Book of the Day Roundup: January 6-10, 2025
Heart of the Glen
Jennifer Deibel
Revell
Softcover $17.99 (352pp)
978-0-8007-4486-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
An Irish woman finds solace with a Donegal weaver in Jennifer Deibel’s warm historical romance novel Heart of the Glen.
Saoirse, running from her past, is set to become a housemaid. When the job falls through, she’s taken in by Aileen and Owen, siblings who depend on the sale of Owen’s exquisite tweeds to maintain their farm. Saoirse becomes fond of them, though she’s still fearful that they’ll learn about her personal tragedy. When Owen is injured by bandits and rendered unable to fill a crucial order, he accepts Saoirse’s offer to become his apprentice.
Set on a rural, picturesque homestead that its characters tend to with care, even while facing ongoing threats from thieves and questions concerning Owen’s healing, the story is told via alternating sketches. Owen’s weaving room inspires Saoirse; the loom’s rhythms and intricacy enthrall her. Owen’s initial skepticism about Saoirse’s abilities is tempered in the course of their lessons, and they reach quiet acknowledgments of each other’s needs. Their edges soften with the passage of time; they develop emotional intimacy. Their handiwork is established as an able metaphor, showing how tangled threads can sometimes be made into beautiful art.
Herein, faith helps people overcome their troubles. The nascent couple leans into church traditions to buoy their hopes, even as a local tragedy tests their resolve. And the biblical story of Gideon and the Midianites is one of the book’s throughlines, with the central trio finding similarities between his circumstances and theirs. They meet their challenges with courage, working past their doubts. When Saoirse discloses her past, she is rewarded with compassion.
In the romance novel Heart of the Glen, a couple weathers uncertainties because of their renewed faith.
KAREN RIGBY (December 23, 2024)
Dear Duck, Please Come!
Sarah Mackenzie
Charles Santoso, illustrator
Waxwing Books
Hardcover $18.99 (40pp)
978-1-956393-11-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A ragtag group searches a forest haven in the whimsical illustrations of this picture book about good friends. Duck receives a letter at his egg-shaped home from his friend Rabbit: “Please come! I lost my tooth.” On his way to Rabbit’s house, Duck searches for the tooth; Badger, Turtle, Squirrel, and Mouse join, but their investigation is to no avail. When they arrive at Rabbit’s carrot-esque house with heads low and hands empty, a misunderstanding is revealed, and the party can begin!
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (December 23, 2024)
Wild by Design
The Rise of Ecological Restoration
Laura J. Martin
Harvard University Press
Softcover $22.95 (336pp)
978-0-674-29836-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Laura J. Martin’s Wild by Design is essential reading, raising pertinent questions about what it means to be “wild” in an era of widespread ecological disruption.
The concept of wildness itself is called into question via examples of drastic human intervention in the fates of endangered species like bison and whooping cranes. In an urgent, academic style that underscores the global impact of anthropogenic ecological damage, the book articulates difficult, dense topics with clarity. It teases apart the threads of historical conservation efforts and weaves them into a coherent, pressing narrative history—vital for professional ecologists, botanists, and biologists.
Evidence of intensive research is apparent throughout. Stark photographs sourced from archives illustrate the sheer damage done by early attempts to manage the population of predatory or undesirable species. Foremost among these is the image of a man posing against a mountain of bison skulls while another stands atop the pile. Extensive historical context is given throughout to situate the scientific aspects of such work alongside the cultural and sociopolitical zeitgeist of the time.
In examining the question of what it means for an ecosystem to be wild, Martin draws important parallels between Indigenous sovereignty or the lack thereof and environmental protection. The rewilding efforts made by scientists who are part of a settler-colonist mechanism rely upon the fallacy of an “untouched” land, the book shows, highlighting the role of Manifest Destiny and imperialist lines of thought in the widespread destruction of ecological systems within the United States.
