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A “sharp-eyed look at the complexities of war” (Parade), that explores the inner workings of the Human Terrain System, a Pentagon program that sends civilian social scientists into war zones to help soldiers understand local culture.

On the day Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, a small group of American civilians took their optimism and experience to a village west of Kandahar, Afghanistan. They were part of the Pentagon’s controversial attempt to bring social science to the battlefield, driven by the notion that you can’t win a war if you don’t understand the enemy and his culture. The field team in Afghanistan that day included an intrepid Texas blonde, a former bodyguard for Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and an ex-military intelligence sergeant who had come to Afghanistan to make peace with his troubled past. But not all goes as planned.

In this tale of moral suspense, journalist Vanessa Gezari follows these three idealists from the hope that brought them to Afghanistan through the events of the fateful day when one is gravely wounded, an Afghan is dead, and a proponent of cross-cultural engagement is charged with his murder. Through it all, these brave Americans ended up showing the world just how determined they were to get things right, how hard it was to really understand a place like Afghanistan where storytelling has been a major tool of survival, and why all future wars will involve this strange mix of fighting and listening.

Vanessa Gezari is the only journalist to have gained access to the lives of people inside this troubled Army program, including the brilliant, ambitious figures who conceived it. This true story of war and sacrifice will upend your ideas about what really went wrong in Afghanistan.

• Sales Rank: #772276 in eBooks
• Published on: 2013-08-13
• Released on: 2013-08-13
• Format: Kindle eBook

Amazon.com Review
Doug Stanton on The Tender Soldier By Vanessa M. Gezari

Doug Stanton is a teacher, lecturer, and author of the New York Times bestsellers In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, TIME, the Washington Post, Men’s Journal, Outside, The Daily Beast/Newsweek. Stanton has appeared multiple times on the Today Show, CNN, Imus In The Morning, Discovery, A&E, Fox News, NPR, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and NBC Nightly News. Horse Soldiers is in development as a movie by Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Stanton reads and lectures nationally to business, civic groups, libraries, writing & book clubs, and universities, including the United States Air Force Academy, University of Michigan, and The Union League Club. Stanton attended Interlochen Arts Academy, Hampshire College, and received an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he graduated with coursework in both fiction and poetry workshops. He founded the National Writers Series, a book festival; and the Front Street Writers Studio, a free writing workshop for public high school students.

Anyone wishing to understand more deeply, and with more complexity, the U.S.’s relationship to Afghanistan will find in The Tender Soldier more than they could have imagined, and certainly more than they have learned from any number of news reports, books, pundits, and the like. Part history, part war story, part critique, Gezari writes with a stone-cutter’s brilliance, snapping into focus a part of the world, and a chapter in American history, that we don’t fully comprehend. This is to say that she has written an entirely thrilling and engrossing book. Citizens on the daily commute, social workers, diplomats, students, and, well, anyone really interested in what it feels like to have been that neighbor down the street who deployed, and what it feels like to have been the Afghan citizen onto whose block your neighbor deployed, will read The Tender Soldier in a few nights and come away feeling smarter and enriched.

In many ways, Gezari’s book raises the very essential question, ‘How is knowledge powerful? To what uses should—and can—it be put? Can knowledge be weaponized?’ Anyone who has read David Kilcullen’s The Accidental Guerrilla will read The Tender Soldier with the same sense of anticipation—that here are vexing, yet fascinating, questions: ‘How do you resolve conflict?’ In many ways, Gezari’s book is a work of anthropology itself: she enters into the world of Human Terrain Systems and draws to vivid and rich life the people who have practiced their craft in this world; and at the same time Gezari manages to be critical, empathic, and conclusive. The final sentence of the eighth chapter—‘What we wanted was to understand ourselves’—deeply sums up the hall of mirrors that can be the world of ‘rapport building,’ the hall of mirrors in which we meet ourselves—and in anthropological terms, the Other, and in military terms, the enemy or ally.

This is brilliant reading for anyone who wants to understand our past decade and more, and it can be read as a kind of road map by which to understand other wars, and other news reports breaking daily around us.

Review
“As Neil Sheehan’s Bright Shining Lie did with Vietnam, Ms. Gezari’s deft if less sweeping narrative dissects the hopes, hubris and shortcomings of America’s efforts to nation-build in Afghanistan while fighting a war there…. It is a testament to the book’s strengths that it left me wanting more…. Ms. Gezari’s book powerfully humanizes the ways the counterinsurgency effort played out in Afghanistan.” (The New York Times)

“With a journalist’s discerning eye for nuance, Gezari brings readers into [a] controversial gray area, framed within the larger, just as murky, context that has come to define the distant wars in Iraq and Afghanistan….Gezari’s writing stands apart from other depictions of our post-9/11 wars….Her book exemplifies the persistence of a war-wise reporter who filed from frontline locations, seeking out sources in sketchy areas, often unescorted by U.S. military personnel….The book’s main subject and its author both devoted themselves—like real anthropologists—to listening, recording, and understanding the stories of the ‘other.’ Iraqis and Afghans have more in common with us than we might think.” (The Daily Beast)

“A sharp-eyed look at the complexities of war.” (Parade)

"Bravely reported and beautifully told, The Tender Soldier is a crushing story of good intentions and war. Vanessa Gezari is an unflinching journalist, and she has written a great, angering, and heartbreaking book that in its many layers is as damning as it is honorable." (David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Soldiers )

“Part history, part war story, part critique, Gezari writes with a stonecutter’s brilliance, snapping into focus a part of the world, and a chapter in American history, that we don’t fully comprehend. Citizens will read The Tender Soldier in a few nights and come away feeling smarter and enriched. This is brilliant reading and is a kind of road map by which to understand other wars, and other news reports breaking daily around us.” (Doug Stanton, author of the New York Times bestseller Horse Soldiers )

“The story running through the heart of The Tender Soldier is a searing reminder that wars may be waged with good intentions, but they are built upon tragedy. Vanessa Gezari explores this grim paradox with an admirable lucidity and a sharp eye for the kind of telling detail that make her account of the U.S. war in Afghanistan a moving, unforgettable read.” (Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker staff writer and author of the national bestseller The Fall of Baghdad )

"The Tender Soldier takes readers on an eloquent journey back through one tragic American death in Afghanistan. But its larger point is a hard-fisted critique of the U.S. military's chronic inability to understand the larger world in which it operates. It is a book worth memorizing, and repeating to U.S. decision-makers, when the next Iraq or Afghanistan presents itself—as it surely will." (Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of Top Secret America )

"Gezari's gripping tale of American idealism gone wrong is vital reading for anyone interested in America's decade of war in Afghanistan. Beautifully told, the book illuminates one of the most interesting and little known programs in recent U.S. military history." (Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR international correspondent )

"Readers get a sobering feel for the difficult task of waging a war on foreign soil, as well as the travails of hardworking and often brilliant individuals struggling to change enormous political and social systems for the better. Nuanced, readable, and utterly engrossing, Gezari’s exposé is a revelatory and unique look at the war in Afghanistan." (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

“Insightful….Gezari delivers a gripping report on another of America’s painful, surprisingly difficult efforts to win hearts and minds.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )

About the Author
Vanessa M. Gezari holds the James Madison Visiting Professorship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She has written for The Washington Post, The New Republic, Slate, and others. She lives in New York.

Most helpful customer reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Equally Captivating and Educational
By Callie Glorioso-Mays
When Simon & Schuster offered me a copy of The Tender Solider: A True Story of War and Sacrifice to review, I thought the book sounded intriguing, but I had two concerns. First, I was afraid that perhaps it would end up being dull. Secondly, I was concerned that it would be abstruse military and combat information. I chose to review it any ways and quickly realized that I was completely wrong on both counts. It turned out to be both captivating and educational.

