I Am a Star is the juvenile non-fiction account of  Inge Auerbacher, who at the age of seven in 1942 was sent with her parents to a concentration camp.  She spend her next three birthdays there.

The book begins,

Of fifteen thousand children imprisoned in the Eterazin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia between 1941 and 1945, about one hundred survived.  I am one of them.  At least one a nd a half million children were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.  The reason most of those children died is that they were Jewish.

Why should one remember these dreadful events? The death of one innocent child is a catastrophe; the loss of such numbers in unimaginable.  Their silent voices must be heard today.  This is why I feel compelled to trace the historical events that made this great evil possible and to tell my own story.

Auerbacher’s story is horrifying and she does give a really good background about the history of the Holocaust so that a child who knows nothing about World War II would learn and understand what happened.  The question that will never be answered though is why?  We know what happened, but we will never truly understand why.

Interspered between the text is a collection of poems written by Auerbacher.  Or I assume that they were written by Auerbacher – there was never really an acknowledgement or explanation of the poems – which is partly why I found the format of I Am a Star a bit disconcerting.  They seemed randomly placed throughout the book.   They did relate to the text though, so I am assuming they were written by Auerbacher.  It’s almost as though the book wanted to be a non-fiction narrative written in verse and also written formally.  I liked both, but maybe they needed to be placed into the book a bit better.

I  enjoyed the photos that accompanied the text.  I always enjoy photos in memoirs, and this was no exception.  I like to visualize what’s going on.  There were a fair number of illustrations.  Again, I’m not sure if these were Auerbacher’s or not.

I really liked I Am a Star and learning about Auerbacher’s story.  If I could recommend only one non-fiction book to read about a child in the Holocaust though, this one would probably not be it.  I just didn’t feel that gut-wrenching horror that I usually feel when I read books about the Holocaust.  I felt removed from the story.  And to tell you the truth, I imagine that the author had to remove herself from her own story just to get past the emotion of bringing it all back to the forefront of her memory.

Overall, I’m glad I read it but it’s not on the best Holocaust memoirs that I’ve read.  I’d recommend something along the lines of I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Button Jackson at about the same reading level.  But don’t discount I Am a Star. Each memoir written about the Holocaust should be valued and their stories heard.  We are losing the survivors to old age, pretty soon we will have nobody left and only their words will be left behind.

Links of interest: Inge Auerbacher website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Memoir for ages 9-12.
Publisher:  Puffin.  February 1, 1993
Paperback, 96 pages.  ISBN:  0140364013
I Am a Star, Child of the Holocaust is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Eve always wanted to join the Peace Corps but once she realized that she was all talk and that she wasn’t getting any younger, she finally arrives at the Peace Corps office only to find that her recruiter, John, is not only really cute but one heck of a nice guy too.  As they arrange for her two years abroad, she secretly wishes that she could stay home instead and try to win John’s heart.  So in a round about way she gives up her comfortable life in New York, leaves John behind, and heads to the jungles of Ecuador and hopes that this sentiment will be enough to prove to John that she’s the type of girl that he wants.

After living in Ecuador for a year and unable to recover from the now unburied memories that surfaced after her co-worker was raped, Eve returns to the busy and frantic States and finds herself overwhelmed just by shopping in the soup aisle.  But she’s happy to have her cappuccino’s and other comforts of life back.  John and Eve marry and it’s not long after that he get’s a job with CARE and they are packing for yet another adventure – this time to a remote outpost in Uganda.

I loved Eve’s experiences and the way in which she shared them with us.  Having a background in AIDS education, Eve had visions of doing great work among the Africans but instead found herself without work and playing tennis everyday.  The story got really good when Eve became pregnant but yet nobody could confirm the pregnancy.  The Dr. asked her if she felt pregnant and if so, then yes!  Eve joked around about needing to write a book about What You Need to Know When You’re Expecting In Africa because the only good that the American book did her in Africa was to smack all the bugs in the house.