Wild by Design is certain to engender heated discussions about ecology in an increasingly industrialized world, as well as raising questions about if, when, and how humans should intervene to save endangered species.
CAITLIN CACCIATORE (December 23, 2024)
The Lady of the Mine
Sergei Lebedev
Antonina W. Bouis, translator
New Vessel Press
Softcover $17.95 (240pp)
978-1-954404-30-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Sergei Lebedev’s harrowing novel The Lady of the Mine, murdered souls buried in an abandoned Ukrainian coal mine haunt the country’s emerging conflict with Russia.
In 2014, Zhanna leaves college to care for her ailing mother, Marianna. An expert laundress, Marianna is renowned for her ability to purge the worst stains; her skills are akin to mystical powers. As the “White Lady,” Marianna’s presence was rumored for decades to have kept “doom at bay” while purifying past Nazi and Soviet evils. Yet with the encroachment of Russian forces in Ukraine, Marianna succumbs to the inevitability of turmoil, disease, and her own death.
The book contrasts enduring, purifying Marianna with toxic, virile Valet, Marianna and Zhanna’s neighbor. Though Valet feigns affection for Zhanna, he plans to rape and perhaps kill her. He takes pride in his adopted Russian citizenship and military service; his commanding officer helms a unit of occupiers amid a climate of surveillance, infiltration, and “undeclared war.” And when a commercial airline flying overhead is accidentally shot down by a Russian missile, Valet steals a gold lipstick case from the nightmarish debris while becoming aroused by a woman’s prone, “submissive” corpse.
In the background is the local mine, once a site of economic dominance and toxic emissions. And within the mine’s secret shaft are thousands of calcified, compacted bodies: Jews executed by the Nazis, shooting victims of “the Bolsheviks,” and other murdered hostages, labor strikers, and prisoners. The spectral voice of “The Engineer,” the mine’s Jewish architect, recounts the histories of those killed; he claims not to be a ghost, but more of “a fossil” within a “stratigraphy” of horrifying violence.
With poetic intensity and unflinching imagery, the historical novel The Lady of the Mine reveals obscured atrocities while creating hellish landscapes of the past and present.
MEG NOLA (December 23, 2024)
The Power of Enough
Finding Joy in Your Relationship with Money
Elizabeth Husserl
New World Library
Softcover $19.95 (288pp)
978-1-60868-942-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Elizabeth Husserl’s personal finance guide, The Power of Enough, redefines wealth in terms of holistic well-being.
An invitation to transform one’s relationship with money by rejecting the abundance versus scarcity mindset to embrace meaning and fulfillment, the book treats money as a social technology and spiritual guide. It encourages seeking understanding of the roots of one’s dysfunctional relationship with money and defines wealth as “not about having everything, but rather about finding meaning in everything we have.” There’s guidance for unlocking the power of enough by “embodying wealth”—that is, experiencing wealth in their bodies, hearts, and minds through self-reflection and mindfulness. Here, a wealthy person is not one who has accumulated money or achieved traditional success but one who has lived a life of satiation and purpose.
The early chapters are theoretical and esoteric, featuring abstract concepts sans tangible takeaways. They allude to a “simple, three-step process” to embody wealth with recommendations to “recognize and appreciate each moment of meaning that nourishes you” and “digest these moments of meaning by integrating what nourishes you and releasing whatever your body doesn’t need.” But as the text proceeds, its recommendations become more concrete.
Interactive exercises and writing prompts ground the book, which is punctuated by “Mini Moments” of self-reflection and mindfulness practices like clinching and releasing one’s fists to represent letting go of material things. Activities like creating a wealth mandala, tracing personal money memories, and holding conversations with money—one of the book’s most innovative suggestions—encourage delving into one’s individual relationships with money in order to transform them.
Earnest and unconventional, The Power of Enough is a holistic financial guide built on meaning, fulfillment, and embodied wealth.
HANNAH PEARSON (December 23, 2024)
Kathy Young
