Orlean Puckett: The Life of a Mountain Midwife by Karen Cecil Smith

The Life of a Mountain Midwife is an interesting, but sometimes meandering, biography about a midwife named Orlean Puckett who lived and worked in rural Appalachia.

This reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books in that Karen Cecil Smith takes great care to detail the day-to-day chores, food, clothing, and lives of the people of Appalachian Mountains in the 1800’s to 1900’s. I loved those intimate details, many of which are completely gone from the modern lifestyle like chopping wood, lighting the stove, and cleaning laundry by hand.

Also, I am a big fan of BBC television show, Call the Midwives so the chapter detailing Puckett’s extraordinary midwifery skills was fascinating to me. Take this gem: “Aunt Orlean continued to ask, ‘Don’t you think it’s about time to feather her?’ Dr. Cundiff finally said, ‘Okay,’ at which point Aunt Orlean produced from her bag a goose feather. She stuck it into the fire and then placed the smoking feather beneath the mother’s nose. The mother started coughing and sneezing and the baby was born immediately.” pg 101 Can you believe that!

Astoundingly, Orlean Puckett delivered over 1000 babies with almost zero training and never lost a mother or child.

Karen Cecil Smith utilizes actual interview tidbits from many of the people who knew Orlean Puckett for this book and that was also enjoyable. She maintained their improper grammar and local accent which lent real flavor to the narrative. For example, many of the children that Orlean helped deliver said that she “borned” them. Here’s a memory from a relative: “Now I was gonna stay up there one night with Granny (Orlean) and she was gonna learn me how to bake wheat bread the next mornin’ and Uncle Stewart he had to go to work and they waked me up and wanted to know if I wanted to put on bread.” pg 57

My only complaint about this book is that it wanders in places and the reader is led into extended stories about ancillary people to Orlean’s life when, this reader at least, just wanted to know more about the Orlean herself.

If you are mainly interested in local history, this book is like a casual conversation with an elderly friend. I’d even go so far as to compare it to an unedited Story Corp interview. It can be charming but also frustrating when the story goes on and on but doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

If you enjoyed this book, I’d suggest any of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. They have the same sort of detail oriented focus but with more of a story line.

I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads program. Thank you for reading!

Aerie (Magonia #2) by Maria Dahvana Headley

Warning: minor (and major if you haven’t read the first book) spoilers, proceed with caution.

Aerie is a very strange and complex, young adult fantasy. Allow me to explain.

In the first book, we met Aza, a girl who was drowning on Earth because, though she doesn’t know it, she’s actually from a kingdom in the clouds. She’s in love with Jason, a genius boy with obsessive thoughts like repeating the numbers of pi in his head over and over again.

Many adventures happened in the first book, but essentially we learned that in Aza’s home, the Magonians use their voices in magical ways. Through changing vibrations, Magonians can make elements appear and change, control the weather and animals, manipulate the molecules of reality itself.

Like most young adult stories, Aza is special, a savior with godly abilities that she didn’t know she had until she was tested. She’s supposed to bring balance back to Magonia because Aza’s mother is crazy and wants to kill everyone on the ground- Jason included.

One of the things that happens at the end of the first book is that Aza’s mother is imprisoned. (Lots of other stuff happens too.)

This book picks up where the last one left off. Jason and Aza are deepening their relationship though Aza looks like a completely new girl because she trashed her “skin,” essentially a suit that allows her to look and breathe like a human, and had to acquire a new one.

Did I mention that Magonians have naturally blue skin with orange/red eyes and white tattoos that change depending on their emotional state? Yeah, that’s a thing.

Aza’s mother, Zal, breaks out of prison and someone has to stop her before she destroys the world. There are rumors of “The Flock,” a weapon of some sort that can stop Zal, but no one knows where or what it is.

And that, I think, is where this story really begins.

Headley’s world building is epic. Magonia itself is a treasure and the other supernatural creatures that the author introduces are tantalizing in their possibility.

However, I didn’t care much for the characterizations or the obvious plot twists.

The grand showdown itself was a huge disappointment like expecting a brightly colored balloon on your birthday only to have it pop in your hands when you receive it. Headley gathered all of these potentially awesome characters together but only the actions of three mattered.

I wanted ships firing at each other, creatures made of flame, earth, water, feathers… slamming into each other in waves, with the earth itself rising in fountains in an effort to touch the sky.

But that didn’t happen.

Aza’s special, I get it.