The scene that will be most memorable to me is when she recounts that early in her pregnancy, she went to the bathroom, sat down and went about her business.  When she was done, she looked down and there was a creature in the toilet! Not just any creature, but a rat!  A rat that was in the toilet the whole time!    I loved it when she said, ” . . . I knew I would never enjoy a leisurely sit on the toilet again.”  Oh my goodness!

I loved Eve’s portrayal of all the people whom she met on her journey.  I imagine that the highlight of traveling and living in different countries would be all the interesting people.  I also loved how Eve showed that living abroad isn’t all fun and games but yet she had a lot of fun and played a lot of games.  There are ups and downs and she wrote about them with not only a great deal of consideration but with a lot of sass.  She’s fun and witty and the book was a real enjoyable read.  I imagine that she’d be the life of the party wherever she goes.

Links of interest:  Eve Brown-Waite website. Other blogger reviews.
Genre:  Memoir
Publisher:  Broadway.  April 14, 2009
Hardcover, 320 pages.  ISBN:  0767929357
First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

I wanted to read That Went Well for one simple reason: it takes place in my hometown and the author is local as well.  Within the last month I have read three books that are set in Salt Lake City, this one, The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale, and The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love by A.E. Cannon (both yet to be reviewed) and I have to admit that I think it’s great fun to read books where you know all the landmarks and wonder about the yummy sounding restaurant in the book.  So that said, even though this author is a stranger to me, I felt a connection simply because of locality.  But the book could have taken place in Timbuktu and I still would have loved it.

That Went Well is Dougan’s memoir and as the title suggests is about the  adventures in caring for her little sister Irene, who was born with a brain injury.  Irene was born in 1946 which frankly was a period of time that parents of children with mental disabilities and special needs were advised to institutionalize them.  Her family didn’t want to send her away.

From a very young age Dougan had to constantly defend her sister from neighborhood kids who made fun of Irene for being so slow and as she grew into adolescence had to explain her sister to the dates at the doorway, especially when Irene would ask them to talk to her dolls.  Irene actually served as a gatekeeper and Dougan knew she had found her perfect match when her date and then later husband, didn’t flinch at all when meeting Irene.

Unable to read and write and unwelcome in the public school systems, Irene was cared for at home and her parents realized that there was no support for parents of children with special needs.  Instead of complaining, they did something about it and created a day care center.  Later, after college and Dougan’s marriage and birth of her children, her parents found it more and more difficult to take care of Irene.  Hoping to ease Irene into independent living, they sent her to live in a group home in California.  Ultimately, she was unhappy and eventually came back home (but not after a few bruised roommates and aide workers).  When Dougan’s parents passed away, she became Irene’s primary caregiver.

That Went Well is a honest and frank exploration of what it’s like to care of a sibling with disabilities.  But to say that it’s a dry and boring exploration couldn’t be further from the truth.  I was sucked into this story from the very first page.  Dougan’s voice is fantastic!  She is laugh out loud funny but yet shares such intimate inner and physical struggles that one can’t help but sympathize with her and this family.   Dougan must come to terms with how she thinks Irene should live versus how Irene wants to live.

And let’s not forget to talk about Irene!  Irene is a riot!  From taking her dolls with her everywhere, to independently riding the city bus, inviting the firemen over for barbecues and to the magnet on her fridge that says, “Normal People Worry Me” she was simply fantastic.  Temper tantrums and all.  I loved her and it’s obvious that her sister loves her too.

Watch this beautiful show of these two sisters.  I was pleased to see so many shots taken at The Kings English Bookshop, my local independent bookshop.  I wish I had known about this book earlier in the year when she did her signing.  (It was a bit wonky to get this video to embed, so the slider is not showing up.  Click in black box to start, click again to pause.  Original video source.)

A beautiful, honest, funny, and thoughtful  journey of these two sisters, I highly recommend That Went Well.  Dougan opens her heart and one can’t help but take a look inside.  It was a pure joy to read this memoir.

