HEARTWOOD by Amity Gaige

Motherhood. The disappointing mothers. The cold and neglectful. The dreamy and ethereal. The non-mothers. Mother earth. Mother trees. The anxious and caring mothers. Mothers of mentally ill children. Mothers of lost children. And the estranged. Valerie, a hiker, goes missing on the Appalachian Trail in Maine, and a Maine Warden lieutenant named Beverly is tasked to find her. Time is of the essence when a 76-year-old living in a retirement community gets involved in the case. Gaige beautifully weaves the three points of view to a satisfying conclusion that could only have happened in her expert plotting.  

Favorite line(s): I’ve been thinking about Halloween, strangely. Near my tent, I hear squirrels kicking in the leaf litter. It’s the sound of Halloween. Children dragging their robes and capes and funny shoes through the crisp October leaffall. You’d think an anxious child like me would hate Halloween. But Halloween was the one night I wasn’t scared. I’d hear those footfalls in the leaves, and I’d squeal. They’re coming! The trick-or-treaters are coming! Filmy ghosts blew like molted kin from the trees. There was a graveyard for every house. From the upper window of our house, I could see them walking through the dusk, in reverse birth order, babies first—the pumpkins, the ice, the Pooh bears . . . Next, the robots, the Supermans, the prepubescent witches. It would be another hour before the older kids came out, their faces hidden behind rictus masks, eyes swimming behind the rubber eyeholes—gorillas, disgraced politicians. I’d be safely inside before they walked down the middle of the streets howling. At Halloween, I was only Scooby-Doo scared. Meaning, the terror would be relieved with a flourish of meta-knowledge. It was all lights and mirrors! You rotten kids!

THE SALT PATH by Raynor Winn 

A memoir about a husband and wife who lose everything after investing with a friend and then the subsequent legal battles that they don’t win. After being forced out of their home, the couple find out Moth, the husband, has a terminal illness. In their 50s, with nowhere to live, they set out to walk 630 miles on the South West Coast Path in England. The hardships they endure along the way, the acts of kindness, and the healing aspects of nature force the couple to contemplate grief for their significant losses and to be grateful for each other when everything else has been stripped away, and they are left homeless.

Favorite line(s): We’d never go back, I knew that. Never walk through the door, drop our bags on the slate floor, feed the cats, cut the grass, walk through the garden on a starry night and see the Plow hanging over the mountains in the north. It was never over the mountains now. It stayed in the north but my perspective had changed; I’d lost my bearings. The country towed above me, a blank empty space containing nothing for us. Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of the other, the path would move me forward and a strip of dirt, often no more than a foot wide, had become home. It wasn’t just the chill in the air, the lowering of the sun’s horizon, the heaviness of the dew or the lack of urgency in the birds’ calls, but something in me was changing season too. I was not longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to, or angry at an authoritarian system too bureaucratic to see the truth. A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned in by the sun, driven in by the storms. I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was a part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it. The core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and growing stronger with every headland.

INA GARTEN A MEMOIR: BE READY WHEN THE LUCK HAPPENS by Ina Garten

I’m an Ina fan through and through. I think I have every one of her cookbooks. Why? You can follow any recipe and it will turn out just like the photo and taste better than you thought. It’s comforting to know she’s got my proverbial back in the kitchen without fail. So it was interesting to read in her memoir about the sad and abusive childhood she endured and the unsatisfying career choices she made before answering an ad in the New York Times for a “catering, gourmet foods & cheese shoppe” for sale in the Hamptons. The Barefoot Contessa. Garten often had luck on her side and the support of her beloved husband, Jeffrey. But she worked hard for every good thing that happened to her, even sacrificing her marriage at one point if it meant losing her autotomy and the success of her business. On TV, Garten comes off as a soft-spoken pushover, always smiling up at the morning host or a famous guest on her cooking show. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Underneath is a driven perfectionist who makes it all look so effortless.  

Favorite line(s): When I decide to work on a recipe—it could be one I remember from the past or something I tried for the first time yesterday—I start with an idea of a dish I would like to make. Next, I might look through the cookbooks in my library and read everything I can about similar dishes. If I have something specific in mind—both flavor and texture—I have a much better chance of getting it right. Then I just start testing—over and over again. I’m really like a scientist and a detective, experimenting until I find the perfect combination of ingredients. Each time I make a dish, I might change one variable to see the effect—What would happen if I added cognac to this sauce? Or more baking powder to this cake batter? My goal in finding the right flavor is to make the dish taste as good as it can taste with as few ingredients as possible. Every ingredient has to earn its place in the recipe. It’s not so much about adding flavors as about making the intrinsic ingredients taste like the best versions of themselves.

THE TELL: A MEMOIR by Amy Griffin (audio)  

Amy Griffin’s young daughter tells her mother one night that she’s never really present. “You’re here, but you’re not here.” This sets Griffin off on a journey to figure out why she’s always running and why her perfectionism has remained front and center for most of her life. Griffin finds answers through psychedelic therapy. A middle school teacher had groomed and abused Amy several times. She never told anyone. She shoved the memories deep down and went on to build the life and career of her dreams. But she kept running from something. The tell is the secret but the real revelation is Griffin’s exploration into the healing powers of letting go of the pressure to be perfect.