Education : A Memoir / Tara Westover

Tara Westover grew up in a rural community in Idaho.  Her father, a survivalist and a fundamentalist Mormon, ruled over his household with an iron will.  While never diagnosed, his frequent bouts of paranoia suggest he also suffered from bipolar disease.  Tara’s mother was an unlicensed midwife, and sold her own herbal remedies to help support the family.  Refusing to acknowledge her husband’s mental illness, she chose instead to believe his pronouncements were the result of the Holy Spirit speaking through him.  No matter how questionable his actions, she chose to obey his every command.

As a result of her father’s beliefs, Tara and her siblings were home-born, possessed no birth certificates, and were home schooled.  Education tells how Westover was able to self-educate herself as a child, later win acceptance into Brigham Young University, and go on to attend Cambridge and Harvard Universities to earn a PhD.  That scenario alone would make for an interesting Pollyanna success story, but this memoir focuses on a much darker topic, her own family.

In this memoir, Westover addresses the topics of family loyalty, the difficulty of outgrowing one’s roots, and the mental distress that results when family ties are severed because of differing beliefs.  The melodrama of her family’s history will leave most readers appreciating their own upbringing.  Since her father hated the medical establishment, despite his children and himself suffering serious injuries, doctor and hospital visits were forbidden.  One of her brothers, following an accident, suffered brain damage that left him prone to violent actions against Tara and other women in the family.  It makes most dysfunctional families look benign.

While I have no doubt that what Westover describes in this book is true, throughout it she has difficulty articulating the lessons she learned from being outcast from her own family.  But perhaps that is the point Education means to make.  When torn between two opposing forces, the figure caught in-between has little control over the push and pull threatening to rip them apart.  Rationality is hard to achieve when  the panic of self doubt colors all.

Charming Billy / Alice McDermott

In the opening chapter of this novel, the family and friends of Billy Lynch gather at a small bar in the Bronx following his funeral.  As they reminisce about the man, events from his life are recalled, including tales of his first love who died before they could marry, how he later met the woman he would wed, and the sad fact that Billy was an alcoholic.  But in this multilayered story, nothing is quite what it appears on the surface.

A gifted writer, Alice McDermott masterfully depicts the Irish community that Billy returned to following World War II and where he spent the rest of his days.  The other main character in this story is Dennis Lynch, Billy’s cousin and best friend.  It is Dennis’ grown daughter, whose first name is never given, who is the book’s narrator.  Throughout, she’s a keen observer, letting the people who knew Billy best have their say.  That said, she does offer subtle clues about the extended family members’ and her own life, adding depth to the story.

One could write an entire chapter on the themes addressed in this novel, with unrequited love, romantic illusion, and alcoholism topping the list.  But just as importantly, it is about family relationships, married life, religion, and the strong bond between a daughter and her father.  McDermott has created a wonderful narrative in which her characters are presented with compassionate candor.  Published in 1997, Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction.  This is a book I will be recommending for years to come.

Stardust

Banding us together,
diamonds are priceless according
to the adverts,
nonetheless, they come at a cost.
Still, they seduce most
with their sparkle and promise
of love’s perpetuity.
But tonight, they seem mere paste
in gloved hands.
This winter walk has presented us
with another currency.
Overhead, the sky has opened to
reveal a vast eternity
and snow-covered fields smoothed
to an even plane.
Returning us to childhood dreams,
it is as if a fairy has
waved her wand to surround us
in crystalline glitter.
Imagination sprinkled by stardust,
this gift is invaluable.
How dull a diamond seems when
held out in comparison.

Black Mass : Whitey Bulger, The FBI, And A Devil’s Deal / Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill

Black Mass tells the stories of thee boys who grew up in the Irish neighborhood of south Boston.  John Connolly grew up to be an FBI agent, while James “Whitey” Bulger and his partner Steve Flemmi became organized crime bosses.  In the 1970s, Connolly began to use Bulger and Flemmi as informants to help bring down the New England Mafia.  As their FBI handler, Connolly turned a blind eye to the pair’s illegal activities, and even provided them with information about other law agencies criminal investigations against them.  He even went so far as to tip off Bulger and Flemmi about two other criminals who were willing to cooperate with police investigations against them.  This led to Bulger and Flemmi making sure both men disappeared for good.

Former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill give a fact-filled description of how Bulger and his partner were able to take over the drug trade and racketeering in the city, while Connolly not only turned a blind eye to their misdeeds but became close friends with both men. It highlights the problems inherent in the process when law enforcement officials interact with criminal informants.  Even though the FBI had strict rules in place to prevent the corruption of agents in such interactions, Connolly had no trouble skirting them.  

Over the span of his career in the FBI, Connolly received eight commendations from eight different Directors, including J. Edgar Hoover and William Sessions.  Black Mass is not only the tale of two Irish-American organized crime bosses and the rogue FBI agent who helped them thrive, it is an indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  After all, it was the Agency that enabled Connolly to get away with his misdeeds for decades.

The Radium Girls : The Dark Story Of America’s Shining Women / Kate Moore

After the Curies discovered radium, it was proclaimed a new wonder drug.  In the early half of the Twentieth Century, it was added to foods, skin creams and other substances because of its believed health benefits.  Another use was found for it as well, radium-dial factories began to turn out watches and clocks with hands that glowed in the dark.  Young women were employed to paint radium on the hands to achieve this effect.  No safety measures were taken to protect them from the substance since it was consider harmless and perhaps even beneficial.  To maximize production, these young workers were taught lip-pointing: by wetting the tip of the brush in their lips between each dial painted, there would by less wastage of radium, an expensive compound.  