Links of interest:  Terrell Harris Dougan website.
Genre:  Memoir
Published by Hyperion.  January 6, 2009.
Hardcover, 224 pages.  ISBN: 1401323294
That Went Well, Adventures in Caring for My Sister available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad

A quick thought – thank goodness I had never seen the cover of this book  prior to picking it up from the  library, otherwise I might have just passed it by.  Yes, she’s got a beautiful face, but there is nothing that makes me want to read this book.  Great example of why book covers do matter.  The paperback cover (shown right) is better but still needs a  little something.

So I must confess that prior to reading Desert Flower, I was unaware of who Waris Dirie is.  I was obviously much to young to care about supermodels (late eighties when she became popular) and had little interest in high fashion.  So when I began reading I had no idea that her story would take her from Somalia to the runways of New York City.

Waris Dirie begins her story when she is 13-years-old alone in the African desert sun staring into the face of a lion.  She is tired, hungry, and ready to die.  I immediately was drawn into her story and wanted to know what had brought her to this point of time and place.  Living with her family, a tribe of nomads in the Somalian desert, her father announced her marriage to an elderly man.  The only way to escape her father’s forcible marriage was to abandon her family and run away.  She says:

While my father and the rest of the family were still sleeping, my mother woke me and said, “Go now.”  I looked around for something to grab, something to take, but there was nothing, no bottle of water, no jar of milk, no basket of food.  So, barefoot, and wearing only a scarf draped around me, I ran off into the black desert night.

As a mother, I was heartbroken by this passage only three pages into the book.  Can you imagine raising a child, loving that child, and then knowing that you were giving them up for good?  To wake them up in the middle of the night and tell them to run?  To know that you may possibly never see them again?  That they are on their own, unprotected but still a child?  It just seems like the impossible thing to do.  But yet her mother made that choice.  To send her baby out into the world in order to protect her.

After finally making her way to a city (with setbacks along the way including attempted rapes on her), Waris Dirie finds an aunt and lives between relatives for many years.  When an opportunity comes for her to become a maid for a distant uncle in London, she jumps at the chance.  After bravely navigating the airplane, customs, and the large city of London, Dirie lands herself in a home which is no home to her.  She is treated no more better than a lowly servant and for a long time she never even leaves the house.

Years later her family moves back to Somalia and Dirie knows that her future is not there and begs to be left behind.  When they leave, she is literally homeless, without a job, unfamiliar with the city, illiterate, and can’t speak the language.  She moves into the YMCA and takes a job at McDonald’s.  She attended classes at a foreigners’ free language school to improve her English and learn how to read and write.  She also finally made the first friends of her life.

An unrelenting photographer finally convinces her to take some photos for him and the rest is history.  Amazed that she could get paid simply for wearing beautiful clothes (she’d always liked clothes), she embarked on a career that would make her a celebrity all across the world.  Her story isn’t without its trials and difficulties.  She’s got huge visa problems, marries twice for convenience and runs into all kinds of problems.  But the story also has it’s beautiful moments.  While in the states, she finally finds true love, marries and has a child of her own.  She’s also able to travel back to Africa and be reunited with her mother.

Oh my.  I seem to be rambling on about her story.  I can’t help myself, she’s got an amazing story.  What struck me the most out of the book was the female circumcision that Dirie underwent when she was five-years -old.  FIVE!!  When the ritual was done to her sister, she sneaked in and witnessed it.  Although what she saw was horrific, she begged her mother to let her do it as well.

From then on, I dreaded the ritual that I would pass through on the way to womanhood.  I tried to put the horror of it out of my mind, and as time passed, so did my memory of the agony I had witnessed on my sister’s face.  Finally, I foolishly convinced myself that I wanted to become a woman, too, and join my older sisters.

When the day finally came, they performed the ritual early in the morning away from the village so people wouldn’t be able to hear the screams.

I expected a big knife, but instead, out of the bag she pulled a tiny cotton sack.  She reached inside with her long fingers, and fished out a broken razor blade.  Turning it from side to side, she examined it.  The sun was barely up now; it as light enough to see colors but no details.  However, I saw dried blood on the jagged edge of the blade.  She spat on it and wiped it against her dress.  While she was scrubbing, my world went dark.  A my mother tied a scarf around my eyes as a blindfold.