The Tender Solider tells the story of the Human Terrain System, a social science experiment to bridge the gap between American troops and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Small teams of trained individuals would work alongside the US Army to help interpret the local culture and collect relevant information. While many people worked on this program with noble intentions, it didn't stay that way for long. Because the program grew too quickly to make proper evaluations and adjustments, many problems emerged. For instance, the teams were not receiving sufficient training before being sent into a combat zone. But a major ethical complication arose: the anthropologists were helping the Army better understand the Afghanis, but that turned out to be a double edged sword because "'good anthropology' might lead to 'better killing'"(p. 115) Many social scientists were concerned about the direction the program was heading.

The Human Terrain System is made personal in the story of Paula Loyd and Don Ayala. Loyd was a Wellesley grad who was working as the social scientist on a Human Terrain Team in Afghanistan. Ayala, one of her teammates, was a former Army Ranger. As they were collecting information one day, a horrific tragedy occurred that changed their lives forever. This event is woven through the book, interspersed with information about the inception and outcome of the Human Terrain System.

Gezari's background as a journalist comes through as she includes almost 100 pages of notes. Additionally, she flew around the United States and to Afghanistan to conduct personal interviews. She spoke with everyone from the founders of the Human Terrain System, to Army generals, to current Human Terrain Team trainees, to local Afghanistan police.

This book helped me put together the pieces of the war in Afghanistan - there was so much I didn't know or understand. Now I have a much better picture of what has happened in the years since September 11th. My copy of this book is full of underlining and annotations. As I read, I kept stopping to tell my husband about it and ask how much he knew about the Human Terrain System. Even as an officer in the Air Force, he didn't know much about the program, but his interested in the book was piqued so he plans on reading it now.

The book was gripping, but its ending was especially sobering. In the last few chapters I had assumed that everything would come together, but you are left with more questions than answers. Of course, there are no easy answers for war and this is even further muddled by the addition of anthropology being used an intelligence source. This book will keep me thinking for a long time to come.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Not what I expected, and not a book about the HTS in sum
By jennifer clark
I was a social scientist, deployed with HTS and then became one of the directors within the program after I returned to CONUS. I interviewed with Ms. Gezari on a few occasions regarding this book and was worried that she would take it on a route so often taken by the media, reporters, and politicians hell bent on making a quick name for themselves. Prior to Ms. Gezari's writing, there were several reports on HTS but each one, no matter how much information we gave the authors or investigators ever got the story right. They always focused on the few bad instances of failure, the screamings of the contractors who had left the program because they lost their pumped up earnings when the government shift occurred, and the ramblings of some of our craziest employees. The hard workers, the team members who earned awards, who did very well down range and earned the respect of the military while also not breaking any ethical boundaries were not often heard in these reports and discounted at best as anomalies when in fact- the opposite was true. So, I was leery when Ms. Gezari approached to say the least but I gave her my time and interviewed with her and gave her as much access as I could.

I began reading with apprehension as she told her story about the events that unfolded around the AF4 team. I went through training with them and had known Mr. Ayala before he deployed. I was nervous about how their tragedy would be portrayed. Thankfully, I can say that IMO, Ms. Gezari was gracious and as honest in her account as she could be. She was delicate and forthcoming, tender in her writing, even if at times she took on too much flair. I appreciated what she had to say and thought the book was well done to an extent.
It IS a book about that one instance though, and should remain that.

It is not a book about HTS although it does shed more light on some of the behind the scenes troubles than other authors have addressed. She had a lot of a access though, so I was expecting more to have been discussed regarding the program. I do believe she was fair in her account. The program had and has it's flaws, but she fell flat by highlighting some of the same nay-sayers who have been given voice before, the same people who have been repeatedly discredited time and time again to the HASC and the CNA. There were bad people in HTS- no doubt, but there were truly amazing people as well. Why were they not mentioned? Why provide chapter after chapter on Dr. McFate's upbringing as if it has some relevant meaning to how HTS operated? Dr. McFate is an interesting character, but the correlation between her upbringing and HTS operations is just not there. The bottom line is that the program was started too fast and given too much to do in too short a time to do it remarkably well. Mz. Gezari addresses that, for which I am thankful. But there is more to the story than what is in this book, so it should not be seen as the overall story of HTS (see George Lucas: Anthropologists in Arms for a better discussion on HTS and like programs Anthropologists Arms Military Anthropology Critical Instead, think of it as simply a heart-wrenching story about how one team went through hell and how service and sacrifice of a civilian ended a brilliant life. HTS was just the vehicle.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A book tha tlooks deep into Afghanistan and America
By Jacob Kipp
For those of us involved in the crisis created by insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book provides an important statement about the complexity of the problem and the means adapted to deal with its challenges. The story of the Human Terrain Team in Maiwand, Afgfhanistan, and the tragic death of Paula Loyd in November 2008 speaks to one part of that story. Paula Loyd, the tender soldier of the title, was no stranger to Afghanistan. She was drawn to the mission by her desire to help, not to win a war in the classic sense but to build a peace, to find some way to end the violence that seems part of the DNA of Afghanistan. The Human Terrain Team of which shewas part had emerged out of the challenge of IEDs first faced in Iraq and then Afghanistan and the inability of classic small unit tactics to meet that threat. Unable to find the persons who made the IEDs or to prevent their implacement, the Army had turned human terrain in order to avoid slipping into the self-defeating posture that all of the indigenous population were the enemy. Maiwand, the sight of an Afghan victory over the Brtiish in July 1880 was by 2008 a highly contested area with a robust Taliban presence. The author, Vanessa Gerazi, carries her story forward by describing the situation on the ground, the principle figures involved and the struggle to integrate this Human Terrain Team into the brigade's mission in Maiwand. She is at her bes tin describing the village culture of Afghanistan, its oral tradition, and the role of family and clan in village live. Paula Loyd's death, one of thousands of American soldiers who have died there, provides a focus for the tangle of fears and hopes that put American troops there. Afghan wars are protracted things. Those who come there to fight must know that they will be transformed in the process. Paula Loyd was a different sort fo soldier, one made for making peace, but in land where peace seems a distant dream.

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From golden-voiced ingénue to bus-driving mother of a pop band, Shirley Jones sets aside her wholesome, squeaky clean image in a memoir as shockingly candid, deliciously juicy, and delightfully frank as the star herself.

“You are going to meet the real flesh-and-blood Shirley Jones, not just the movie star or Mrs. Partridge,” says the beloved film, television, and stage actress and singer of her long-awaited memoir, an account as shockingly direct, deliciously juicy, and delightfully frank as the performer herself.

Sharing the “candid” (Los Angeles Times) and “revealing” (Associated Press) details of her life in Hollywood’s inner circle and beyond, Shirley Jones blows past the wholesome, squeaky-clean image that first brought fame, and gives us a woman who only gets hotter with time.

If the story of a rebellious, gifted small-town girl being discovered by Rodgers and Hammerstein isn’t thrilling enough, go deeper behind the scenes, where Shirley Jones portrays her tumultuous marriage to Jack Cassidy, the dashing and charismatic but deeply troubled actor who unlocked her highly charged sexuality and captured her heart forever. She talks openly about their passion-fueled relationship; the infidelities, the costar crushes, and sexual experimentation. She reflects on her relationship with stepson David Cassidy; her cult status as coolest-ever TV mom Shirley Partridge; her second marriage to wacky TV comedian and producer Marty Ingels; and much more in this “saucy” (Entertainment Weekly) self-portrait.

• Sales Rank: #226858 in eBooks
• Published on: 2013-07-23
• Released on: 2013-07-23
• Format: Kindle eBook

Review
"Shirley Jones comes across sounding like a thoroughly modern woman. Maybe, sometimes, nice girls do finish first." ---AudioFile

About the Author
Shirley Jones is an American singer and actress of stage, film, and television, perhaps best known for playing Shirley Partridge in the situation comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970-1974).

Shirley Jones is an American singer and actress of stage, film, and television. The winner of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry, she is perhaps best known for her role as Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the situation comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970-1974).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Shirley Jones ONE

A Beautiful Morning
Although I was named Shirley after the saccharine child star Shirley Temple, I’ve always been far more full of spice than of sugar.

