Liberty's Martyr

Someday I’ll read this book, Liberty’s Martyr by Janet Uhlar, a writer from the Cape. Copies were gifted to me and my teacher friend Elaine by the author who we met at a Massachusetts Historical Society summer workshop. See the note below for an explanation of why I'm thinking about this book now.

Liberty’s Martyr is about Elaine’s favorite historical ‘crush’, Dr. Joseph Warren who famously died at the Battle of Bunker Hill. My copy of the book has survived the famous purge during the Dumpster Summer of 2024 and currently resides in my living room bookshelf. I'll have to ask Elaine if she ever read it.

Teaching social studies and attending history workshops and exhibits are what I miss most about being retired from teaching. Of course, I still visit museums and speaking engagements, but the element of integrating the material into my professional life is what’s missing. That, and the camaraderie of learning and synthesizing information with colleagues. It was fun while it lasted, before the education system fried my nervous system.

Note: It was just about a year ago on June 24, 2025 when I dragged Elaine—on her last day of the school year—to Tales of Cape Cod because Janet Uhlar was speaking. To say the author was hyper would be an understatement. It was the longest, strangest event I have ever attended at Tales. Elaine was exhausted, and I was my usual jumble of chaos. Here’s an excerpt from my journal.

Last night I met Elaine in Barnstable for a quick bite at the (awful) Tuscan Cuisine Restaurant and a spirited talk at Tales of  Cape Cod—the author was ranting about contemporary biographers ‘flying fast and loose’ with the facts about her subject, Joseph Warren. The adventure culminated with me somehow locking my purse with keys IN the car and having to call Michele and AAA to rescue me. I should just stay in my house. 

A Life Suspended

This important book, A Life Suspended: A Mother and Son’s Story of Autism, Extinction Bursts, and Living a Resilient Life, is written by my writing group facilitator Nicole Donovan. 

It was fortuitous that I attended Nicole’s Snapshot Stories workshop at the Sandwich Library in February. Despite my experience writing, after retirement I was in need of some inspiration. I learned so much from Nicole that I signed up for five more sessions in May at her Lotus and Rose Healing Arts Studio. The Ancestral Stories writing group continued meeting monthly through September and has been a consistent source of joy for me throughout.

Now, I’m at a crossroads about how to move forward with my writing. September truly is a month of transitions and a time for me to come to terms with my goals. I love the group energy of Ancestral Stories and can’t give that up. I’ve been questioning what direction to take, and I feel like I need some guidance. My ancestors haven’t exactly been banging down the door between me and the netherworld, but nonetheless I feel their presence. Somehow, my writing persists. 

And, I have seriously digressed from this book review!

Having finished reading this book, I believe Nicole is a good fit to help me bring some coherence to my own ideas. Her writing is honest and accessible. She writes in an open and authentic manner about the very personal topic of her son Jack’s Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. Nicole is insightful and generous with her time and feedback.

Our writing styles and outlook on life seem similar in many ways. We’re both mothers and teachers whose experiences reverberate with the familiar themes of self-doubt, a search for clarity, and difficulty letting go. Correlations echo throughout, mostly in our reflective natures and coping strategies. Therapy, journaling, breath work, meditation, and humor bring solace to us both during emotional challenges.

I love how Nicole incorporates figurative and descriptive language into her prose. Her story is both heartrending and hopeful at the same time. She fully captures the essence of trying to keep it all together as a mother, as well as the intensity of our ‘mother bear’ feelings for our children. 

I annotated the hell out of this book as I read it, but this passage stands out for its relevance in my life at the moment. 

“There is an old saying, ‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,’ which I found true in my own life. Jack was ready for the next phase. It was time for me to let go . . .”

I have had opportunities to be both the teacher and the student in my lifetime. Lifelong learning and emotional growth are the key components for a worthwhile existence at any age.

Little Dipper

Little Dipper: Roots of Healing—Tides of Change by Marlene Denessen is a gem of a little book published in 2007, yet much of its wisdom remains relevant in 2025. 

“I listen to the radio as I exercise. The situation in the Middle East is violent and bloody, and it isn’t going to go away soon.”

Marlene Denessen was my therapist back in the late 1990s and early 2000s during my existential crisis of motherhood, divorce, identity. I knew she was smart, but I was unaware of the extent of her deep-thinking and writing abilities. Her counseling empowered me during a deeply confusing time in my life, and I credit her support with allowing me to move forward in life with gratitude and positivity. 

I continue to be inspired by Marlene’s outlook as I read this now, at an age close to hers when this book was written. This Amazon description captures the essence of the book. 

“Rendered in crisp and engaging prose, and drawing upon the insights of the long career of a professional helper, this book is a must-read for those who seek, in their own ways, simplicity, spirituality and wholeness.”

The story is a recounting of a period of time when the author was searching for clarity, grieving the loss of a grandchild, and seeking to simplify her way of life. Like Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond, she purchases a remote plot of land in Canada where she stays for weeks at a time in the summer embracing a slower pace and healthy lifestyle surrounded by the beauty of nature.

Sounds like the perfect antidote to our current social malaise brought on by greed, intolerance, and (mis)information overload.