Aza can sing a song that only she can sing, I get that too.

She FEELS things deeply then SINGS them deeply. Blah.

I just never connected with Aza the way Maria Headley wanted me to. Headley built a lovely world that was so much more than just three characters.

Perhaps I’m being unfair- did anyone who read this book feel differently? I would love to hear from you.

Recommended for readers who are willing to overlook a weak story for some fantastical and wildly imaginative elements.

You don’t have to read the first book to appreciate this one, but I think you’d want to in order to absorb the outlandish world that is Magonia. Some similar reads: The Breedling and the City in the Garden, Archivist Wasp, or Under the Empyrean Sky.

Thanks for reading!

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

This was the description from Goodreads:

“Audrey Niffenegger’s dazzling debut is the story of Clare, a beautiful, strong-minded art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: his genetic clock randomly resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future.”
Goodreads

Photo by Aphiwat chuangchoem on Pexels.com

Unpopular opinion time: I found the story to be quite different from that and have to say a big no thank you to The Time Traveler’s Wife.

To the legions of fans of this book, I’d like to know what you enjoyed about it. What did I miss? I see that it’s won a pile of awards and I just don’t get it.

I thought I was in for a sweet romance but all I got was a time traveler who cheated at the lottery, beat people up for clothes, and engaged in sexual hijinks with time traveling versions of himself.

I was completely creeped out by the fact that Henry is Clare’s best friend from the time that she was 6. She was groomed from that young age to be his wife, no matter that it wasn’t consummated until later. How awful is that.

When she is essentially date raped, she doesn’t go to the police, Clare goes to Henry who engages in some vigilante justice. It was horrible what happened to her, but she should have reported it to the authorities.

The yuck factor from a bunch of places absolutely ruined the book for me not to mention that fact that Clare never really had a childhood or life at all without Henry in it. That’s not romantic, it’s sad.

Anyway, my apologies if you loved it. Like I said, I am willing to consider other opinions on this book, I just really can’t recommend it.

Thanks for reading.

The Autumnlands V. 1: Tooth & Claw by Kurt Busiek

Excellent introduction to a world where anthropomorphized animals live on cities that float in the sky with the help of a magic that is fading from existence.

To combat this magic shortage, a talented magic user gathers a coalition of wizards to bring a great warrior from the past to the present in order to reawaken the powers.

The warrior is surprising, his summoning has unintended consequences, and the reader, after just a few pages, finds herself quickly caught up in a strange new world.

Highly recommended for adult readers who enjoy fantasy graphic novels.

There is a bunch of graphic violence and full frontal male nudity in here so, head’s up librarians. Make sure to shelve The Autumnlands in the appropriate section.

Some similar graphic novels, though I didn’t enjoy them nearly as much as this book: Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening or Wild’s End, Vol. 1: First Light.

Thanks for reading!

Splintered by A.G. Howard

Alyssa is a descendant of Alice Liddell- the Alice who inspired Carroll to write his tale of white rabbits and fantastical creatures. But, Alyssa has a family secret: the women of her bloodline go insane when they come of age.

She tries to look on the positive side of this: At least one good thing has come out of my inherited insanity. Without the delusions, I might never have found my artistic medium.” pg 10, ebook.

Alyssa is in love with Jeb, a dark and brooding young man with a penchant for grunge clothing and a lip piercing (that she talks about all the time). But, he is dating the most popular girl in Alyssa’s high school class, Taelor (of course).

Things get really exciting when Alyssa starts to hear voices coming from the bugs and plants.

After a brief introduction where the reader learns that Jeb is freakishly controlling and Alyssa’s mother is in an insane asylum, she falls through a mirror and after some trials, finds her way into Wonderland.

I thought this could have been a potentially interesting re-telling of the classic Alice in Wonderland story, but Splintered‘s uniqueness is stifled under a bunch of teen angst and a love triangle.

Granted, I’m not the target audience for this book, but I’d been on a roll lately with awesome fairy tale re-tellings and I thought I’d give it a shot. Oh well.

I actually enjoyed A.G. Howard’s interpretation of Wonderland itself. The characters were familiar but twisted slightly.

Here’s a passage from the tea party- my favorite part: “Now we need to get back to our world. Like yesterday.” “Yesterday, you say?” the hatmaker warbles in his bouncing timbre. “Yesterday is doable.” Guffawing, the hare slaps a knee and adds, “Although two yesterdays would be impossible.” The Door Mouse snickers, slipping back into his uniform. “No, no! You can retrogress as many yesterdays as you please. Simply walk backward the rest of your life.” pg 187, ebook.