As a baby, instead of cooing away softly and then serenely sleeping all day in my crib, I screamed and screamed at the top of my voice until I got attention. My favorite pastime was chewing on my crib because I seemed to like the taste of varnish so much. I chewed so hard, and with such great determination, that chew marks were left all over the wooden rails of my crib.

I was sturdy, adventurous, and unafraid. When I was four years old, and playing in the family-owned Jones brewery, my grandfather promised me jelly beans if I drank some beer. I jumped at the opportunity, tried the beer, and hated it.

But I loved the brewery, and everything about it, primarily because it was my haven, my second home. My father, Paul Jones, and his brothers ran the Smithton, Pennsylvania, brewery, and from the time when I was three years old and we moved from Charleroi, Pennsylvania, where I was born, I spent much of my childhood there, playing hide-and-seek among the beer vats and the ice lockers, while my father’s employees all held their breath, terrified that I would accidentally lock myself in a freezer and emerge as a pint-size ice sculpture!

The Jones Brewing Company employed at least half of Smithton (population only 800), and it was started by my grandfather William B. Jones, who hailed from Wales. He immigrated to Pennsylvania, became a coal miner, worked himself to the bone, and saved enough money to buy a corner building in the little town of Smithton, a Norman Rockwell painting in living color. Then he converted that building into a small hotel with six rooms and called it the Jones Hotel. He was the bartender, and my grandmother Lulu did everything else necessary to make the hotel run smoothly.

The official story, the one that I grew up knowing by heart, was that the hotel was so successful my grandfather bought a building on a beautiful site on the Youghiogheny River, which flowed through Smithton, joined the Monongahela River, and then ran right into Pittsburgh, twenty-one miles away. In 1907, in that riverside building, he founded the Jones Brewing Company.

The unofficial story, one that I heard years later, was that William B. Jones, my grandfather, actually won the brewery in a poker game! According to that tale, the brewery had originally been based in Sutersville, Pennsylvania, and manufactured Eureka beer. After my grandfather won the brewery in 1907, he renamed it the Jones Brewing Company and moved it to Smithton.

Whatever the truth, I’m sure of one thing, the origin of the name of Jones brewery’s most beloved beer. According to family lore, one of my grandfather’s earliest customers was an African-American man who regularly visited the brewery along with his bulldog, Stoney.

My grandfather grew to love that dog so much that after the dog died, he declared, “From now on, my name is Stoney Jones.” And he named the beer he brewed Stoney’s beer after the dog he loved so much.

Since then, the Jones Brewing Company, Stoney’s beer, and Stoney’s Light beer have been featured in the movie Striking Distance, starring Bruce Willis, and in the TV shows Northern Exposure and My Name Is Earl.

Although I never knew my grandfather well, I inherited his love of animals and, as a child, raised mice, birds, squirrels, and had no fear of snakes or spiders. No fear whatsoever. In fact, my biggest ambition was to become a vet and look after animals of all types and sizes. Then, fate took a hand and I became something quite different.

My grandfather died of diabetes aged only fifty-six, after having his leg amputated, rumor had it, because he drank too much beer. Sometime before he died, he tried to reverse his diabetes by instructing that Stoney’s beer be manufactured without sugar. Sadly, that didn’t help, and he died anyway. Nonetheless, even today, Stoney’s beer is still manufactured without sugar or preservatives.

After my grandfather’s untimely death, my formidable grandmother Lulu inherited the Jones brewery, and my father and his brothers ran it for her.

Despite his responsibilities, my father was a relaxed, generous, and happy man, with a heart of gold. From the first, he was the love of my life. When I was in the crib and screamed until it felt as if my lungs would burst, he would immediately rush into my nursery at top speed, lift me high in his strong, muscular arms, then place me on his barrel chest, whereupon I would promptly fall into a deep, contented sleep.

In contrast, my mother never came to my rescue when I screamed. She just let me go on screaming and screaming. She was much too busy running our home, or entertaining guests. But while my father was always the life and soul of the party, my mother was not.

Her name was Marjorie, and she was born Williams, of English descent. Her father was a telephone lineman, she had two sisters, and when she met my father, she fell in love with him at first sight.

That love was to last a lifetime, but from as far back as I can remember, my mother continually appeared to be suffering from a deep and abiding disappointment. As I grew older and got to know my mother better, it became eminently clear to me that when she married my father, of the Jones Brewing Company, she had expected far more out of life and, forever afterward, desperately longed to get out of Smithton and move into the big city.

But despite my mother’s unfulfilled expectations, she loved my father unconditionally and adored him unreservedly. I never saw her fight with him, and even though he sometimes came home drunk, I never saw her get angry with him. Drunk as he was, she would undress him, get him ready for bed, and take care of him without a word of complaint. Looking back through the years, I realize that because from the time when I was a small child I watched my mother display such love and tolerance toward my father, her example unconsciously formed my own attitude toward men, in general, and to my first and second husbands, in particular.

My father was away from home a great deal, traveling from Pittsburgh-area saloon to saloon, selling Stoney’s beer. Now and again, to my joy and excitement, he would scoop me up and take me with him on his travels. Together, we would drive through the countryside in his gray Chevy, talking away, drinking in the beauty of the Pennsylvania countryside.

Our route always took us over one particular bridge across the Youghiogheny River, through farmland where cattle and horses peacefully grazed. My father would invariably stop the car and just sit there, gazing at the animals. “They are so beautiful, Shirley,” he would say, “so beautiful.” Witnessing my father’s deep reverence for animals and for nature bequeathed to me an enduring love for animals and nature, as well.

Once we arrived at a saloon, he would sell cases of Stoney’s beer to the saloon owner, then go up to the bar, put up a sign, BUY STONEY’S BEER, and place beers for everyone at the bar, while I played on the pinball machine to my heart’s content.

I couldn’t help noticing that wherever we went, women were all over my father. He was such a handsome man. Years later, I once asked him if he had ever cheated on my mother, and he smiled and said, “I just played at it. I patted a few asses now and again, but I didn’t do more than that.” And I believed him.

He was kind and loving, perhaps because he was the youngest son and had grown up very loved by his mother, Lulu, my grandmother.

After my grandfather died, my grandmother became the matriarch of the family. My mother and father and I lived with her in a fourteen-room brick house on the corner of Second Street in Smithton. The house had a huge front porch, which ran half the length of the street and looked warm and welcoming.

My mother and father and I had seven rooms in the house, my grandmother had the rest, and a door led between my grandmother’s kitchen and ours. Every morning, I would wake up and run to have tea and toast with my grandma in her kitchen.

She was the boss lady who owned the brewery, handed out paychecks, and gave a big Christmas party every year for her family and employees at Sweeney’s Restaurant and Lounge on Route 51 in Belle Vernon. She was a great role model, a tough lady who had to fight to stay on top in a man’s world.

My world, in contrast, was safe and secure. As an only child, I had my own room, with my own little desk in one corner, a blackboard in another, and all the toys I wanted. I had a tricycle I loved, every paper doll known to man, and countless real dolls.

I adored my dolls, one in particular named Carol, who had a huge china head, big blue eyes, and a body bigger than the average baby’s. She was so startlingly lifelike that one time I even dressed her in the hat and dress that my mother took me home from the hospital in and painted her nails. Now that same doll belongs to my granddaughter Megan, my youngest son Ryan’s child, and she loves Carol as much as I did all those decades ago.



Smithton was a classic all-American small town, like River City in The Music Man, made up of only four streets, and my childhood there was idyllic. The biggest house in the town belonged to Dr. Post and stood on top of the hill at the end of Fourth Street.

All us kids always looked up at Dr. Post’s house—a country-style home with white shutters, a lot of land, and a big fence around it—and dreamed of one day living in such an imposing and impressive mansion ourselves.