The next thing I felt was my flesh, my genitals, being cut away.  I heard the sound of the dull blade sawing back and florth through my skin.  When I think back, I honestly can’t believe that this happened to me.  I feel as if I were talking about somebody else.  There’s no way in the world to explain what it feels like.  It’s like somebody is slicing through the meat of your thigh, or cutting off your arm, except this is the most sensitive part of your body.

She finally passes out, only to wake up when she is being sewn together with the thorns from an acacia tree.  The result is a tiny opening the diameter of a matchstick which results in tremendous pain while urinating and later while menstruating.  “This brilliant strategy ensured that I could never have sex until I was married, and my husband would be guaranteed he was getting a virgin.”

Later, bound, she is taken to a special hut and left overnight.  As a child!  Can you imagine doing that to your five-year-old and then leaving them in a hut separate from the rest of the family by herself so she could heal?!

Finally, Mama came for me and I shuffled home, my legs still bound together.  The first night back at my family’s hut, my father asked, “How does it feel?”  I assume he was referring to my new state of womanhood, but all I could think about was the pain between my legs.  I was all of five years old, I simply smiled and didn’t say anything.  What did  I know about being a woman?  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I knew a lot about being an African woman: I knew how to live quietly with suffering in the passive, helpless manner of a child.

After transplanting herself in London, Dirie came to realize that what had happened to her was not normal and eventually got the courage to see a doctor and later underwent surgery to undo some of the damage.

As a result of her experience, Dirie has become passionate about educating people about female genital mutilation.  She became a UN Goodwill Ambassador in the fight against genital mutilation,  and then later concentrated her efforts on the Waris Dirie Foundation.  Of her work she says, “Female Genital Mutilation has nothing to do with culture, tradition or religion. It is a torture and a crime, which needs to be fought against.”

I quoted the most horrific parts of the memoir and they are disturbing.  I highly recommend reading the rest of her story.  Truly amazing to see how far people come in their lives and the obstacles that they overcome.

Dirie has written two additional books, Desert Children and Desert Dawn exploring more about her return to Africa, being a high fashion supermodel, and her crusade to stop female genital mutilation.  I hope to be able to pick them up at some point.

Links of interest:  Waris Dirie Foundation website which campaigns against female genital mutilation.
Genre:  Memoir
Published: William Marrow, August 1998
Hardcover, 224 pages. ISBN: 0688158234
Desert Flower is available from your independent bookstore, Powells and Amazon.

Kabul Beauty School is the memoir of Deborah Rodriguez, a hairdresser, who shortly after 9/11 joined a humanitarian organization which ultimately took her to  Kabul, Afghanistan.  Leaving her two young sons with her mother (which was a huge discussion point in our book club – how does one just pick up and leave their family), and putting distance between herself and an abusive husband, Debbie soon found herself in a home with other humanitarian workers but unsure of exactly what role she was supposed to play.

After playing hairdresser to Westerners and a trip back to the U.S., Debbie sought sponsorship from beauty companies to start her own beauty training school for Afghan women.  In a country where women are undervalued, at the mercy of their husbands, rarely hold jobs, have little to no income, going to beauty school to train and open their own salons opens up opportunities and freedom previously unknown to them.  Debbie recounts the many girls and women that she became friends with and their heartbreaking stories.  She also shows how the beauty school was a much needed refuge and safe haven for the women where they could feel free to be themselves and free their inhibitions.  

To tell you the truth, I’m totally shocked that Debbie didn’t get herself killed while she was there.  She has a very loud, abrasive personality which in a country where women are not to draw attention to themselves, she was like a bull in a china shop.  I was surprised at what should have been a very tense political situation and a dangerous time in the country that she seemed to have very little fear or concern for her personal safety.  I’m sure she really did but it didnt feel that way in the writing.  She often yelled at the men, taunted her neighbors, and even once gave a ride to her arrested neighbor to the police station.  And she was the one pressing charges!  I couldn’t believe some of the things that she did.

