Book of the Day Roundup: March 3-7, 2025
Pieces You’ll Never Get Back
Samina Ali
Catapult
Hardcover $27.00 (272pp)
978-1-64622-261-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Samina Ali’s searing memoir is about how a birth gone wrong took her, a promising young writer, to the brink of death.
Ali’s intuition warned her of danger to her pregnancy. She suspected bias against women of color after her requests for help went unattended, attributed to her need for drama. Her intuition proved correct. Undiagnosed preeclampsia almost took her life and that of her baby.
Ali describes feeling her brain dying during the complicated delivery of her son. She had a massive seizure and multiple strokes, and she became comatose. When she awoke, most of her memory had been wiped clean. At twenty-nine, she had to relearn how to talk, walk, and eat, as well as basic self-care. Her doctors were certain she would never write again.
Medical jargon is kept to a minimum so that the lived experience of severe brain damage can be brought to the fore. Intense, frightening descriptions of Ali’s inner world reveal a cold, dark, empty place where “every moment was instantly forgotten. Every moment was brand new. Events were sliding away instead of stacking up into some semblance of meaning.”
Ali attributes writing to saving her. With no recall of the novel she’d been working on before becoming “a writer without words,” she forced herself to begin anew. She hoped to build new neural pathways in her brain. Her initial efforts resulted in nonsense: She wrote “peaches” when she meant “rain,” and ten minutes of work felt like an hour. But the struggle proved worth it. Herein, supple, luminous prose carries a message of near inconceivable resilience and hope.
Pieces You’ll Never Get Back is an inspiring memoir about rising from despair and triumphing over catastrophic brain injury.
KRISTINE MORRIS (February 17, 2025)
Days of Shattered Faith
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Head of Zeus
Hardcover $30.99 (544pp)
978-1-03-590152-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Geopolitical and magical intrigue entangle in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s intricate fantasy novel Days of Shattered Faith.
As a new aide to Gil, Pallesand’s diplomat in Usmai, Loret seconds her superior in a duel with Lor’s diplomat. Amid convoluted machinations, this duel is retribution for Lor’s defeat in war against Pallesand and corresponds to Pallesand-backed Dekamran, the second-eldest royal son, becoming heir to Usmai’s throne after his older brother’s banishment. Meanwhile, the current ruler nears death.
The book’s sweeping perspective shifts cross social strata, revealing people’s conflicting motives: An orphaned courier yearns to be more than just a “boy” to the cruel ruler, who mourns his lost wife. Enticing suspicions engulf Pallesand’s mismatched diplomatic duo: The blind, murderous rage that erupts from Loret’s fearful timidity is perplexing to snarky, cynical Gil, who’s a master of diplomatic tradecraft (“one hand over the table to sign the documents and one under the table to hold the knife”). And Gil shares a forbidden intimacy with Dekamran, whose soft straightforwardness is a conspicuous rarity.
Usmai, a stratified place, is fleshed out in sophisticated terms: Among waterfalls and rainbows, the aristocratic rich inhabit the upper layers of the cliffside metropolis. Little trickles down to the impoverished sea-level community with its clandestine, duplicitous operators. Alluring spectacles of magic and religion are brandished throughout Usmai, leaving newcomer Loret aghast at their violation of Pallesand’s doctrinal “perfection” (efficiency, uniformity, and secularism). Elsewhere, the Waygrove monks are one among many mysterious religious sects and alienated outsiders who seek a tenuous alliance with Usmai.
Marked by dynamic, violent maneuvers for political power in the inner courts and across national borders, the elaborate fantasy novel Days of Shattered Faith focuses on schemes for international supremacy that twist with manifold personal desires.
ISABELLA ZHOU (February 17, 2025)
Cures of Ireland
A Treasury of Irish Folk Remedies
Cecily Gilligan
Rowman & Littlefield
Hardcover $29.95 (304pp)
979-888180506-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Cecily Gilligan’s sweeping encyclopedia Cures of Ireland archives centuries of Irish folk medicine, herbalism, and healing charms.