See? Howard nailed the classic characterizations, but Carroll’s original creations were far superior to Alyssa, Jeb, and Morpheus, who were her main contributions to the story.

Disregard my opinions on this book if you simply must read any and all fairy tale re-tellings because, at the very least, it is that.

Just be aware what you’re picking up- a young adult romance/coming of age- and if that’s what you’re in the mood for, you may really enjoy it.

I find that my expectations shape my opinion of a book almost as much as the text itself. For example, I think if I had been warned that Alice in Zombieland had really very little to do with the Wonderland story, I may not have disliked it as much as I did.

Splintered actually has a lot of the original Wonderland in it and, if I had to choose between Alice in Zombieland or Splintered, I’d pick this in a heartbeat.

Some highly recommended horror/fairy tale re-tellings (for adults): Alice or All Darling Children.

Thanks for reading!

All Darling Children by Katrina Monroe

All Darling Children asks the question: what if something corrupted the ‘boy-who-never-grew-up’?

Peter Pan is one of my favorite fairy tales and it has featured in quite a few beautiful re-tellings. (Tiger Lily is one.)

All Darling Children is a masterful, twisted take on a literary classic. I loved this for its horror filled examination of the spiritual cost of eternal youth and the strong female lead.

From her first moments in Neverland, Madge, the grandaughter of Wendy, can tell that something isn’t right: “Neverland. It seemed a hodgepodge of landscape ripped from a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. On one side, lush forest grew dense with heat and energy. Flowers bloomed in a rainbow of colors. They shuddered as Madge gazed at them, and then, as Pan looked in their direction, shriveled to pale, dry nothings.” loc 525, ebook.

This is not Disney’s version of Neverland.

Peter and his Lost Boys are dangerous in this world. Immature and wild, they try to force the traditional gender role of ‘mother’ on Madge (because they don’t know how to handle girls otherwise) and she resists: “Outsiders aren’t supposed to know how to find the tree house until they’ve been initiated.” “Initiated?” Madge’s stomach fell. “What’s that mean?” “It means you’re in the club, not that you’d ever get in, being a girl and all.” loc 692.

I never questioned the ‘Father’/’Mother’ roles of Peter and Wendy from the original book but, if the authority of the position was abused… it gets so creepy very quickly.

Madge’s story is told in-between entries from Wendy’s old diary. Here’s one of the passages: “I’ve learned much about (Peter), and while he is erratic and inconsistent in most ways, in one he is steadfast. Predictable. Peter must always be forced to try harder. If one gives in, he loses interest. I will never give in.”loc 921.

The back and forth from the story that the reader thinks she knows that is presented in Wendy’s diary, to the new story that Monroe is weaving with Madge, is awesome. There are enough similar elements drawn in from the original that the whole thing feels chillingly familiar- a mirror version of the classic.

Peter’s bragging about his exploits is presented as charming in Barrie’s version- Monroe takes a far more modern view: “Who wants to hear the story of how I cut off Captain Hook’s hand?” The boys whooped and smacked the table. Madge paled. He’d cut off someone’s hand? What was worse, he was bragging about it? Psycho.” loc 973

If you like twisted fairy tale re-tellings, you may love All Darling Children. I did. Another one that you’ve got to pick up if you liked this is Alice by Christina Henry. It’s an incredible, dark re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland and it’s also amazing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Adept Publishing for a free, digital ARC.

Also thank you to my Goodreads friend, Rosemarie Short, for writing a fantastic review that convinced me that I just had to read All Darling Children. You can see her review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…

And, thank you for reading!

The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis To Personal Transformation by Emma Bragdon

Though a bit dated (written in 1990), Emma Bragdon presents information about “spiritual emergencies,” what they are and how to help your loved ones or yourself through it.

To begin, what is a “spiritual emergency”? : “Spiritual emergence is a natural process of human development in which an individual goes beyond normal personal feelings and desires-ego- into the transpersonal, increasing relatedness to Higher Power, or God. … When spiritual emergence is punctuated by profound emotions, visions, psychosomatic illness, and compelling desires to behave in unusual ways, including suicidal thoughts, the spiritual emergence becomes a crisis, a spiritual emergency.” pg 1.

This process can be absolutely terrifying if the person has no idea what is going on and is surrounded by professionals who are also clueless.