Little Monsters/Wild Game

Adrienne Brodeur is an author with a connection to Cape Cod. I started reading her memoir, Wild Game, which oddly enough documents her unorthodox relationship with her mother, while I was waiting for her novel Little Monsters to become available. I like her writing style which is unrestrained and descriptive but not overblown. 

Finally Little Monsters arrived on my kindle, and I took it to jury duty in December. (That’s a story for another day! Warning: it involves a transvestite lawyer, drunk driving, and an overcrowded, pre-holiday courthouse.) 

Fast forward to Saturday of the glorious MLK long weekend when I returned to Little Monsters. I finished reading about the hellishly dysfunctional Gardner family on a day that began with a blustery thunderstorm and then morphed into a balmy, windswept, blue-sky day.

Now I can get back to Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me and reawaken some “mama trauma” of my own.

What makes this book so disturbing is that it recounts a true story. The people are real, and their actions are appalling. Here is the author's mother’s obituary from the Cape Cod Times.

I’m glad I read both books. I liked the memoir better than the novel, and the references to Cape Cod were an added bonus. 

Love, Theoretically

 Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood took me way longer to read than it should have, considering Brenda gave me a copy at the beginning of the summer and I just finished it last night 9/17/23. Her paperback has long since been returned, and I downloaded a kindle copy that was so overdue from CLAMS I had to resort to the airplane mode trick.

This is a romance novel with a twist, a scientific slant that brings some legitimacy and intellect to the typical rom-com plot line. The main characters and love interests are physicists, albeit smarties with flawed personalities and plenty of baggage from their childhoods. 

The reader can easily see through the contrived tension between the pair in the beginning, and we know they will end up together. I think the slow burn leading to the consummation of their relationship is worth it though.

Lady Clementine

Lady Clementine is another novelization of a historical figure by Marie Benedict. This time Benedict takes on the life of Winston Churchill’s indomitable wife, Clementine (which I discovered the British pronounce Clem-en-teen).

I learned a lot about Winston Churchill’s role during this historical time period, but I also found myself wondering if the portrayal of his relationship with his wife was completely accurate. Reading  fictionalized conversations between real-life characters always distracts me from the authenticity of the story.

The Last White Man

 

Three books in three days?! Who even am I? My identity is shattered somewhat like the protagonist in this story.

Well, I'm grieving the end of 2022 for some reason. Winter has been mild but rough for me emotionally. Anxiety, discontent, work stress, changing routines. . . damn Judy Woodruff' leaving the PBS news broadcast, and soon Jim Broude will no longer host Greater Boston. My weeknights from 6-7:30 pm (bedtime) will be forever changed.

I've learned a lot from Braude, even though he makes me cringe at times. I was intrigued when he interviewed Mohsin Hamid, the author of The Last White Man, so I picked up a copy of the book when I saw it at Target. It has been sitting in my to-be-read pile for months. I'm glad I finally made time for it. 

Here is Maureen Corrigan's description of the book in an npr book review from August 2022. "A deft, if narrow, Twilight Zone-type fantasy about identity, The Last White Man only seriously strains credulity at its very end. No doubt, it says something about our own anxious times that the happy ending here seems too far-fetched." 

This short book has an unusual writing style. Long, wordy, run-on sentences are somehow easy to comprehend. The dystopian theme was supposedly inspired by Kafka's Metamorphosis. With references to society's "addictive quest for celebrity" and a recognition of "the local paper having shut down long ago," Hamid's future world reflects some troubling aspects of our current world of miscommunication and fake news. His rambling prose brings a sense of urgency to his message.

"In a world that did not care and was getting worse all the time, worse and worse and more and more dangerous, a danger you could see all around you, all you had to do was to look at the crime and the potholes in the streets and the weird people who now came when you called for anything, for a plumber, an electrician, for help with your garden, for help with anything at all."

The Little Prince

I know I’ve read The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry before. I know it’s a classic, but I couldn’t remember why. I thought it would be a good idea to refresh my memory since it’s the book we chose to gift all our fifth graders this year for the holidays.

I finished rereading this brilliant tale on Christmas Eve, and I actually hope some students will give it a chance because it has a nice little message about following your own heart and discovering what's really important in life. 

“All men have the stars … but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are not more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You—you alone—will have the stars as no one else has them …”

Extra credit earned for students who took the time to read it during their break and can complete a short, meaningful assignment about it!

“A lovely story . . . which covers a poetic, yearning philosophy—not the sort of fable that can be tacked down neatly at its four corners but rather reflections on what are real matters of consequence.”
—The New York Times Book Review

Lincoln's Grave Robbers

One of my advanced fifth grade social studies students introduced me to Lincoln's Grave Robbers by Steve Sheinkin. With a lexile level of 930 and high interest subject matter, this book is a great nonfiction choice for strong readers who also enjoy history. The plot revolves around a crazy scheme hatched by a group of counterfeiters in the 1870s to steal the remains of Abraham Lincoln from a memorial in Springfield, Illinois and hold them for ransom. It details the efforts of the newly formed Secret Service agency to thwart the plan.

