Member of the Family by Dianne Lake This is a memoir written by a woman who belonged to the Manson Family before and during the murders occurred in 1969. She was 15 or 16 when she joined the family, and she describes how insane it was to live with the Manson family, how Charlie would run hot and cold with his girls and then what it was like when the members committed the murders and then came back to tell her all about them. It was her testimony that ultimately helped bring down Charles Manson and the members who had committed the murders. A very interesting insight into the family.
The Women by Kristin Hannah
All the reading groups on Facebook that I belong to go absolutely bonkers when Kristin Hannah releases something new. And for good reason! This one is about a woman who goes off to be a combat nurse during the Vietnam war. This is the war when we first started paying attention to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by being in combat. She did 2 tours in Vietnam working in front line hospitals, where she saw an incredible amount of traumatizing things. Then she went home, back to her privileged life on Coronado Island in San Diego, where the wealthy live. She can’t fit back into that life. She’s a traumatized combat veteran in a world where nobody thinks that women actually went to war. She goes to the VA to get help only to be turned away because “no women served in Vietnam.” She leans closely on her two friends that she served with, who also understand everything she’d gone through as she had gone through it too. It’s a very detailed view into when women first started to serve in combat and how poorly she, as a veteran, was treated when she returned.
These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant
I listened to this one and was riveted. The narrator was Bronson Pinchot. Remember that show Perfect Strangers—he played Balki the immigrant who arrived to live with his cousin in Chicago, and culture shock hilarity ensued. His voice is NOTHING like that of Balki, btw. Anyway, in this story Cooper and his 8 year old daughter Finch are living in an isolated cabin. They are very strict with rationing supplies because they can’t just go to the store and buy more. They’re in hiding. Over the course of the story you learn that Cooper is a single dad whose custody of his daughter was being threatened by his in laws. So he took Finch when she was a baby and took off to live in this cabin. Now Finch is 8 and wondering why they’re there and why they don’t have any contact with the outside world. Their supply line, his friend, didn’t show, and they have no way of knowing why or asking why. This is a story of doing whatever it takes to be together, and then coming to grips with the fact that if they step into the outside world again, he could be arrested for kidnapping. An amazing story.
The Burnout by Sophie Kinsela I have loved Sophie Kinsela and I am so saddened to hear the news about her brain cancer. I suspect this will be her last book. Sasha is incredibly overworked and epically loses her shit at work. To the point where the HR lady is chasing her down the street and she runs headlong into a wall and knocks herself out. When she comes to she realizes that she’s been put on leave from work and her mom has booked her into a hotel in the seaside town where they used to vacation when she was a kid. The hotel isn’t at all the grand place she remembers, but she stays there anyway and the cast of characters running the place are purely Sophie Kinsela. Sasha recovers from her burnout by trying to follow a wellness plan her mom recommended, when she meets a man also staying at the hotel who is also recovering from epically losing his shit at work. So, we have a love interest, some comedy with the weirdos working at the hotel trying to source things like kale and noni juice because Sasha’s mom ordered it, despite the fact that they are terrible tasting. And there’s also a bit of intrigue involving the local surf shop. I really loved this book. Thank you, Sophie Kinsella, for all the years of awesome books.
My Effin Life by Geddy Lee LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE! I grew up listening to Rush, the band where Geddy Lee is the lead singer and bassist. I listened to him sing the lyrics written by drummer Neil Peart. And man is his life story absolutely fascinating and well worth the entire time it took to listen to it. His parents were survivors of Auschwitz, and while he’s in his 70s now he still carries their stories of survival with him. His parents’ need to thrive after such a trauma seems to have driven him to be the success that he is, while still being a great human being as well. The love he openly expresses for his band mates is also wonderful. Very worthwhile read. Absolutely awesome. I could feel the profound heartbreak when he described losing Neil Peart.