Drawing on firsthand interviews and archival research, this expansive book details hundreds of Irish cures—rituals passed down through generations to heal physical and psychological ailments and injuries. The book documents these traditions in an effort to preserve practices facing extinction due to historical colonial oppression, technological development, and religious persecution.
The first sections include a comprehensive history of Irish folk remedies throughout the centuries, showing how practices evolved and survived throughout wars, famines, and changing social and political climates. Gilligan then describes the cures of over 100 people she met and interviewed. Aimed at ailments both benign and severe, they confront issues like warts, headaches, and cancer. Each cure is described in clear detail—except in cases where the person in possession of the cure chose to keep aspects of it secret to preserve the authenticity and potency of the remedy.
Cures of Ireland captures a culture steeped in ancient wisdom and invested in preserving traditions and ways of life that are at risk of becoming obsolete. It is an appealing treasure trove of folk wisdom with connections to alternative medicine, herbalism, and cultural traditions.
BELLA MOSES (February 17, 2025)
You Must Take Part in Revolution
Melissa Chan
Badiucao, illustrator
Street Noise Books
Softcover $23.99 (264pp)
978-1-951491-29-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Three youths unite in protest against an authoritarian government, afterward winding up on different paths, in the thoughtful, provocative graphic novel You Must Take Part in Revolution.
Andy, Maggie, and Olivia meet during political protests in 2019, inspired along with other Hong Kong residents to take to the streets. When the resistance turns violent, Maggie embraces the change; Olivia and Andy have doubts. A baby is killed during one of Maggie’s operations, and she’s sentenced to life in prison.
A decade later, Andy is recruited into a paramilitary organization battling Chinese aggression. He reunites with Olivia and becomes part of a daring attack on the jail where Maggie is held. The action brings the three former friends together again and leads to tragedy.
The story incorporates actual historical events and extrapolates an intriguing but bleak possible future. Military tensions between China and the US provide an ominous backdrop. While the book includes plenty of excitement, its greatest strength is the depth of its characters. Andy, Maggie, and Olivia are complex, intelligent individuals whose views on protesting and the ethics of violence change throughout the book. Their dynamic characterizations anchor the narrative, reflecting how people looking to do good differ in situations where moral clarity is hard to discern. The moody black-and-white art includes splashes of red and yellow to grab attention—an effective approach that lends kinetic appeal to the images.
You Must Take Part in Revolution is a thrilling, heartbreaking graphic novel about the price of accepting—or fighting against—an oppressive government.
PETER DABBENE (February 17, 2025)
Snake in the Grass
A Fina Mendoza Mystery
Kitty Felde
Chesapeake Press
Hardcover $19.99 (196pp)
979-898949343-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A Latina girl sleuths on Capitol Hill to help her congressman friend in Kitty Felde’s entertaining, civic-minded mystery novel Snake in the Grass.
Fina is a California congressman’s daughter who is used to meeting her father’s colleagues. She even keeps a hideout in a Capitol building storage room. When Democratic Congressman Hobbs is bitten by a garter snake found in his gym bag, Fina aims to discover whether the creature was there by happenstance or was placed to send a message about his bipartisan activity.
Facts about how Congress and district elections work and about the Capitol’s murals and fascinating interior are shared from Fina’s curious insider’s perspective. She also delivers impressions of the powerful people she meets. Her home life with her grandmother and teenage sister is busy: They all support the congressman, adapting to the challenges of their political lives. They are an affectionate family, which helps to even out their conflicts.
Fina is a plucky heroine who’s at ease conversing with adults. Despite her fear of snakes, she learns about them in the course of her investigation. She also walks dogs for Capitol Hill lawmakers, overhearing staffer conversations and attending media conferences in the process. The mystery itself is light, sans real malice beyond some bumbling pranksters. More pressing is the senselessness of adults who can’t seem to work across party lines, hinting at ongoing political rifts. Fina’s fun visits to an arboretum to view cherry trees and other observations of the city setting are a refreshing counterbalance to these concerns.
Pairing the allure of Washington, DC, with an animal misadventure, Snake in the Grass is a robust series mystery novel.
KAREN RIGBY (February 17, 2025)
Kathy Young