Lies You Wanted To Hear

I read about Lies You Wanted to Hear by James Whitfield Thomson in the Cape Cod Times in early February, and it was the perfect February vacation read. The newspaper article was about the author who wrote the novel between the years 2006 and 2011 at a library in Natick. I was intrigued by the description in the Times which called the book "a compelling story of a recognizable but flawed couple, bound by bad choices and devotion to their children that explores the consequences of their of self-deceptions with insight and irony." 

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." —Inspired by an Eskimo Legend

Walter Mosley's The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey has replaced A Prayer for Owen Meany as my all-time favorite book. And I couldn't have read it at a more appropriate time. Its message was comforting to me during a time when I needed comfort.

According to Bookmarks Magazine, "Critics described The Last Days of Ptlomey Grey as a remarkable blend of literary fiction, mystery, and fantasy. Most were moved by the story of a man slowly losing himself to dementia and his friendship with the compassionate and pragmatic Robyn . . . And though Mosley's latest is a pretty big departure from his private detective series featuring Easy Rawlins, the novel stands on its own as an original tale of aging, family, love, and loss."

I fell in love with the characters because of their authenticity, and I was touched by the fortitude of the 91-year-old Ptolemy as he reflects on his substantial life lessons, especially those learned in childhood from his mentor, Coy McCann.

Ptolemy wondered how he could have lived for so long but still the most important moments of his life were back when he was a child with Coy McCann walking at his side. How could the most important moments of his life be Coy’s last dance on fire and Maude’s death in flames? Hadn’t he lived through poverty, war, old age? Didn’t any of that mean anything?

For me, the poignant story inspired patience and tolerance for the experiences my own father was going through. Reading about Ptolemy's perspective gave me strength, as if I was receiving solace from a dear and trusted friend.

There are times in your life when things line up and Fate takes a hand in your future,” Ptolemy remembered Coydog saying. “When that happens, you got to move quick and take advantage of the sitchiation or you’ll never know what might have been.”

“How do I know when it’s time to move quick?” L’il Pea asked.

“When somethin’ big happens and then somethin’ else come up.”

Letters to a Young Teacher

With all the recent hype surrounding Davis Guggenheim's documentary, Waiting for Superman, and media grandstanding such as NBS's Education Nation and Oprah's "groundbreaking announcement" regarding the Newark, New Jersey schools, it seems only fitting to revisit some original principles asserted by Jonathan Kozol decades ago. A writer, educator, and activist, Kozol is known for his books criticizing the public education provided to urban children in our country. Some of his more famous books include: Savage Inequalities (1991), Amazing Grace (1995), and The Shame of the Nation (2005).

Letters to a Young Teacher, published in 2007, restates all of Kozol's messages, interweaving his thoughts and recollections into correspondence with a new, idealistic teacher in the Boston schools. Although I agree with many of Kozol's opinions, I still found the letter format to be a bit heavy-handed. Even though in writing to "Francesca" he is "preaching to the choir," the "letters" read more like "lectures." This book seems to be just another platform for Kozol's fervent views about public education that are evident in this quote:

The children of the suburbs learn to think and to interrogate reality; the inner-city kids meanwhile are trained for nonreflective acquiescence. One race and social class is educated for the exploration of ideas and for political sagacity and future economic power; the other is prepared for intellectual subordination. The longer this goes on, Francesca, I'm afraid the vast divide that we already see within American society is going to grow wider.

I did enjoy Kozol's personal anecdotes and the detailed notes section at the back of the book, and I definitely respect his passion and conviction. The following passage describing his visit to an out-of-control New York City high school lunchroom especially resonated with me. Of all a teacher’s various roles, none is worse than the dreaded lunch duty.

Visitors from outside these neighborhoods who witness confrontations like this often make the unkind observation that "these students act like animals." But if you treat these kids like animals, herding them along for squalid feedings like so many cattle rather than providing them with even minimal civility, it's not surprising to me that they act accordingly.

My absolute favorite part of this book however was Kozol's description of the type of teacher he recruits. I wholeheartedly agree!

As you know, Francesca, I recruit young teachers every time I have the chance when I speak at colleges and universities. I never recruit people who seem docile, flat-natured, and boring. If they're boring to a grown-up, it seems likely they'll be boring to a class of children too. But if they're dynamic and engaging individuals, if they're in love with children and in love with language and like to read good books and poetry and talk about them with excitement, and if their heads seem thoroughly screwed on, so I feel assured about their personal stability—in other words, if they're the kind of person you'd be eager to have as an intern in your class— I always say, "Come on! Wrap up the courses that you need in order to be certified. Then bring your interesting personality, your energy, your love of beauty, and the academic benefits of your good education into the schools where people with your gifts are needed most."

Hate That Cat/Love That Dog

LEXILE rating for Love That Dog is 1010. Hate That Cat was given the NP (Non-Prose) code.

A few years ago I read Love That Dog By Sharon Creech. Loved it!

This year we read aloud Hate That Cat during our fifth grade poetry unit. Loved it, too.

These books make poetry accessible to elementary students who couldn't be any further removed from the work of the poets that they are forced to read and analyze on standardized state tests. It makes sense to help them to connect with poetry in a way that they can relate to.