I think that the main problem with integrating such experiences is that modern society neither supports or recognizes them as valid: “People in our culture are afraid of speaking openly about spiritual experiences, because psychic phenomena… have been considered symptomatic of psychosis. Most psychiatrists, psychologists, and even clergy have believed that most spiritual experiences are indicative of either retarded development or emotional disease.” pg 12.

The clergy part of that passage is particularly interesting to me. These are the so-called experts on the spiritual realm, yet, when something breaks through into reality, they’ve got nothing.

And humanity is the poorer for it.

Bragdon then relates numerous instances of men and women from all over the world who have gone through this process and reminds us: “In all the major religions of the world can be found examples of people … who have been through intense and sometimes physically and emotionally debilitating periods of spiritual experiences and ultimately attained transpersonal levels of consciousness.” pgs 81.

It makes one wonder, if Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, or pick-your-prophet had been born in the modern era, would his/her vision just been medicated into oblivion?

Bragdon points out that the problem is in the attitudes of the religious and medical establishments- the places that should be the most educated and accepting of these sorts of troubles: “The administrators of (religious) institutions are inconsistent in their view of spiritual experience as part of spiritual growth. The conventional religious establishment is similar to the conventional medical establishment, which is so ambivalent about the reality of spiritual experiences that it doubts their validity altogether.” pg 101.

When did we completely separate the health of the body from that of the soul? After all, one won’t work without the other.

Then, she goes on to talk about all of the different ways that these sorts of experiences emerge from drug use, sex, stress, and just life.

It is so pervasive that it seems that it must be a part of the human experience, but it is hard to study and come to grips with in scientific terms because the phenomena can’t be forced or replicated.

Despite these difficulties to categorize and treat it, Bragdon suggests that being present for the person going through it is enough: “What these people do want is acknowledgement, recognition that they aren’t crazy, and the companionship of others who know what they have experienced is real.” pg 113

So, even though this book was written 26 years ago, I don’t think that we’ve really made that much progress in that time- at least not in the arena of holistic medicine or transpersonal psychology.

Some further reading: Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, Dreambody: The Body’s Role In Revealing the Self, or The Power of Myth.

Thanks for reading!

Dying to Wake Up: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back by Rajiv Parti

Rajiv Parti was living a materialistic dream with the house, car, and beautiful wife to prove it. But, the many things in his life didn’t bring him comfort when he developed prostate cancer and a bunch of unfortunate side effects from the surgery to remove it.

Addicted to pain pills and disconnected from the people around him, Dr. Parti underwent emergency surgery and experienced something so incredible, that when he woke up, he completely changed his life, developed a new form of holistic health treatment, and gave up many of the possessions that were weighing him down.

This is the memoir about that experience and Dr. Parti shares it in the hopes that it will change the reader’s life or at least bring comfort to those who are struggling in their current life experience.

Like many of the other memoirs I’ve read by medical professionals, Dr. Parti talks about the completely scientific view he had of the soul, which is to say, if you couldn’t see it and measure it, then it doesn’t exist.

Also, working on the technological edge of medical breakthroughs in the treatment of various diseases, had given him an invincible feeling.

This experience blew that attitude away: “Feeling like a master of the universe is easy in the world of modern medicine. … Maybe it’s a sense of cheating death for others that gives us cardiac surgical teams the vague feeling that we can overcome our own death. Of course that isn’t true. … Reality popped that myth for me.” pg 10

In his near death experience, Dr. Parti not only encountered his father, but also a huge crowd of his ancestors.

They shared messages of forgiveness and love: “Love is the most important thing there is, my grandfather communicated to me. I am glad to let you know that simple truth while you can still make change in your earthly life.” pg 44

But his time on the other side wasn’t all light and love, Dr. Parti also had the (fairly rare) experience of seeing hell and the suffering souls within it.

This is entirely my opinion, but I think that the detached manner in which Dr. Parti was living his life brought forth a major wake-up call from the spirit world. He saw hell first and then heaven and, in a way, that could be a metaphor for his life experience.

I don’t believe in “hell” myself other than the nightmare that people can create in their own minds and lives, but, I didn’t experience it like Dr. Parti did. This memoir does not focus on the hell portion of the narrative, but, with the rarity of that experience, it could have. That, in itself, says something.

When Dr. Parti “comes back”, he knows that he wants to start a new life and a new focus, but he doesn’t know how.