Meanwhile, as we all waited to grow up, we relished our childhood in Smithton. Our world was small, self-contained, innocent, and ideal. Smithton was so tiny that the town had no policemen, only a sheriff, and there was just one movie theater, the Smithton Movie House, which played movies only on the weekend.

Smithton boasted just one grocery store, a drugstore, and a little variety store, which sold toys and clothes and candy. When I was six, overcome by an uncharacteristic surge of greed, I grabbed a stick of bubble gum from the store, slipped it into my pocket, and skipped home with it. When my mother saw me open the bubble-gum packet, she asked where I got the money to buy bubble gum for myself, and I confessed that I had just snatched it from the store. Outraged, she immediately insisted that I return it to the store right away. So I trudged over there, declared to the shocked owner, “I took your bubble gum,” and threw it right back at him.

Afterward, my mother sent me up to my room in disgrace and told me to stay there until she gave me permission to come out. So I stomped upstairs into my bedroom, slammed the door, then tore the linens off the bed, the drapes off the windows, swept everything off the dresser, and dragged it all out into the middle of the room.

When my mother eventually came upstairs and yelled through the door that I could come out now, I yelled back defiantly, “Why don’t you come in and look at my room?”

She did, drank in all the chaos I had created, and ordered me to put everything back in its place again. Naturally, I couldn’t do that on my own, so I got one of my friends to help me instead. I didn’t feel guilty about what I had done, either. I was already a little hell-raiser, and proud of it.

Another quintessential story from my childhood as Shirley, the precocious little rebel: When I was five years old, my mother took me to the dentist. After examining my teeth, the dentist announced that I had to have a tooth pulled.

I shook my head and stamped my feet, but to no avail. An appointment was made for the dreaded extraction of my errant tooth.

When the morning of the appointment dawned, my mother and father accompanied me to the dentist, along with my favorite aunt, my mother’s sister, Aunt Ina.

In the car, I kept yelling that I wasn’t going to have my tooth pulled, no way, no how.

My mother, to her credit, was kind and patient and kept reassuring me, “Now, sweetheart, it’s not going to hurt. Your aunt Ina’s here, your daddy’s here, I’m here. Everything is going to be all right.”

I should have believed her, but being the child that I was, by the time we all climbed to the top of the stairs in the dentist’s building and stood outside his office door, I plainly did not. So I pulled away from my family and ran downstairs again.

All of them, my mother, my father, and Aunt Ina stood at the top of the stairs, begging me to come back.

I just kept shaking my head and stayed put at the bottom of the stairs, and out of reach.

Then Aunt Ina hit on a winning formula: “Listen, sweetheart, if you come up the stairs again, I’ll buy you a pony.”

Won over by her promise, I looked at my mother first, then at my father, and both of them nodded encouragingly.

“Come up, sweetheart, I’ll hold your hand and nothing’s going to hurt you, I promise,” Aunt Ina said.

Mollified, I ran upstairs, and my mother, my father, and Aunt Ina, all grabbed me and put me in the dentist’s chair. Within moments, the dentist had injected me with anesthetic, then yanked out my tooth.

“But where’s my pony? Where’s my pony?” I cried, when I woke up.

I looked questioningly at my mother, my father, and Aunt Ina. None of them met my gaze.

The dentist exchanged glances with my father, then shrugged.

The writing was on the wall.

I stuck my face straight into the dentist’s and yelled, “I’m not getting a pony. And you’re a big shit!”

I don’t know where or how I learned that particular word, but I was on the right track, really. Because over the next few months, however often I asked my mother, my father, or Aunt Ina where my pony was, however much I begged and cajoled, I always got the same answer: “It’s coming soon.”

Not surprisingly, my pony never did materialize, and I was angry with Aunt Ina, with my parents, and with the dentist. They had all lied to me, and I didn’t like it at all. Which is probably partly why I became even more of a rebel. The other reason, I guess, was that I was just born that way.

I was willful, stubborn, and determined to do exactly what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I was unable to follow rules, or to act in the way in which a well-bred young lady was supposed to act. From as far back as I can remember, everyone who knew me agreed that I was already my own person.

The dentist incident caused me to loose trust in adults, but I think yet another reason for my tendency to rebel at every turn and to be a tomboy so early on was because I knew that my father had always wanted a son, and because I loved him so much, I wanted to please him.

So I yearned to be a boy and to do everything that boys did, only better. I refused to wear dresses and did whatever I could to prove that I was as tough as any boy and could do exactly the same things as boys could, only better.

After my father taught me sports and took me to all the Pirates games, I became a great baseball and softball and basketball player and, down the line, became head majorette in high school.

My father was delighted by my sporting prowess and made sure that I knew it, praising me at every turn. My mother, however, was not amused that I wasn’t evolving into a nice, well-brought-up, little Shirley Temple–type young lady. Practically every morning, after I refused to wear a dress to school, or to comb my hair, my mother paddled me with whatever she could lay her hands on, from a hairbrush to a spatula. If I came home covered in mud or threw my clothes all over the floor, in the evening my mother paddled me again.

In retrospect, I don’t blame her, because I just flatly refused to take orders. The moment she—or anyone else—told me to do anything, I did exactly the opposite.

When I wasn’t rebelling against authority directly, I was causing trouble in other ways. One Sunday night at around seven o’clock, when I was nine years old and hanging out with my best friend, Red, and my cousin Joanne, I pressed the town’s fire alarm, just to see what would happen. The second I did it, sirens blared, and the Smithton Volunteer Fire Department truck pulled up outside the café where we were hanging out.

Red and Joanne and I ran away as fast as we could, but someone ratted on us. Before we could make our getaway, we were hauled in front of the sheriff, who read us the riot act, in front of our parents, who had been called down to witness our rebuke and disgrace. Terrified, I mustered up the courage to ask the sheriff if we were facing jail. Jail, he told me gravely, was a real possibility, reform school at the very least.

Red, Joanne, and I were white with terror. Luckily for us, though, the sheriff took pity on us and relented. We were too young to go to jail, he announced, and instead he presented each of us with a piece of paper, ordering us to check in with him once a month for the entire year, without fail. We did and thanked our lucky stars that we got off so easily.

Apart from my sporadic bursts of rebellion, life in Smithton had a leisurely rhythm to it, a serenity in common with that of many American small towns. Every Sunday, my mother would make a big dinner at our house. She was a good cook, and her signature recipe was City Chicken—chicken, beef, and veal meatballs on a skewer, coated in bread crumbs, then put in the oven with vegetables.

Usually my grandmother ate with us, and so did my aunts, and during dinner and afterward we would all sit around talking local talk—about the brewery, what Mrs. so-and-so did today, what the grocery man said—the kind of conversation that only goes on in small towns all over America. If anything out of turn happened to disturb the routine of the town, that became a big deal indeed.

Animals were always the biggest deal in my life. Many times when my father came home late at night after being out all day on the road selling beer—often starting at eight and getting back home to us at three in the morning—to my delight he would bring home a puppy or a kitten as a gift for me.

Best of all, when I was very young, he brought home a dalmatian puppy, whom I instantly named Spot. I was devoted to Spot; he swiftly became my chief confidant, and I told him my deepest secrets constantly, so I was devastated when—around my tenth birthday—I came home from school one day to find that Spot had disappeared.

Distraught, I ran to my mother and demanded to know where Spot was.

My mother shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Last thing I saw, he went over to visit your grandmother.”

I ran over to my grandmother’s part of the house and begged her to tell me where Spot was.

All my grandmother would say was “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I gave Spot a piece of cheese and he ran away because he didn’t like it.”

Young as I was, I didn’t believe her. Particularly when I remembered that, the day before, Spot had raced out into her garden and dug up her cherished rhubarb plants. I drew my own conclusions, and I was not happy. For a while, my feelings toward my grandmother altered radically.

Instead of mourning Spot for too long, though, I drowned my sorrows in playing with my other pet, a little terrier I called Snoopy, who was no bigger than a Chihuahua.

Then there was school, which I adored. Our school housed two grades in a single room and went up to eighth grade; then you went on to high school.

