from Leon Logothetis, one of the travel industry's most inspiring figures, made me move beyond the mundane and dream of magical moments and big dreams.
Annie Fitzsimmons, Editor-at-Large, National Geographic Traveler
Leon has nailed it. It's rare that one so young gets what we all eventually find out; that the grandest and most difficult of journeys is to find and make peace with ourselves. He not only speaks so eloquently of it, he shows us the way.
Ted Klontz, Co-author of The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge
In Leon's latest book, the reader is taken on yet another journey of self-exploration and enlightenment. Leon truly represents the nomadic soul of a traveler seeking answers.
Dane Steele Green, CEO, Steele Luxury Travel, Huffington Post blogger
Leon shares wonderful real-life experiences that are bound to rejuvenate your soul—often from the most unlikely people and places. Live, Love, Explore is entertaining, insightful, and inspiring.
J.P. Hansen, Success coach, inspirational speaker and bestselling, award-winning author of The Bliss List and Find Your Bliss
Leon does it again! In his newest book, Leon so generously shares his experiences which has provided me invaluable guidance on living my best life.
Brad Jamison, Founder of Good Citizen
Leon shares his hilarious and heartwarming stories of his adventures on the road. Through his wonderful gift of story, I've learned to live my life more fully and without regrets. Thank you!
Lyss Stern, Founder and CEO, Divalysscious Moms, bestselling author and columnist
Leon sets himself apart with his powerful message paired with such authentic delivery. His insights from his personal experiences have helped me have a more clear vision for a more happy and fulfilling life. Live, Love, Explore is funny, deeply moving and beyond inspiring.
Margie Warrell, Life coach and bestselling author
Discussion Questions
1. What Are Your Key Life Events? As you look at your own life, what are the five key events that have made you who you are today, either connecting you to your sense of purpose or preventing you from realizing it? Think back to your early childhood, and review the challenges of adolescence. Maybe some of these moments took place in your early years of work, marriage, or child rearing. What five life events have shaped you?
2. What Makes Up Your Creative DNA? Your themes might be rooted in creativity: being a writer or actor or sculptor. For others, the themes might have to do with science or math or engineering. For me, it was travel and connectivity and being of service. Discuss the three themes that run through your life, and how you can begin dedicating more time to them.
3. What Are Your Accidental Opportunities? Take a look at your own life history and identify three accidental opportunities and discuss.
4. Who have been the accidental heroes in your life? The ones that sometimes gently, sometimes with greater force, have pulled you out of the muck, and reminded you that you are not alone. Discuss three of them.
6. How Can You Throw Yourself Off Balance? Discuss three things that sound incredibly uncomfortable to you, and pick one to actually do…
7. Where are the miracles in your life today? Discuss three moments where you saw the magic in your everyday existence.
8. What are your gifts and how could you start sharing them? Discuss what you can do today to share your gifts with the world?
9. Which personal stories you tell yourself should you question? What expectations did others put upon you? Think back through those belief systems you were raised with. What values were considered most important? What type of life were you expected to lead? Discuss three of these expectations and how they have affected your life?
10. When Can You Stop and See the Magic of life? Where do you need to slow down today? Is it spending more time with your kids or family? Is it watching the sunrise in the morning or the sunset at night? What activities can you begin doing that will reconnect you to the magic in your life?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
J.D. Vance, 2016
HarperCollins
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062300546
Summary
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans.
The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside.
J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984
• Born—Middletown, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Ohio State Universtiy; J.D., Yale University
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and spent many summers in the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and is a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm. Vance lives in San Francisco with his wife and two dogs. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump. Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he's done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans…. Whether you agree with Mr. Vance or not, you must admire him for his head-on confrontation with a taboo subject. And he frames his critique generously, stipulating that it isn't laziness that's destroying hillbilly culture but what the psychologist Martin Seligman calls "learned helplessness"—the fatalistic belief, born of too much adversity, that nothing can be done to change your lot.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times
[Vance’s] description of the culture he grew up in is essential reading for this moment in history.
David Brooks - New York Times
[Hillbilly Elegy] is a beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America….[Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it…a riveting book.
Wall Street Journal
[A] frank, unsentimental, harrowing memoir...a superb book.
New York Post
Vance isn’t a hillbilly at all. I ordered Vance’s book in the hope that his story would be a frank look at the lives of the less fortunate people around me who face the struggles of the hillbilly culture and Appalachian economy daily. But Vance’s story is one about how his grandparents’ sacrifices made it possible for him to be where he is today. That makes his critique of the hillbilly culture in crisis ring empty.
Brandon Kiser - Lexington Herald-Leader
[Hillbilly Elegy] couldn’t have been better timed...a harrowing portrait of much that has gone wrong in America over the past two generations...an honest look at the dysfunction that afflicts too many working-class Americans.