Katharine’s Remarkable Road Trip by Gail Ward Olmsted Another awesome one by Gail Olmsted! This one is about the woman she mentioned in her book Landscape of a Marriage, which was about Mary Olmsted, wife of the famous Frederick Olmsted. In that book, Mary mentioned a woman named Katharine Prescott Wormeley, who was a friend of Frederick Olmsted. In the Landscape book, there was a bit of a question about whether something more went on between Frederick and Katherine. In this book Katherine is in her 70s, it’s 1907, and she decides she’s going to drive from her home in Newport Rhode Island to her other home in Jackson New Hampshire. Over the course of this multi day drive, during which she traveled a torturous 10 miles per hour, she encountered some adventures, met some people along the way, but this was also a very creative way for her to reflect on her life and for the readers to learn more about her. Which was awesome.
Paris by Paris Hilton I remember when she hit the scene in the early 2000s, she was famous for being famous and I was so annoyed by her. But she was actually doing it right. She was getting paid to attend parties and building her brand. But you didn’t see what was going on behind her smile at the cameras. In this book she tells us how she was a victim of the troubled teen industry. So in the late 90s early oughts parents were sending their “out of control” children to these behavior modification boarding schools. The parents were presented with the pretty pictures of kids smiling and learning to adult. But really it was way worse than any state funded prison. (Check out the docuseries The Program on Netflix.) So, Paris Hilton got sent to one of these places when she was 15 and she was to stay there for 2 years. And it was an incredibly messed up place where kids had to “earn” the right to speak, put shoes on, walk into a room, etc. And of course tons of mental, physical and sexual abuse happened there. She escaped 4 times, and was sent back every single time, and of course her parents were told not to believe her when she told them she was being abused. It was incredibly damaging and traumatic, and incredibly messed up. And it messed her up. A lot. She’s become an activist against these “schools” (which still exist, somehow!) and she’s now very outspoken about how crazy this system is. And you know what, I kinda like her now!
Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea Sidney is a documentary maker who gets onto a case of a woman, Grace, who was accused of killing her boyfriend on a trip to Saint Lucia. She is accused and convicted faster than anyone can blink, so Sidney looks into it and makes a real time docuseries about the murder and whether or not Grace really killed her boyfriend. While she's releasing episodes she's reinvestigating the case on her own. She ends up providing enough doubt that they have to release her. But then we start to wonder if she really did it or not. Sidney learns that Grace had a boyfriend in high school who died the exact same way. It had me second guessing until kinda close to the end who the real killer was.
Funny Story by Emily Henry Daphne moved to a small town on a lake in Michigan to be with her fiancé Peter. She basically just stepped into his life and allowed his life to be hers. Then he comes back from his bachelor party and tells her that he hooked up with his best friend since childhood, the gorgeous Petra, and tells her that he can’t marry her in 2 weeks and that she needs to vacate his house that minute because Petra is on her way to move in. She has nowhere to go, she hasn’t really made friends because Peter’s friends were her friends. So she moves in with Miles, Petra’s ex-boyfriend. They get drunk together and they both got invites to Peter and Petra’s wedding, which is happening in like 5 minutes. And wtf why would they invite the exes they stranded??? Anyway, they decide to RSVP yes with a plus one, and then post on social media that they are now a couple. But they’re not, they barely know each other. But they are both so heartbroken they want to stick it to their exes. So then they have to go through the charade of pretending to be a couple when they barely know each other. The title of the book is accurate
We Came Here to Forget by Andrea Dunlop I want to know more. I know that this author has a podcast called Nobody Should Believe Me. She talks about Munchausen by Proxy and how it impacts people other than the patient involved. Her sister is a Munchausen by Proxy mom, and it has torn her family apart. And this book was about that. Katie is a champion skier who is on a sabbatical in Buenos Aires, where she meets a group of other ex-pats and hangs out with them. She doesn’t tell them her real name or what brought her to Buenos Aires, because her real name is tied with the very public court case against her sister. Her sister was accused and acquitted of killing her own toddler daughter with excessive medical treatments. Her sister was very public about her daughter’s illnesses online and sought attention for those illnesses. Then the daughter died and everyone figured out that the sister had a lot to do with it. Turns out all the ex-pats she met were also fleeing some traumatic thing that happened in their lives. In the end they all came clean and started to heal. Very good book, and I know a lot of it is based in reality.
BJ Knapp is the author of Beside the Music, available for purchase here. Please sign up for the Backstage with BJ Knapp mailing list to get updates on events, signings, dog pictures and so much more.