From third grade on, my best friend was Red, who is still my best friend today. I lived at one end of the town, and she lived six blocks away from me at the other. Red and I were always together, and when the boys came up to me and yelled, “Who do you think you are?” (because my family owned the Jones brewery), or threw mud at me, Red would be right there, sticking by me.

Not that I needed any support, really. I was always a big fighter and would think nothing of battling the boys until my nose was bloody and my hair torn out in shreds. I didn’t care. I just wanted to win, and I usually did.

Part of the problem, I think, is that a few of the boys thought I was some kind of princess—the heiress to the Jones Brewing Company—and spoiled. But that wasn’t true. I wasn’t in the least bit spoiled. Although I was an only child, I never felt that I was given more than anyone else. My friends were never jealous of me or competitive with me or treated me as if I were in any way different from them. I was one of them and always would be. I still have friends whom I first met when we were in the third grade together.

But while I loved school, I didn’t love what awaited me when I got home from school, the paddling that my mother invariably gave me. At times, it seemed to me as if I got daily paddlings, and maybe I did.

I was so strong, so determined; I wanted what I wanted, and no one could divert me from it. I hated authority, and I was set on getting my way, come hell or high water. So I got paddled, over and over.

To me it seemed that my mother thought that everything I did was wrong—and she punished me accordingly.

I was constantly shut up in my room, banned from going out with my friends, and paddled. I took my punishment stoically, rarely cried, and in a way the paddlings became part of my life. Then one day, I just had enough.

I was nine years old and, after a particularly heavy paddling (I’d moved the blackboard from one wall to another in my room, had undone my ponytail, or whatever other transgression had made my mother mad), sat on the landing with my dalmatian, Spot (who hadn’t yet vandalized my grandmother’s garden and been spirited away by her), next to me. I was sore and sad. The only one around to comfort me was Spot.

So I put my arms around him, held him close, gazed deep into his eyes, and started confiding in him. “Spot, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. It’s just not working out for me. I guess I’ve got to change my ways,” I said ruefully.

Spot looked up at me and wagged his tail.

The next morning, just before school, for the first time in my life I put on a dress. I remember that dress to this day: peach-colored taffeta with puffed sleeves.

As I came downstairs into the kitchen, my mother was making breakfast and had her back to me. My aunt Ina, however, did not.

“Look at that, Marge, Shirley’s wearing a dress! Isn’t that exactly what you wanted?”

My mother spun around, looked me up and down, and smiled radiantly. “Well, Shirley, how nice you look! How lovely you look! Isn’t that wonderful? I’m so proud of you!”

I felt great. I guess I’ve got to start pleasing my mother more, I said to myself.

And that’s what I did for quite a few years, until I hit my early teens and all hell broke lose.

Until then, I was basically a good girl, who, when she wasn’t playing the tomboy and getting dirty, loved playing with her dolls. Dolls were now things of the past for me. Instead, I was obsessed with movies and movie stars. I plastered the walls of my bedroom with pictures of my idols: Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Howard Duff, and—my all-time favorite—Burt Lancaster. If you had told me then that one day I would meet him and make a movie with him—Elmer Gantry—I wouldn’t have believed you in a billion years.

I adored movies and movie stars and longed to look like one. When I was nine years old, I wore lipstick for the first time. I wore full makeup a year later. I cut my hair before all my friends did, and I was the first girl in town to wear a strapless dress to the prom.

A rebel in everything, in my early teens I tried sloe gin and got so sick that my friend Red had to put me in the shower so that my parents wouldn’t smell it on my breath when they came home.

I was wild, willful, and independent, and only three elements in my young life served to make me toe the line to some degree.

The first was my father, for whom I could do no wrong. I would have died if I had disappointed him, and that sentiment kept me on the straight and narrow.

Then there was my love for animals, and for nature, both of which tamed my unruly personality.

Last but not least was the other great love of my life: singing.



When I was four years old, Aunt Ina and I were playing on the swings together. Out of the blue, she asked me if I knew how to sing “God Bless America.”

Without any hesitation, I launched into “God Bless America,” both word-perfect and pitch-perfect, and Aunt Ina practically fell off the swing in shock.

Within moments she was yelling at my mother, “Marge, have you heard your daughter sing?”

My mother rushed out into the yard, and Aunt Ina asked me to sing “God Bless America” again. For the first time in my four years, I was an obliging child and, on cue, sang another chorus of “God Bless America.” My mother was ecstatic. From that moment on, she would always encourage me in my singing and would years later always write the lyrics of the songs I sang on three-by-five cue cards, so that I would never forget them.

To me, my aunt and my mother seemed to be praising me for something that I took for granted. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I thought all children could sing like me, and as easily.

At my mother’s and my aunt’s behest, from then on I sang at all our family functions, in particular at my grandmother’s end-of-summer family party, which she held at Sweeney’s Restaurant and Lounge, where we had all our big celebrations.

Most of the time, young as I was, I sang my favorite song, “Frankie and Johnny,” about the gal who “shot her lover down.” I sang it at one Christmas party and shocked my family to the core. When my choice of song was more suitable for a child of my age, sometimes my cousins joined in, and though I would try not to, I invariably drowned them out.

At six, I was the youngest member of the Universalist Church Choir, and I knew all the hymns by heart. Everyone said that I had a magnificent voice, but I was never vain or conceited about my singing talent. I believed—and still do believe—that my voice was a gift from God.

I loved singing, and I loved my mother’s reaction to my singing. My voice, she said, was “wonderful,” and I basked in the warm glow of her praise.

But that didn’t mean that I was suddenly transformed into an obedient, well-behaved child. After my mother suggested that I take piano lessons, and I had five, I flatly refused to take any more because I hated the lessons, and besides, I just didn’t like playing the piano.

But nothing would stop me from singing and glorying it. In the summer of 1946, when I was twelve, my parents sent me to camp on Lake Erie. Over eight weeks, I spent every evening with the other kids, sitting around the fireplace, roasting hot dogs and singing song after song, popular songs, patriotic songs, and religious songs—“The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Lord’s Prayer.” For the first time in my life I could sing my heart out, and I adored every minute of it.

Not only that, I had an angel watching over me, my camp counselor, Peggy Demler, who had platinum hair down to her shoulders and played Broadway show tunes on the piano as if she were born to do so. From the first, she made no bones about how she considered my voice to be God-given and special.

Peggy loved to play the piano while I sang and gave me guidance on how to enhance my singing voice. When the summer ended, Peggy called my mother and told her that I had an extreme talent and that I ought to have singing lessons.

Moreover, Phyllis Decker Rocker, my singing teacher at South Huntingdon High School, also believed I was already a talented singer and encouraged me to pursue singing as my career. Luckily for me, my mother listened to Peggy Demler and Phyllis Decker Rocker and enrolled me with singing teacher Ralph Lewando, who was the music critic for the Pittsburgh Press and who, along with his wife, Olga, was famous as being the top voice coach in Pennsylvania.

My father drove me to and from Pittsburgh once a week for my lessons there, an added bonus being I would be alone with my beloved father during the journey. He was delighted that I was having singing lessons, predicted that my name would one day be up in lights, and always treated me as if I were the princess of the world.

However, my singing teacher, Ralph Lewando, was quite another story. Although he was enchanted by my voice from the very first time I sang for him, he had firm ideas about my future and exactly where he thought my singing talent should lead me.

After I’d sung just a few notes, he stopped me in midsong and announced that I was a born opera singer—a coloratura soprano—no question about it. That was my talent, my gift, my mission in life, he decreed; my God-given vocation was clear.

Much as I respected Ralph Lewando, I didn’t agree with him. I didn’t want to be an opera singer. So I plucked up the courage to tell the august Mr. Lewando that actually I wanted to sing musical comedy as well as opera. He was taken aback, and although he reluctantly agreed to allow me to sing the odd Broadway tune now and again, he made it clear that he thought singing show tunes was harmful to my voice. I didn’t argue with him. I just listened to his instructions, studied hard, practiced religiously, and sang aria after aria, but deep down, I knew that however beautiful the arias were, my heart still belonged to the Broadway musical.