National Review
[A]n American classic, an extraordinary testimony to the brokenness of the white working class, but also its strengths. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read… [T]he most important book of 2016. You cannot understand what’s happening now without first reading J.D. Vance.
Rod Dreher - American Conservative
J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, offers a starkly honest look at what that shattering of faith feels like for a family who lived through it. You will not read a more important book about America this year.
Economist
The troubles of the working poor are well known to policymakers, but Vance offers an insider’s view of the problem.
Christianity Today
In this compelling hybrid of memoir and sociological analysis, Vance....observes that hillbillies like himself are helped not by government policy but by community that empowers them and extended family who encourages them to take control of their own destinies. Vance's dynamic memoir takes a serious look at class.
Publishers Weekly
Vance compellingly describes the terrible toll that alcoholism, drug abuse, and an unrelenting code of honor took on his family, neither excusing the behavior nor condemning it…The portrait that emerges is a complex one…. Unerringly forthright, remarkably insightful, and refreshingly focused, Hillbilly Elegy is the cry of a community in crisis.
Booklist
Growing up in Appalachia may leave a person open to harsh criticism and stereotype, yet Vance delves into his childhood and upbringing to make a clear distinction between perception and reality.... A quick and engaging read. —Kaitlin Malixi, formerly at Virginia Beach P.L.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A Yale Law School graduate's account of his traumatic hillbilly childhood and the plight of America's angry white working class. "Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash," writes Vance, a biotech executive and National Review contributor. "I call them neighbors, friends, and family."... An unusually timely and deeply affecting view of a social class whose health and economic problems are making headlines in this election year.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points for Hillbilly Elegy...then take off on your own:
1. In what way is the Appalachian culture described in HillBilly Elegy a "culture in trouble"? Do you agree with the author's description of the book's premise:
The book is about what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Vance suggests that unemployment and addiction are self-inflicted and that the Appalachian culture is one of "learned helplessness"—individuals feel they can do nothing to improve their circumstances. Do you agree with Vance's assessment? What could individuals do to improve their circumstances? Or are the problems so overwhelming they can't be surrmounted?
3. What are the positive values of the culture Vance talks about in Hillbilly Elegy?
4. The author's mother is arguably the book's most powerful figure. Describe her and her struggle with addiction. How did the violence between her own parents, Mawaw and Papaw, affect her own adulthood?
5. To What—or to whom—does Vance attribute this escape from the cycle of addiction and poverty?
6. Talk about Vance's own resentment toward his neighbors who were on welfare but owned cellphones.
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Vance writes
Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation.... I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largess enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
Does his book address those two separate but related issues satisfactorily?
7. Critics of Hillbilly Elegy accuse Vance of "blaming the victim" rather than providing a sound analysis of the structural issues left unaddressed by government. What do you think?
8. What does this book bring to the national conversation about poverty—its roots and its persistence? Does Vance raise the tone of discourse or lower it?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Juniper: The Girl Who Was Born Too Soon
Kelley and Thomas French, 2016
Little, Brown and Co.
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316324427
Summary
A micro preemie fights for survival in this extraordinary and gorgeously told memoir by her parents, both award-winning journalists.
Juniper French was born four months early, at 23 weeks gestation. She weighed 1 pound, 4 ounces, and her twiggy body was the length of a Barbie doll. Her head was smaller than a tennis ball, her skin was nearly translucent, and through her chest you could see her flickering heart.
Premature babies like Juniper, born at the edge of viability, trigger the question: Which is the greater act of love—to save her, or to let her go?
Kelley and Thomas French chose to fight for Juniper's life, and this is their incredible tale. In one exquisite memoir, the authors explore the border between what is possible and what is right.
They marvel at the science that conceived and sustained their daughter and the love that made the difference. They probe the bond between a mother and a baby, between a husband and a wife. They trace the journey of their family from its fragile beginning to the miraculous survival of their now thriving daughter. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Kelley Benham French
• Birth—1974
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Florida; M.A., University of Maryland
• Awards—Finalist, Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Bloomington, Indiana
Kelley Benham French, has been an American journalist, 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and now professor of Journalism at Indiana University. She and her husband are co-authors of Juniper: The Girl Who Was Born Too Soon (2016), the story of their baby daughter's birth at 23 weeks and the couple's decision to fight for her survival. At the time of the book's release, Juniper was a healthy three-year-old.
Career
French received her B.A. from University of Florida and her M.A. from the University of Maryland. From 1998 to 2001, she taught high school journalism, mass media, film, newspaper, yearbook and photo-journalism classes at a magnet journalism high school in Deerfield Beach, Florida. She helped produce the school’s first online newspaper and was named the Florida Scholastic Press Association’s district teacher of the year in 1998.