I was also shocked when she agreed to be married in an arranged marriage to an Afghan whom she couldn’t even talk to because they spoke a different language.  And he already had another wife.  She was shocked that this other wife became pregnant with his child while she was married to him.  Somebody at our book club mentioned that one reason she left the country was because her husband was going to kidnap her son for and hold him for ransom (more details).  At this point, I’d definitely think that the different culture thing didn’t work out for them.  Can you just imagine sitting down to lunch with this author?  The stories she could tell!

Kabul Beauty School could have been edited better.  It felt as though she just sat down and began a rambling of her experience in Afghanistan, breaking off here and there to tell different stories or backgrounds.  But luckily, those stories were fascinating.  I particularly liked hearing about the women she taught and would like to have heard their voices even more.  From the woman whom Debbie helped fake her virginity, to the 12 year-old used to pay off her families debt, her crazy housekeeper who seemed to be on drugs half the time, to the woman who continued her training despite the beatings from her Taliban husband; these are the stories that I wanted to read about.   From what I understand, many of these girls are now in danger because of this book.  You can read more about that in this NPR article and you can watch Rodriguez talk about her book as well.

Overall, I liked this memoir.  It’s not the best that I’ve read but it is fascinating to learn about the Afghan women and the steps that they are taking to gain back their personal freedoms.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Elizabeth McCracken, a successful author, is in the ninth month of her pregnancy when she finds out that her baby has died.  I can’t even imagine.  As a mother, we love our children as soon as they are conceived and love them more with each passing month.  At nine months we are ready to welcome them into our homes and into our hearts.  To be told that our baby has died and then to still have to deliver him is something that I pray I never have to go through.

I really wish that I had marked passages of this book to share with you, the language is just gorgeous, but I couldn’t put it down to do so.  I read the book in one sitting.  I could turn to just about any page and its words are profound.  Let’s test that.

Page 111:

No, I insist:  other’s people’s children did not make me sad.  But pregnant women did.

Page 40

Here’s what else we didn’t do when I was pregnant the second time.

Knock wood.  Light candles.  Tell ninety percent of the people we knew that I was pregnant.  Have an amniocentesis.  Pick up pennies.  Wish on:  stars, white horses, alarm clocks reading 11:11, wishbones, blown dandelion fluff.  Buy baby clothes.  Pick names.  Find out the baby’s gender.  Come up with an in utero name:  the kid was “the kid” or “whoever it is” or merely the unspoken result of “if everything goes right.”  Begin sentences, “After the baby’s born . . .” Toss spilled salt over left shoulders.  Give a fuck about the number thirteen no matter where it showed up.

Page 150

Later I found out this was a Braxton Hicks contraction, my uterus puttering around, maybe getting read for labor, maybe not.  I found out, you see, because I continued to have them even after he was irrefutably dead.

And the last page:

And now I’m thinking of that Florida lady again, the one who wanted a book about the lighter side of a child’s death, and I know: all she wanted was pleasure instead of grief.  To remember that he was dead, but to remember him without pain: he’s dead but of course she still loves him, and that love isn’t morbid or bloodstained or unsightly, it doesn’t need to be shoved away.

It isn’t so much to ask.

I imagine that this memoir would hit very close to home to those mothers who have lost a child.  Although infused with sadness, this book also has it’s funny moments.  And a child is born.  Her second.  As the dust jacket says,

It is a story of true love and unfathomable sadness.  It is a story of courageous recovery and bittersweet moments, of steadfast memories and deep affection.  It is a story of the importance of friendship.  It is a story of happiness and of hope.

I couldn’t agree more.  Touching, beautiful, moving, and sad.  I loved it.

Elizabeth McCracken website.