Peggy Demler, my camp counselor at Lake Erie, had played Broadway songs to me so enchantingly, and my father often took me to see musicals when Broadway touring companies played Pittsburgh. My passion for Broadway and the Broadway musical began early in my life. Every summer from as far back as I could remember, my parents and I drove from Pittsburgh to New York and spent a week there, the highlight of which was seeing a Broadway show together.

The very first was Oklahoma!

Most helpful customer reviews

90 of 99 people found the following review helpful.
Not Mrs Partridge!!!
By E. B. Watson
It takes guts to write a book like this and risk one's reputation at 79 years of age. But Shirley Jones was never weak, and she shows her raw strength at its best in this fascinating and, yes, shocking tale of show business and a woman we all thought we knew. A riveting read, Ms. Jones doesn't let "polite society" stand in the way of stark truth-telling. Beloved as the nearly perfect "Mrs Partridge" and the idealistic "Marian the Librarian," Ms. Jones was instead a flesh-and-blood woman married to a man she adored, but who mistreated her (to use the kindest euphemism) and introduced her to a sub-world she certainly knew nothing about during her protected childhood in Smithton, PA. In many ways, Ms. Jones's life could have been more like that of "Lulu Baines" in "Elmer Gantry," led astray by callow men. Instead, she, with her remarkable talent, found her way out of the cobwebs and into the life she deserves. She is married to a man who loves her (as odd as he might be!) and has four sons and twelve grandchildren who fill her life. They may be -- will be -- upset and disturbed by what their mother writes about her trials in life, but should be proud of her ability to survive it all with a sense of humor, enduring strength, and a vital sexuality. Oh, yes, Mrs. Partridge does have a sex life, and you'll read all about it! Perhaps a little TMI for the squeamish, but you can skip those parts if you must!

121 of 135 people found the following review helpful.
Bit of a disappointment
By Galla
Given her talents and the longevity of her career, I was expecting a bit more from this memoir. Jones skims over much of the really important and interesting aspects of her career in order to focus more on her marriage to Jack Cassidy. Jones worked with great actors and directors but they are only mentioned briefly, although a few, such as Richard Brooks and Marlon Brando, with telling comments. The book would be far more interesting if she had discussed in greater detail her work on these movies and her relationships with her costars. (The information about riding around and necking with Richard Widmark really was mindboggling.......Richard Widmark?????). The description of her childhood, growing up in a small town, and her relationship with her parents is interesting. Despite the seemingly importance of her parents in her life, however, they are hardly mentioned after her move to New York. For example, when did her father die? She mentions his death at an early age in her introduction but never discusses it in the book, despite her great love for him. And what about her mother? Her disapproval of Jack Cassidy is referred to (smart woman) and her attempt to cut David Cassidy's hair, but nothing else. Was she a constant presence in Shirley's life long into her adulthood? The focus of the memoir is really on Shirley's marriage to Jack Cassidy, evidently a rather nasty bit of work. He was the 'love of her life" and she accepted his jealousy of her success and that of his two sons, his constant infidelity, his temper tantrums, his drinking, until his illness posed a real threat to their sons. Even thirty five years later she still sees him as her great love, despite the success of her second marriage to Marty Ingels. There is very little introspection or reflection on her part although she evidently takes great pride in her four sons, including stepson David, and how they weathered their father's treatment of them and their own problems with early success and/or drug abuse. Overall, the book was an easy read and interesting but it could have been much better, both in content and writing style. As for those supposedly shocking and intimate details about her sexuality, actually they are silly rather than shocking.

75 of 85 people found the following review helpful.
Jones sets out to shock readers, but instead leaves them dissatisfied
By Talia
I've been a fan of Shirley Jones since I was 11 and saw her in "The Music Man." I've also had the pleasure of meeting her in person twice - once at a lecture and another time at one her concerts.

Although it's easy for people to confuse the actor with the role, I've always had a solid understanding that Shirley Jones was unlike the roles that she played on TV and in the movies.

That being said, I was quite disappointed with her latest book. Aside from the fact that it was not copy-edited very well (several misspellings and missing words), I felt the content was poorly organized. Generally, memoirs and autobiographies are linear. It just makes sense to organize the narrative that way. But Jones' book jumped all over the place - one moment she was a young child, the next a married woman, and then back to being a teenager.

The content itself was disappointing. Rather than present a thoughtful account of her upbringing, career and marriage, she chose to resort to shock-jock tactics, spilling everything about her sexual activies (including how she masturbates and to what), her sons' physical endowments, etc.

I realize that you don't want to sugar coat things in a memoir, but there are ways to be tasteful while still being honest. It's almost as if she wanted to distance herself from any squeaky-clean image that still might linger. For me, that forced crassness was distracting and frustrating.

In the end, I did learn more about Shirley Jones. In some cases, I learned much more than I ever wanted to know. Reading this book makes me want to sit down and write Julie Andrews an earnest thank you card for providing a lovely memoir that was thoughtfully and tastefully written and laid out in an easy-to-understand chronological order.

Shirley Jones should take note.

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Everyone has a face that they show to the outside world—but our thoughts, fears, and perversions lie just beneath
“Referred pain” describes the sensation of pain, not at the actual point of injury, but somewhere else in the body. This disorientation of the senses is felt, in one way or another, by many of the characters in this collection from Lynne Sharon Schwartz, one of America’s foremost chroniclers of contemporary life. In the title novella, a son of Holocaust survivors circumvents his discomfort over his parents’ history through a Kafkaesque series of dental procedures. In another story, a professor’s sexual attraction to one of his students leads him down a twisted path of misplaced identity. Laced with Schwartz’s satirical, acidly intelligent wit, Referred Pain displays the peak of her ability.

• Sales Rank: #1224935 in eBooks
• Published on: 2012-11-20
• Released on: 2012-11-20
• Format: Kindle eBook

From Publishers Weekly
In the unsettling title novella of Schwartz's latest collection of stories, the deluded son of Holocaust survivors feels that he can finally understand the anguish his parents have experienced when he undergoes a series of difficult dental procedures. As the title implies, his pain is experienced indirectly, and Schwartz's metaphor emerges periodically in these 12 stories about vulnerable characters in uneasy situations. Schwartz (Disturbances in the Field; Leaving Brooklyn; etc.), has an uncanny ear for dialogue and a lucid prose style that is by turns comic, surreal and biting, but difficult to categorize. In the clever but not sterile postmodern "Intrusions," she tells of a woman's encounter with an intruder in her apartment building, only to deconstruct the narrative and retell it in a different way. The least rewarding works in the collection are "The Stone Master" and "Deadly Nightshade," which read like contrived, overextended fables. Schwartz's talents are better displayed in stories that bravely mine difficult truths: in "Francesca," a professor finds himself attracted to a student who turns out to be his long-lost daughter, and in "Hostages to Fortune," a middle-aged couple bicker over their two grown children's fates in increasingly abstract terms as the story builds to a startling, ambiguous conclusion. In "Sightings of Loretta," a widower comes to the crushing realization that he never paid enough attention to his wife: "He sat on the bed with horror seeping through him. He was ready to pay attention now. There were questions he needed to ask." With precise economy, Schwartz makes her characters' pain both familiar and felt.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Schwartz is the author of 14 works of fiction and nonfiction, but never before has she so fully disclosed both her incisive use of language and penetrating understanding of the human psyche as in this collection of eerie short stories. Life appears to be oppressively normal as Schwartz establishes typical domestic situations, but things quickly take a turn toward the weird as characters struggle against insidious forces that prevent them from doing what they need and want to do. As situations grow strange and characters strive to find explanations for the inexplicable, Schwartz enters Kafka's nightmarish realm and crafts fables that reach archetypal depths. In the mesmerizing title story, for example, the musician son of survivors of the siege of Leningrad and German concentration camps sees his girlfriend go off to Bosnia to work with rape victims. He struggles to legitimize his easy existence in light of these "aristocrats of pain," and ends up suffering a series of disastrous dental procedures complicated by "referred pain," that is, pain whose source is other than it appears. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Schwartz’s generosity of mind and heart, are present on almost every page of this book.” —Chicago Tribune

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Mostly Worth the Read... Mostly...
By booknosh
Cut to the Chase:
Referred Pain introduces us to an eclectic group of protagonists and situations; some are surreal and fable-like. “Twisted Tales” and “The Stone Master” have unnamed protagonists trying to shift their way through imagined and imaginary fears and foes and have traces of Aimee Bender’s fantastical fiction. The stronger works in this collection, however, focus on the everyday domestic situations and dramas which, often against the will of the readily recognized and empathy-inducing protagonists, are shaped by everyday crises. Like any collection, there are ups and downs, but overall, I laughed and empathized with many of the characters here, making it a worthwhile read.