The information for developing a new type of medicine comes to him slowly during meditation: “What is (the new mode of healing) anyway?” “…It is how nonpharmacological treatments in combination with drugs can heal things like depression and addiction and other diseases. It’s about searching one’s own soul to fight back against the hollowness that pharmaceuticals alone or alcohol and illegal drugs create or don’t really fill.”pg 91.

He eventually develops meditations and lifestyle changes as well as a manifesto for treatment.

To me, the most fascinating part of this memoir was the communication between himself and the spirit world once he was back.

For readers who are unfamiliar with near death experiences, Dr. Parti provides a broad background with some of the major historical figures who went through it.

Like Jung: “(Carl) Jung’s NDE led to a split with Sigmund Freud, who believed that spiritual experiences were fantasies. Jung, however, considered spirituality an important part of our well-being saying that life has purpose beyond material goals and that our main task, the path we should all be on, is the one that leads to our own connection with the universe.” pg 124

Ultimately uplifting and empowering, Dying to Wake Up is another excellent entry into the literature about near death experiences.

Recommended for anyone who questions why we are here or what comes after. Some further reading: Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing, or Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences

Thanks for reading!

The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner

The Sound of Gravel is in the running for my favorite book club read this year! (Bull Mountain is the other pick I really enjoyed.)

It is Ruth Warnier’s memoir about her poverty-stricken childhood in a polygamist cult in Mexico, her dysfunctional mother, abusive step-father, and struggle for survival along with her many siblings.

She pulls you in, first line: “I am my mother’s fourth child and my father’s thirty-ninth.” pg 10, ebook. I read that sentence to my husband and his reaction was, “Are you reading a book about royalty?” Unfortunately, no.

Ruthie’s father was a founding member of the “Firstborns”, a polygamist group that broke away from the Mormon church. He believed that, in order to live in the manner that God intended, men are supposed to have multiple wives and as many children as possible, to become like gods in the next life. He lived what he preached.

But, unlike members of royal families, Ruthie’s father, and later her stepfather, did not have the resources available to allow his wives to live in houses with running water or electricity. It is a hard existence but Ruth’s parents live it because of their faith.

“After all,” she said, “it is better to have ten percent of one good man than to have one hundred percent of a bad one.” The women of LeBaron (the colony in Mexico) were always saying that…” pg 12, ebook. But what about ten percent of a bad man…

At first, Ruth’s stepfather seems almost normal: “Everyone in the colony was always saying how Lane had a strong work ethic. He spent every day milking cows, planting and baling hay, fixing tractors, trucks, and other equipment- all of which broke down regularly. But in spite of all his hard work, he never made enough money to provide for his eleven kids and stepchildren.” pg 21, ebook.

And his family grew larger than that quite quickly. But, after a short time, he begins to show his true self.

It’s hard to imagine the level of poverty that Ruth and her family endured. Every month, her mother and all of her brothers and sisters made their way by bus from Mexico to the US to collect government assistance. The trip took all day and when they got back, if stepfather Lane did not show up at the bus stop to pick them up, they had to walk a mile home.

“The rest of us followed silently, watching and listening as Mom took a wide step over the highway shoulder and onto the dirt road, the gravel crunching beneath her footsteps, the sound of home.” pg 29, ebook.

Ruth’s mother tries to do what she can for her children but there’s only so much a perpetually pregnant, struggling mother of five (or more) can do. Some of Ruth’s siblings suffer from disabilities that make it dangerous for them to be left alone with any of the younger ones. After reading what her childhood was like, I am simply amazed that Ruth survived to write this book.

Major trigger warnings for sensitive readers: there are some seriously disturbing scenes of child abuse and domestic violence. But, it is worth the read.

The Sound of Gravel is ultimately uplifting, inspiring, and I highly recommend it. A few similar memoirs: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis , Pigs Can’t Swim, or A Girl Named Zippy.

Thanks for reading!

The Help Desk Book Blog

Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Tag: reader

Orlean Puckett: The Life of a Mountain Midwife by Karen Cecil Smith

Aerie (Magonia #2) by Maria Dahvana Headley

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Autumnlands V. 1: Tooth & Claw by Kurt Busiek

Splintered by A.G. Howard

All Darling Children by Katrina Monroe

The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis To Personal Transformation by Emma Bragdon

Dying to Wake Up: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back by Rajiv Parti

The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner

Menu

Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Share this Blog:

Menu