Harsh Light

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks, [2018]
xviii, 477 p. : ill. ; 214 cm.

This is a fantastic book that ties several important periods of US history together - WWI, The Roaring Twenties and The Great Depression.  It also has a local interest in that half the drama of the story is in Ottawa, IL about an hour and forty-five minute drive from here in Urbana.

But it's a tough book, too.  It's the story of literally murderous corporate exploitation and dishonesty that shortened the lives of hundreds of women who worked in the factories where the luminous (and dangerously radioactive) radium was painted on wartime instrument panels and on civilian-use watch dials.  The deaths of several of the women featured in the book are slow, agonizing, and terrible to read about.  What makes the book inspiring, though, is the courage, grit and determination of the victimized women as they take on the companies that used and abused them - and eventually win significant victories.

This book has a lot of heart. The author succeeds in putting the reader into the lives of the women who worked in the radium-dial industry - capturing the initial excitement of well-paid employment for young women of the twenties and the freedom it gave them, and humanizing the gruesome and tragic illnesses that stalked these young women several years after they started the work.

The book is a great lesson about the dangers of unregulated corporate behavior, the power of unified resistance, and the importance of family, friends, community and the media in taking on powerful foes. It's a long, but very worthy read for anyone interested in US history.



    

An Inside the Park Home Run

One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard
New York : Hyperion, [2012]
viii, 255 p. : ill., map ; 25 cm.

I added this book to our high school library last April after seeing that it was a 2016 Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee, and that it won a 2013 Alex Award (given to books for adults that have great young adult appeal).

After reading it, I wish it had won the Lincoln Award; it's that good!  It's a great book with so much to recommend it: a great baseball tale, an underdog story with heart, an homage to the counterculture of the 60s & 70s, a nostalgic coming-of-age saga, and a local setting!

I won't spoil the ending, but the book, with the subtitle A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season, recounts the unlikely successes of a very small town high school baseball team during the 1970 and 1971 seasons.  I was surprised to find out that in the 70s, Illinois high schools (at least in baseball) competed for state playoffs against schools large and small.  There were no classes and divisions, so a little school of 300 students might play a Chicago, powerhouse school of 5000 students.  This uneven competition is part of what makes the story so compelling.  Also, at the heart of the narrative is an iconoclast teacher/coach who - because of his big heart and unconventional notions - brings out the best in students and players.

I will highly recommend this book to students and teachers.  Some of the events of the story take place right here in Champaign-Urbana, and just 70 miles away in Macon, Illinois.  Also, the sports writing is crisp and interesting, but what really makes this book wonderful is the great passion and love that shines in the retelling of the Macon Ironmen "Mod Squad."  It is a lovely tale of some of the best aspects of teaching, coaching, and playing sports for the love of the game.

Honey and Dream

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
New York, NY : Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2015.
345 p. ; 22 cm.

What a fine and unusual novel this is.  In some ways I think I should end my review here and say, "Just read it for yourself, and see."

I read Bone Gap after seeing it come up several times - a finalist for the National Book Award and a Printz Prize winner this year.  As you can see on the author's website, the book has received a great deal of high praise - and I'd have to concur.  The author both employs - and cleverly does away with - realistic narrative.  Several reviews acknowledged "magical realism," but it is more than that - dreamy, psychological and mythical.

I love that the novel is set in a town that actually exists in my home state, and yet it really only exists between the covers of the book. I also appreciate that the novel could well be a lovely little adult novel and not just a young adult novel.  It tells the story (stories) of two brothers, the likeable and unlikable characters of the town, a Polish immigrant, a kidnapping, a romance (two romances?) and the magic of love and imagination.  What more could you want from a simple, and not so simple, coming of age story.

The novel made me think a bit of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Master's Spoon River Anthology, and even works of Günter Grass.  If you like well written novels, with a touch of romance, mystery, magic and danger, then Bone Gap should definitely be on your to-read list.

Ka-Boom!

Ashfall by Mike Mullin
Terre Haute, IN : Tanglewood, c2010.
466 p. ; 22 cm.

The picture at the top of this post should give you pause.  Yellowstone Park [shaded in green], the US national treasure of hot springs, geysers, mountains, lakes and wildlife is basically the crater - or caldera [large red boundary] of an incredibly massive supervolcano that last had a major eruption about 640,000 years ago.  Ok, 640,000 years ago is a long time, but the problem is that it will erupt again in the future - probably not in our lifetimes (but it could).   It is the unlikely, but theoretically possible event of such a nation-shattering (about 2/3 of the US would be significantly damaged) and world-altering volcanic event that starts Mike Mullin's first novel off with a bang.

The novel is set far away (hundreds of miles) from Yellowstone,  - in Iowa - but not far enough away to escape the devastating noise, ash and ejecta of the eruption.  The event creates a cataclysmic environment through which the hero of the novel - 17 year old Alex - seeks to survive as he heads east toward Illinois where his family is.  His ordeal through this landscape - one that brings to mind Cormac McCarthy's The Road -  forms the plot of this thrilling novel.

As you might imagine this new, altered world brings out the best and definitely the worst in people and institutions that Alex is exposed to.  A bright spot is his joining forces with a remarkable young woman, Darla, whose skills and courage help Alex survive.  Not surprisingly the two eventually fall in love, in a rather believable, and touching way. 

The novel should appeal to all kinds of readers.  There is disaster, survival, action, romance, and some gritty violence and tragedy.  I really appreciated how Mullin allows his novel to really delve into the complex ways that individuals and institutions can trend toward good - and definitely toward evil in situations of grave social disruption.  I could easily recommend this book.  We also recently acquired the sequel - Ashen Winter.