Greater Detail:
As always with collections, here are some selected synopses:

“Hostages of Fortune” – an older married couple wrestle (literally and emotionally) with redefining their roles now that their children (whom we gradually learn our protagonist never truly wanted) have grown and flown.
“Twisted Tales” – a series of connected short shorts with unnamed protagonists struggling to align themselves with the world around them: a woman who is convinced she was born into the wrong language, another who barricades herself against all clutter (including members of her family: her husband, her children) so that she might finally be able to think in peace
“The Stone Master” – a wrong turn in a rainstorm lands a moderate celebrity in an almost fantastical town where citizens have stones of light
“The Word” – short short about missed opportunities which seems to be thematic center for the collection
“Intrusions” – my favorite in the collection, a writing professor follows her own exercise and writes about a long-ago incident where she came closest to feeling genuine fear and then reflects on her own telling of the tale: where is it least genuine, most manipulative, what if she had told it all differently?
“Deadly Nightshade” – another fantastical premise: a woman is the first in her village to eat a tomato
Schwartz’s characters are deftly honest about their frailties (divorced parents who reconnect for one night after their son’s wedding in “The Trip to Halawa Valley”) and frighteningly self-aware (a writing professor reflects on the full impact of a story she has written about a long-ago boy intruder in “Intrusions.”) Though there are weaker moments (the more fantastical tales lack the genuine specificity which infuses other stories), what holds this collection together is the wry and often surprising humor found in everyday, almost commonplace dramas. Just as Koslowski learns to endure his little discomforts and finds ways to be moderately heroic in daily life, earning “his right to live,” the string of genuine moments and propelling dialogue saves and justifies the collection as a whole.

Comparisons to Other Authors:
The stories that I enjoyed in this were more about missed opportunities and kind of remembered suffering in a way that maybe reminds me of some of Joyce Carol Oates’s stories (though Oates is so prolific I feel like I might as well not have said that). Specifically, I guess this collection reminded me of some of the short stories in Oates’s Faithless (though I enjoyed the latter a little more), and some of the fantastical stories are like some of what Atwood or Garcia Marquez writes (though again, the comparison would make this one the slightly weaker link).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Secrets, games, conversations in our heads
By Patricia Kramer
The stories in this book open the window to the characters' minds. They live their public lives but we are allowed to share the private lives and their attempts to live with and avoid pain.
As always Lynne Sharon Schwartz's writing shines. Not a word is wasted. My favorite story was Deadly Nightshade. It is about a woman who breaks with the grandparents' warnings and dares to eat a "poisonous" tomato. "Nothing she did in later years came close to the elation of that single act of abandon. She was a daring woman who found no more opportunities for daring, or for the kind of daring peculiar to her, which was biting into the perilous unknown and letting it travel through her."
This was a short simple story which illustrates the book's theme of people living their lives wanting more of life but not being able to grab the brass ring for that second chance.
The stories will linger in your mind.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Some great stories, some not so great
By J. Rosenberg
I loved the title story in this collection. Everything in it worked toward the perfect culmination. Some of the other stories fell a bit flat, and the ones that leaned toward the "experimental," only a couple, were not my cup of tea. Overall a very satisfying read.

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^ Download PDF The Lancashire Cycleway: A comprehensive guide (Cicerone Cycling), by Jon Sparks

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Cycling guide to the Lancashire Cycleway - two loops, each 130 miles (225km), which meet at Whalley in the Ribble Valley, northern England. Lancashire is a great place to cycle, and cycling is a great way to see Lancashire. One of its great delights is its sheer variety. There's easy riding on the flat expanses of the west of the county and the gentle undulations of Arnside and Silverdale or the Ribble Valley. More stirring challenges are found in West Pennine Moors and the epic crossing of the Bowland Fells. But even on the wildest stretches, you're never too far from a welcoming pub and somewhere to sleep. The Cycleway comprises two distinct loops, each around 130 miles (225km) in length, which meet at Whalley in the Ribble valley. Seasoned cycle tourists can comfortably tackle either loop in a weekend, or do the whole thing inside a week. However, access by rail at numerous points means that less experienced cyclists can do it in shorter sections. This book, the first comprehensive guide to the Lancashire Cycleway, gives guidance on how to manage this, as well as a full description of the route, notes on where to find meals and accommodation, and masses of information about places of interest along the way. There is also some helpful advice for those new to cycling or cycle touring.

• Published on: 2012-10-03
• Released on: 2012-10-03
• Format: Kindle eBook

About the Author
Jon Sparks is an photographer and writer, based in Lancaster. He has been a lover of cycling, especially in Lancashire, for many years, but researching this book still brought many pleasant surprises, especially in the southern half of the county.

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! Download Ebook The Why of Things: A Novel, by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

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“A fast-paced, entertaining summer read” (People), The Why of Things is a “keenly observed” and “richly drawn” (The New York Times) novel about a family fighting towards hope in the wake of a terrible tragedy.

Since the loss of her seventeen-year-old daughter less than a year ago, Joan Jacobs has struggled to keep her tight-knit family from coming apart. But Joan and Anders, her husband, are unable to snap back into the familiarity and warmth they so desperately need, both for themselves and for their surviving daughters, Eve and Eloise. The family flees to their summer home in search of peace and renewal, only to encounter an eerily similar tragedy when a pickup truck drives into the quarry in their backyard killing a young local named James Favazza.

As the Jacobs family learns more about the inexplicable events that preceded that fateful evening, each of them becomes increasingly tangled in the emotional threads of James’s story: fifteen-year-old Eve is determined to solve, on her own, the mystery of his death; Anders finds himself facing his own deepest fears; and seven-year-old Eloise unwittingly adopts James’s orphaned dog. For her part, Joan becomes increasingly fixated on James’s mother, a stranger whose sudden loss so closely mirrors her own.

With an urgent, beautiful intimacy that her fans have come to expect from this “bitingly intelligent writer” (The New York Times), Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop delivers here a powerful, buoyant novel that explores the complexities of family relationships and the small triumphs that can bring unexpected healing. The Why of Things is a wise, empathetic, and exquisitely heartfelt story about the strength of family bonds. It is an unforgettable and searing tour de force.