While attending a prestigious college, Comfort meets Ben, an older 24-year old student who has just finished serving in the Navy.  Although it’s obvious that he doesn’t fit in, Comfort is immediately drawn to him and they start dating.  Comfort chronicles their ups and downs and the strain of Ben’s mental illness.  Eighteen months later, Ben kills himself and Comfort is racked with guilt.  What she doesn’t understand most is that nobody knows how to talk to her anymore.  Nobody even asks her how she is handling Ben’s death.  It’s as if because she was the closest to Ben at the time of his death, nobody will even acknowledge that he once existed in her life.

For the next fifteen years, she come to terms with Ben’s death and shares candidly her journey of life, love, hurt, guilt, and forgiveness.  Surviving Ben’s Suicide is well written but there was something to be desired.  I think that this is probably because I don’t think the back and forth time line works especially well.  Maybe I was longing for a more linear telling so I could accompany Comfort on the journey as she was making it and without knowing how she was now.  Other than that, I appreciated her honest approach to a very taboo subject and came away with an appreciation that she was able to share with the reader her candid and very personal thoughts.

A few insights I liked:

But why live if I had to discard my past life?  For me, that took away the meaning in life.  I’ve heard some people say that the meaning of life was simply to enjoy the journey.  The passage that Ben’s uncle read at the funeral said that the meaning of life was love.  Other people have said that there is no particular meaning and that we, as human beings, are overly analytical.

I believed, on the contrary, that each person hadd his or her own meaning of life and that the key to that meaning might be the link between our memories and the way we lived our lives at present.  To me, that was the secret.  That was the closest that I could come to reaching my potential.  By allowing myself to look back and to learn from the people and the events in my life, I could do better in the future.  And that was why I refused to forget about my bus accident or Ben’s suicide.  My memories of both events influenced the decisions that I made every day and the way I treated otehr people and myself.  I couldn’t think of anything more pertinent, more critical, more vital than memories.

and

One of the paradoxes of surviving Ben’s suicide is that I have learned two seeming contradictions.  One, I have the power to make a difference in some small way to others.  Two, I do not have absolute control over other people.  The balance between trying to help and backing off has been hard for me to find, but reaching Antoine [a student of hers] proved to me that I needed to keep trying.

I think this ending passage is just beautiful:

I like to think of my memories of the events in my life as old books that I keep next to my bed, on a shelf in the study, or up in the attic.  Some of them I refer to regularly.  Some I may never look at again.  Some are tragedies.  Others, comedies.  Some I understand now.  Some I will understand after a few more readings.  Others will cause me to pull out  my hair, and still I may never understand them entirely.  But the more I read, the better I will grasp the meaning of my books and the meaning that my library has in my life.

Visit C. Comfort Shields website and blog.

And I apologize for the canned description from the publisher.  I’ve been sitting on this review for a month because I was so intimidated by trying to describe it, so I finally just gave up.

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths to which Jeffs went in order to control the sect’s women.

Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America’s most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child’s perspective on life in the FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family’s turbulent past intersected with her strong will and identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Detailing how Warren Jeffs’s influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set and unrelenting pressure that forced her to wed despite her repeated protests that she was too young.

Once she was married, Wall’s childhood shattered as she was obligated to follow Jeffs’s directives and submit to her husband in “mind, body, and soul.” With little money and no knowledge of the outside world, she was trapped and forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless relationship, which eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face the tormentor in her bed.

Yet even in those bleak times, she retained a sliver of hope that one day she would find a way out, and one snowy night that came in the form of a rugged stranger named Lamont Barlow. Their chance encounter set in motion a friendship and eventual romance that gave her the strength she needed to break free from her past and sever the chains of the church.

But though she was out of the FLDS, Wall would still have to face Jeffs—this time in court. In Stolen Innocence, she delves into the difficult months on the outside that led her to come forward against him, working with prosecutors on one of the biggest criminal cases in Utah’s history, so that other girls still inside the church might be spared her cruel fate.

More than a tale of survival and freedom, Stolen Innocence is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her life.

I could not believe this book!  I had to keep reminding myself that Elissa is just 21 years old.  Right now!  She gives us a very up close and personal look at the world of Warren Jeffs.  How messed up this guy is.  And I would use the term brainwashed for those within the community.