In 2002 French joined the Tampa Bay Times as reporter, feature writer and, later, editor. As a reporter, she covered several hurricanes and an execution, and she wrote the obituary of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman with brain damage who died after a right-to-life legal battle that received national attention.
She became a deputy editor in 2006 of the Floridian, the Times’ feature section. Appointed as full editor in 2008, she helped to create and lead the paper's Enterprise Team, editing two stories that became Pulitzer Prize finalists—one of which revealed decades of abuse at a state-run reform school, leading to its closure.
In addition to her work for the Times, she served as a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school (and owner of the Tampa Bay Times). She also taught at the University of Florida and spoken about writing at universities, workshops, and conferences around the country.
In 2013 French became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for "Never Let Go," a series about the premature birth of her and Thomas French's daughter. The series considered the ethical and medical dilemmas involved in saving the lives of premature babies.
In 2014 she joined Indiana University (where her husband Thomas French also teaches) as a professor of journalistic practice. Her position is at the university's Media School, which unites faculty from the School of Journalism and the departments of telecommunications and communication and culture. Upon her appointment, French commented:
I’ve spent my career in a newsroom stocked with brilliant journalists who periodically break out into the IU fight song, so I’m...thrilled to be joining the Media School at this pivotal moment, when the teaching of reporting, writing and thinking has never been more important.
(Adapted from IU Bloomington Newsroom.)
Thomas French
• Birth—January 3, 1958
• Raised—Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Indiana University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize (journalism)
• Currently—lives in Bloomington, Indianapolis
Thomas French is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist who worked for the St. Petersburg Times (currently the Tampa Bay Times) for 27 years. After his retirement from the Times, he turned to teaching and occupies the Riley Endowed Chair in Journalism at Indiana University School of Journalism and teaches in Goucher College's creative nonfiction MFA program
Personal
French was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. While at Indiana University, he was the editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, the recipient of a Poynter scholarship, the winner of the Hearst Competition for Feature Writing. He graduated in 1980. He has two sons by his first wife Linda and is currently married to Kelley Benham. Benham documented the premature birth of their daughter Juniper in the Tampa Bay Times, for which she was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
Career
In 1981 French started at the then St. Petersburg Times, working on the police and courts beats, as well as writing general assignments.
In 1998 he won the Pulitzer Prize-Feature Writing for his piece “Angels and Demons,” the story of the murders of Jo, Michelle and Christe Rogers and the eventual capture of the murderer, Oba Chandler.
French also wrote the series "South of Heaven," with the cooperation of LHS journalism teacher Jan Amburgy. The series, later expanded into a book, focused on students at Largo High School at end of the 1980s. He collaborated on "13," a mini-series that ran in the St. Petersburg Times about middle schoolers at Booker T. Washington Middle Magnet School for International Studies in Tampa. His piece "The Exorcist in Love" is an in-depth investigation into the life and work of Laura Knight (now Laura Knight-Jadczyk).
According to Washington Postreporter Anne Hull, French's work has set the standard for a generation of reporters:
He wrote a seminal piece of journalism called 'A Cry In The Night' that dominated our craft for a long time and made a model for the rest of us to follow.... He's been my teacher since the day I met him. IU will soon get a glimpse of his passion and ferocious belief that journalism should be fair and truthful but also raucous, subversive, emotional and daring.
His 2010 book about Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Florida is called Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/2/2016 .)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [A] love story about [the French's] daughter, with highs and lows throughout and moments of sheer joy that will keep readers involved until the very last page.... With sharp prose...this book should be in the hands of every parent—indeed, of everyone.
Publishers Weekly
The authors raise questions about the enormous cost of saving a single life when the same funds could provide health care for countless children, and they are aware of the great risks of permanent damage to an extreme preemie.... A fierce and fact-filled love story with few holds barred.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Juniper...then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the serious, often permanent, risks of keeping extremely premature babies alive. What would you have done in the French's case?
2. In their book, the couple discusses the enormous cost of keeping Juniper alive, funds that might have provided health care to many other children. What are your thoughts on this ethical dilemma?
3. Was this child perhaps more precious because of the couple's age and their previous but failed attempts to have a child?
4. What have you learned about the field neonatal care that you were unaware of before reading Juniper?
5. We know the end of the story (the photograph on the cover says it all). Still, did you find the roller coaster story suspenseful? Which parts did you find most harrowing? Which parts brought a lump to your throat or tears to your eyes? Which parts were hopeful...and especially joyful?
7. During your book club meeting, conisder listening to Radio Lab's segment on Juniper and Frenches. The episode is entitled "23 Weeks 6 Days."
(Questions by LitLovers, Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)