• Sales Rank: #518285 in eBooks
• Published on: 2013-06-11
• Released on: 2013-06-11
• Format: Kindle eBook

From Publishers Weekly
A pickup truck careens into a water-filled quarry, killing the young male driver, in the backyard of the Jacobs family's home on Cape Ann, Mass. The family is already reeling from the recent suicide of its eldest daughter, Sophie, when their second daughter, Eve, becomes obsessed with discovering whether the truck's driver was another suicide, a murder, or an accident. Eve's father, Anders, helps her follow clues while her mother, Joan, tries to connect with the dead man's mother. Winthrop (Fireworks) reveals little about Sophie's life or death, aside from that she parked her car on railroad tracks. Joan blames herself for the suicide, though it seems impossible that the home environment is at fault. Winthrop writes beautifully about family bonds made solid by respect, kindness, integrity, and commitment, and it feels petty to disrespect their dignity by wishing they would reveal even a little bit more about Sophie's life. However, she crafts the family too precisely and ties their narrative threads too tightly. Towards the end, Winthrop doses each of her characters with a palliative, but insists that they, and the reader, must accept that sometimes you have to live without answers. It's an understandable sentiment, but an unsatisfying conclusion. Amanda Urban, ICM. (June)

From Booklist
In this subtle examination of grief and its aftermath, the talented Winthrop delicately explores how the members of the Jacobs family cope with the suicide of the eldest daughter, 17-year-old Sophie. As the Jacobs arrive at their summer house on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, 14-year-old Evie discovers tracks leading directly into their quarry. Soon police divers discover the body of James Favazza, a young local man. Over the course of the summer, each family member reacts differently to a situation that so closely mirrors his or her own tragic circumstances. Joan meets James’ mother, hoping to see within her a coping mechanism she can appropriate as her own. Evie is convinced that James was murdered, since she cannot accept the fact that he may have committed suicide. Anders, inspired by a scuba-diving class, comes to feel that his dead daughter’s energy might still exist in the world and is something that cannot be destroyed. In small but significant ways, the family members start to heal and to move toward each other, finding comfort from their pain. An exquisitely written portrait of grief and healing. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review
“Keenly observed...richly drawn….[Winthrop]’s message, as complex as it is simple, is that the unendurable can and will be endured only if one chooses to go on.” (New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice)

“A fast-paced, entertaining summer read.” (People (3 out of 4 stars))

“Totally engrossing from start to finish. Winthrop’s scene building is captivating, her characterization intricately layered, and her ability to build tension both preternatural and Hitchcockian—the suspense accumulating so subtly that you don’t notice you’re getting wound up ‘til you put the book down to take a break and suddenly your teeth are clenched.” (Ploughshares)

“The Why of Things is elegantly written, insightful and haunting. It is emotionally raw but never saccharine, tender but powerful, and well captures the feelings of sadness and uncertainty that follow deaths like those of Sophie and Farvazza --- but also the resilience and hopefulness that come, surprisingly and tentatively, to those left in their wake.” (BookReporter.com)

"An outstanding, uplifting novel about how one family keeps on living after tragedy strikes... and strikes again." (Shelf Awareness)

"Winthrop writes beautifully about family bonds made solid by respect, kindness, integrity, and commitment." (Publishers Weekly)

A somber novel about the effects of suicide on a family and the secret wounds that become memorials…tender and true…reveals a quiet beauty.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“An exquisitely written portrait of grief and healing.” (Booklist)

“With insight, respect and luminous clarity, Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop plumbs the afterlife of grief: the futile attempts to reconcile old habits and perceptions to the relentless questions that trail behind any unspeakable loss. This haunting, shimmering novel reminds us how all of us know our families: with unimaginable intimacy, and hardly at all.” (Andrew Solomon National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree)

"Once again, Elizabeth Winthrop conjures light from a dark place in her beautifully constructed, touching novel The Why of Things. Why do some so loved willfully leave us is the question Winthrop sets out to answer--and what meaning she renders from this mystery! The book starts and ends at the same quarry's edge, but a quarry changed. Winthrop's quiet magic makes the water's mutable darkness bearable and better--nothing to be afraid of, a substance of possibilities." (Christine Schutt author of Prosperous Friends)

"Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop is one of the finest writers of her generation. With deeply moving intelligence and a clean, spare style, she gets right to the heart of loss and survival." (Brad Watson author of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives and The Heaven of Mercury)

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Winthrop's new novel is beautiful and poignant
By Bookreporter
"When our children die," wrote Henry Ward Beecher, "we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity and wonder." For the fictional Jacobs family, the fear, pity and wonder they are experiencing after the death of their eldest daughter is compounded when another death --- that of a stranger --- happens in their own backyard. Parents Anders and Joan, 15-year-old Eve and seven-year-old Eloise are still deep in mourning for 17-year-old Sophie when they are drawn into the heartbreak and mystery surrounding the death of a young man named James Farvazza in Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop's beautiful and poignant new novel, THE WHY OF THINGS.

Upon arriving at their summer house, Eve Jacobs notices tire tracks cutting across the yard and ending at the edge of the huge water-filled quarry on the property. She also observes bubbles rising to the surface. The police tow trucks, paramedics and divers soon arrive, but by the time 27-year-old James Farvazza is pulled from the quarry, still inside his pick-up truck, he is dead. How and why Farvazza ends up in the quarry becomes a bit of an obsession for Eve; she tries to understand the event, suspects foul play, collects evidence, and eventually begins to see that coming to terms with Farvazza's death is a way of coming to terms with the death of her sister.

Meanwhile, other members of the Jacobs family are confronting the loss in their own ways. Anders finds an unexpected peace in a diving class, Eloise falls in love with a dog and worries about ghosts, and Joan has a few heart-wrenching encounters with Farvazza's own grieving mother.

While readers come to learn the manner of Sophie's death (just as they know about Farvazza's), the reasons why ("the why of things") are never made clear. They are not clear to the reader nor to the fictional characters, and so the crux of the emotional movement in the book is toward the realization that ultimately there will be no understanding. It is a bold and honest move on Winthrop's part, and a successful one at that. This is a wonderful novel of loss and wonder, and Eve and Anders in particular are fascinating and exciting characters. The changes in them over the course of the story are craftily mirrored in the landscape they inhabit.

THE WHY OF THINGS is elegantly written, insightful and haunting. It is emotionally raw but never saccharine, tender but powerful, and well captures the feelings of sadness and uncertainty that follow deaths like those of Sophie and Farvazza --- but also the resilience and hopefulness that come, surprisingly and tentatively, to those left in their wake.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
There are no answers
By Karen M
Why, we ask ourselves at the death of a parent, a child, a sibling or a stranger. Why that moment, that place, that person and so a story unfolds.

Death creates a distancing between people. It isolates. Each dealing with what has happened in their own way. Grief. The lose of a child, a sister.

And then there is the mystery of the second death of the stranger. Eve convinces herself it might have been murder just as her sister's death was not and begins to investigate. While Joan questions how she is able to endure the loss of a child and holds the guilt of having taken that child for granted for too long. Anders, her husband, worries about his roses and the distance growing between himself and Joan. Eloise, the youngest child, fears the quarry is contaminated forever by the death of the stranger. But most of all they are at a loss as to why Sophie, the oldest child, has died.

Summer distractions fill their time. Anders takes the diving lessons Joan has given him as a gift. Eve finds a job working at a local greenhouse. Eloise goes to day camp and Joan begins writing her next book. Oh, and then there is the dog who mysteriously turns up on their property. Each dealing with the lose of Sophie.

"a single energy that inhabits all living things, an energy that is both fleeting and eternal; we each are given it only for a time before it passes on to give life to something else."

The why? "For the living, for those left behind, there is no answer that is good enough."

Very moving book which I throughly enjoyed and highly recommend. This one really makes you think. There truly is no answer to why.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
The "Why" has many answers and also none.
By Mark E. Murray
Just completed the "Why of Things" and true to form it is another outstanding piece of psychological fiction by Ms. Winthrop. Exploring the archetypical question of "why" in life leads us down multiple pathways and usually resulting in new questions but seldom resolution. Ms. Winthrop brings the Jacobs family of Eve, Eloise, Anders and Joan along this path soon after the suicide of the oldest daughter in the family, Sophie. Each of these characters have both unique as well as parallel journeys grieving this loss. When they arrive at their summer residence in Gloucester on Cape Ann Massachusetts they discover a pick-up truck has driven into a quarry on their property. When a body is pulled from the truck the relaxation of vacation routine disappears.

Ander's fears, Joan's unacknowledged grief, Eve's unexpressed anger and Eloise's sadness of the innocent are woven neatly through every page of this novel. The summer is the setting, the place is the magnificence of Cape Ann and the characters will come to life as they live the question, "Why".

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