A few years into working at the two factories highlighted in The Radium Girls, a good number of the women employed there began to be afflicted with illnesses physicians at the time could not explain.  Their teeth began to fall out, entire jaws would come loose, and extreme bone pain in other areas of the body became a complaint.  Little did they know, their symptoms were caused by the ingestion of radium leading to the development of various bone cancers.  If the book had merely focused on how medical science was able to finally identify radium as the cause of these young women’s life threatening illnesses, it would still be an interesting (and sad) read.  There is a second part to the story, however, and reading it is sure to leave many readers infuriated as well.

Even after medical science became concerned about radium’s adverse effects and found a way to identify radium poisoning, factory owners continued to assure their workers that the substance was safe.  Not only that, when they did finally run tests and were able to identify which of their workers had been poisoned, the results were never shared with them.  When a number of women tried to sue for compensation once sickened, the owners fought tooth and nail to avoid having to pay out any money at all.  Because of the weak safety laws at the time, by delaying court proceedings, the hope was that most of the young women would die before a settlement would need to be paid out.

In this well researched narrative (and page-turner as well), Kate Moore has presented a complex story with clarity and compassion.  As she points out in the conclusion, thanks to these young women’s tenacity to be heard and compensated, it led to better factory safety regulations, advanced medical science understanding of radium poisoning, and most likely prevented the deaths of thousands of other innocents.  The Radium Girls is not only a personal study of the women affected, it also addresses the topics of law, health, and industrial safety.  And throughout, Moore keeps readers interested and always sympathetic.

Wagging Baton

Bored with idleness,
I’m drawn to the window by a flurry
of unexpected activity––
the neighbor’s dog is burrowing
a hole in the snow.
Only its rump and an animated tail
are fully exposed.
What attraction has focused her so?
Could the sheltered grass
still be lush and green underneath?
Is she determined to
exhume a bone buried long ago?
A pirate’s treasure?
With the dark freezing its assets,
the snow’s pliancy has
stiffened as nightfall encroaches.
Nonetheless, she digs.
What scent is beguiling her so?
Oblivious to the cold,
why is she ignoring her owner’s
worried summons?
Conducting a silent orchestra,
attuned to the quest,
that wagging baton isn’t saying.

A Gray Sunday

Unopened on the counter,
a green bottle with just enough red
to color a gray Sunday.
Aglow, with an occasional crackle
and pop, a fireplace’s
embers generate a comforting heat
for stocking feet.
With dusk’s darkening presence now
asserting itself here
at mid-afternoon, why fight back?
Forgoing a planned walk,
uncorking bottled inspiration, let’s
enliven taste buds instead.

Unoccupied

For weeks, I’ve waited for this,
to walk in the door and find the house quiet,
unoccupied by anyone but me.
The dirty dishes in the sink of my own making.
Knowing when I finally sit down,
I will not need to get back up at someone
else’s behest. Flipping through
the channels, I can stop wherever I please.
For the sake of modesty,
there is no need to close the bathroom door.
And if were to sing along to
the music, only the silence will be disturbed.
I can stay up past bedtime
and not have to tiptoe when I crawl into bed.
Nobody will be shortchanged
should I brazenly steal an additional pillow.

And yet, before I can fully enjoy
tonight’s solitude–all of this wasted space–
unexpectedly, I find myself
wistfully wishing that the phone would ring,
for your voice to reassure me,
come tomorrow night, you’ll be home again.

Clothesline

Late in autumn,
well-bundled against the cold,
out on the porch
smoking the season’s last cigar,
I watch a hawk,
white-bellied and magnificently
persistent, draw and
retrace a single straight line on
the sky’s canvas,
its purpose left to interpretation.

Invisible and abstract,
what it is trying to emphasize
only becomes evident
when, my cigar burnt to ashes,
I realize an entire
afternoon has been spent with
thoughts pinned to
a piece of art that is not there;
summer’s ensemble
hung to dry on its clothesline.

Wrapping A Gift

Another holiday to celebrate;
the only guests we invite in are memories,
accompanied by a playlist
quietly blending the secular and the sacred.
Through the long afternoon,
photographic evidence ensconced in her lap,
my wife communes with
a family resurrected from past Christmases.
With tonight’s meal of
reheated leftovers invigorated by egg nog,
we toast our good fortune,
even if the presents beneath the tree are few.
Before nine, she’s fast asleep,
yet animated, and what ghosts have come to
trouble her aren’t evident.
Fearing their haunting presence might chill,
I decide to carefully re-tuck
a blanket that has found its way to the floor.
This gift is best left wrapped.

Dream Cave

Informed by Sleep
that it is not in the mood,
behind closed eyes
I retreat to my dream cave.
There, I picture
myself cocooned in blankets,
wearing every piece
of clothing I own to ward off
a mountain’s chill.

But I’m not alone;
fast asleep, there’s someone
within arm’s reach,
a back turned away from me.
In the endless tick
of minutes that separate us,
rather than to awaken
this stranger from her oblivion,
I want to join her.

Knowing full well
that curfew will be enforced
by midnight’s knell,
I dare not move to reignite
a dead camp fire
with a fresh handful of twigs.
Measured breaths
alone will convince its sentinels
of my compliance.

Dawn’s rescue surprises me.