What I was really surprised by was how innocent Elissa was when she was forced to marry.  I was given the impression from the other two books I’ve read that sex was often talked about amongst the wives in the household.  But yet Elissa had no idea.  She didn’t know how babies were made.  She did not know anatomy.  She was told that boys were snakes to be avoided at all costs and then the next minute to submit fully to her new husband.  She was very confused when he tried to have marital relations with her.  After being repeatedly raped, she went to Warren Jeffs to ask for a divorce.  He continually sent her back.

Once she was able to leave she worked with authorities to bring Warren Jeffs to justice.  I was amazed with the behind the scenes view that she brought to such a high profile case.  Man, oh man.  Just read this book.  It was fascinating.  I can’t believe the things that people live through.  Many of their free will and others who desperately want out but can’t.

Video of Elissa Wall:

Highly recommended.

Here is a synopsis from the publisher:

To be sure, some brothers and sisters have relationships that are easy. But oh, some relationships can be fraught. Confusing, too: How can two people share the same parents and turn out to be entirely different?

Marie Brenner’s brother, Carl—yin to her yang, red state to her blue state—lived in Texas and in the apple country of Washington state, cultivating his orchards, polishing his guns, and (no doubt causing their grandfather Isidor to turn in his grave) attending church, while Marie, a world-class journalist and bestselling author, led a sophisticated life among the “New York libs” her brother loathed.

From their earliest days there was a gulf between them, well documented in testy letters and telling photos: “I am a textbook younger child . . . training as bête noir to my brother,” Brenner writes. “He’s barely six years old and has already developed the Carl Look. It’s the expression that the rabbit gets in Watership Down when it goes tharn, freezes in the light.”

After many years apart, a medical crisis pushed them back into each other’s lives. Marie temporarily abandoned her job at Vanity Fair magazine, her friends, and her husband to try to help her brother. Except that Carl fought her every step of the way. “I told you to stay away from the apple country,” he barked when she showed up. And, “Don’t tell anyone out here you’re from New York City. They’ll get the wrong idea.”

As usual, Marie—a reporter who has exposed big Tobacco scandals and Enron—irritated her brother and ignored his orders. She trained her formidable investigative skills on finding treatments to help her brother medically. And she dug into the past of the brilliant and contentious Brenner family, seeking in that complicated story a cure, too, for what ailed her relationship with Carl. If only they could find common ground, she reasoned, all would be well.

Brothers and sisters, Apples and Oranges. Marie Brenner has written an extraordinary memoir—one that is heartbreakingly honest, funny and true. It’s a book that even her brother could love.

I’ve never really done this before, but I’m deferring this entire review to Melissa over at the Book Nut (review published here at Estella’s Revenge).  Her review pretty much summed up my entire experience word for word.  So why try to reinvent the wheel?  Part of that review states amongst other observations:

I found Brenner to be ruthless in her observations, sparing no one: her family, her work companions, her current and former husbands. In addition to the biting reflections and commentary, the book is disjointed and hard to follow. She bounces around from present to past and back again, making it difficult to follow the narrative. It’s frustrating because it is difficult to get a sense of not only her relationship with her brother, but a sense of who she and her brother are.

Click on over to read more.  But perhaps for a more positive review check out Sam at Book Chase who really enjoyed it.  I guess this one just wasn’t for me.  Maybe you’ll feel differently.

Video of Marie Brenner talking about Apples and Oranges:  My Brother and Me, Lost and Found:

Somaly Mam, born in a small village in Cambodia, is orphaned at a young age.  She doesn’t even know her real name or her birthday and most of her memories consist of scavenging for her food and finding a place to sleep at night.  No one really takes her in.  Somaly’s childhood coincides with the Khmer Rouge regime but her village was so remote that she has no recollection of soldiers, but later learns that many of her troubles in the future can be blamed on the political upheaval of Cambodia.

