In June 1970, my life was working as I’d hoped. At twenty-six, when my son Jim was born with a severe cleft lip and palate, my world turned upside down. Doctors took charge of my son’s medical needs. I felt side-lined, pressured to cope silently and without support. I recoiled when I saw my ten-day-old infant’s battered face after the first surgery. Feedings were traumatic, and I feared Jim would fail to thrive. Emotions I’d never felt before – disappointment, guilt, helplessness, self-loathing, resentment -- overwhelmed me. I shrank from the inevitable stares and insensitive comments.
I met Earl and his wife, Suzanne, several years ago over lunch in Phoenix, discussing fundraising strategies for an NGO they set up in Guatemala, “Seeds for a Future,” which provides training to impoverished rural women on the South Coast. I soon learned that we shared a love and appreciation of Guatemala and the Desert Southwest and that Earl was also a writer and, in his case, a poet.
Graham updated the initial book Democrazy to From Democracy to Democrazy: A Warning To ALL Americans as the first version came out a few weeks before the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress and a little over a year before Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine which provided important new material. She expresses the objective of both books as “How the U.S. was caught in an evil, repulsive and dangerous vortex from 2016-2020 and beyond.”
Home braids the history of a New England house and town with teachings of motherhood, loss, and tradition—plus a little romance and humor along the way. In childhood, M.G. adores her old family house as if it were a guardian with heart and soul. After her mother dies, her father soon remarries and sends her and her brothers, one at a time, off to live with older siblings. M.G. buries her affection for that home, along with the family divisions and pain of her mother's departure.
Palo Alto, California, is home to stratospheric real estate prices and equally high expectations, a place where everyone has to be good at something and where success is often defined by the name of a prestigious college on the back of a late-model luxury car. It’s also the place where Irena Smith—Soviet émigré, PhD in comparative literature, former Stanford admission reader—works as a private college counselor to some of the country’s most ambitious and tightly wound students . . . even as, at home, her own children unravel.
If you like history of any type, you must read this book. Part history, part travel guide but always interesting, and when you’ve finished you’ll be a master of some particular Trivia questions. Each chapter represents a different town or historical story and while each are short, all are very interesting in their own way. The pictures are just an added bonus, bringing to life the places Jorgensen writes about. Well researched and well written, the author does justice to all that is Coca Cola – the iconic brand of the American 20th Century.