At the age of nine or ten, Taman, one of the men in the village sold Somaly to  her “grandfather” as an indentured servant.  For the next few years, Somaly is abused, beaten, starved, and let’s not forget to mention the back breaking work that she must do.  To pay off a debt, her grandfather sends her to another man who has paid for her virginity.  This agonizing rape at such a young age is her first encounter with what will become almost a lifetime of heartbreak, as soon afterward her grandfather sells her into sexual slavery at the age of twelve.

Somaly goes from brothel to brothel in an unending cycle of abuse and rape.  As if the the forced prostitution isn’t hard enough, she’s abused with unthinkable methods including snakes and maggots being poured all over her body.

With this physical devastation, naturally, an emotional devastation comes as well.  Somaly literally feels like garbage, always dirty, ugly, and unworthy.  But of all of this Somaly says,

This was ordinary prostitution.  Stinking mouths and bodies, dirty rooms, violence.  The blows hurt, but the act itself was much worse.  Sometimes there would be only two or three men a day, sometimes many more.  If there weren’t enough, Li would tell Aunty Peuve not to feed us, so we’d try harder.  If there were too many, you hurt inside and out, until you managed to shut all feeling off.

It’s still happening, today, tonight.  Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book.  My story doesn’t matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don’t sleep at night.  They haunt me.

Ordinary prostitution?  How sad that there is even such a thing!  The effects are longlasting, as Somaly recounts:

The memories that torment me most are those of rape and the stink of sperm.  In brothels, they don’t bother changing sheets much.  The smell of sperm is everywhere.  It’s unsufferable.  Even today, I often have the sense that I’m breathing in the smell of whorehouses.  The custoemrs were dirty.  They never showered . . .

I lived amid this stench for so long, that I can’t bear it now.  Even fifteen years later, I feel dirtied by it.  So I was myself like a madwoman, put cream on and cover myself in eau de toilette in order to mask the stench that persues me.  At home I have a cupboard full of perfume.  I spend money to blot out a smell that exists only in my imagination.  I try to chase it away with the contents of my bottles.

As Somaly enters her late teens/early twenties she manages to escape the brothels with the help of a French aid worker (it’s not as angelic as you think, he does start off as a customer).  She begins to attend some classes and even lives in France for almost two years.  When she returns to Cambodia, she is no longer the same woman.  She’s mad as hell, she’s bold, and she’s not going to let what happened to her happen to other young girls.

Somaly becomes the angel that she herself could have used when she was younger.  She founds an organization to rescue girls, builds shelters, raids brothels, takes down judges in court, and rescues thousands of women and children in not only Cambodia, but also Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.  It’s difficult work.  Now with two children of her own, their lives were continually threatened and she almost lost her own daughter to sexual prostitution when she was kidnapped.  She witnesses children as young as six being sold for their virginity, being sewn up, and then sold over again.  Many at the hands of their own parents, who don’t view them as a child, but rather as a means to their paycheck.  The abuse is getting worse and the girls are becoming younger.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports from Cambodia:

Sex trafficking is a industry that brings in $9.5 billion a year.  Sounds daunting to take on doesn’t it?  Why does she keep persevering?

For the moment, our opponents are winning the war, but we’ve won one battle at least.  They’ve lost face and respect.  We’ve investigated this traffic, exposed it for what it is, and made it shameful.  We’ve shown that these people aren’t invincible, and I’m glad we’ve managed that.  People ask me how I can bear to keep doing what I do.  I’ll tell you.  The evil that’s been done to me is what propels me on.  Is there any way to exorcise it?

A portion of the proceeds from The Road to Lost Innocence is donated to the Somaly Mam Foundation.  I highly encourage visiting the website, for being such a ugly topic, it’s a beautiful site.  This video gives great insight into the work that Somaly Mam is doing:

A interview with Somaly Mam about The Road to Lost Innocence:

This memoir is a testament to the power of an individual to bring about change in the lives of thousands of girls who have nowhere to turn.  Somaly Mam shows them the beginning of a flicker of hope, the realization that they can get out, and that there is somebody who loves them.  One person can make a difference in this world of unthinkable horror and evil.  I give The Road of Lost Innocence, The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine by Somaly Mam my highest recommendation.