An emotional and educational account of one woman’s journey toward motherhood.
In a heartfelt debut memoir, a Colorado kindergarten teacher tells of her determination to conceive a child in spite of an infertility diagnosis.
In 1979, Casey and her husband, Peter, were both 29 years old when she received the unwelcome news that blockage of her fallopian tubes would make it impossible for her to become pregnant. She traced the problem back to a uterine infection five years before—a complication that occurred after the implantation of an experimental contraceptive intrauterine device. At first, her doctors were sanguine; the tubes might just “pop open,” they said, with a small amount of very painful pressure. Failing that, a simple surgery would doubtless fix the problem, they asserted. Driven by a deep desire to bear and raise a child, Casey underwent eight surgeries in four years. Along the way, she faced insensitivity from physicians and friends and repeatedly endured what she calls the “knee-buckling agony of loss” as each attempt to open the blocked tubes failed; other options, such as adoption, also remained out of reach. Finally, a sympathetic doctor and an emerging field of medical technology offered the author the life and family she sought; she was approved for participation in an experimental in vitro fertilization program, and she became the mother of “Colorado’s first test-tube baby.” Casey’s narrative is intimate and revealing, and she effectively conveys her personal struggle, which included feelings of guilt and anguish over her inability to conceive through traditional methods. The text is further enriched by the author’s regular placement of informative sidebars on such topics as the history of birth control, ectopic pregnancy, and surviving the loss of a pregnancy. Overall, she recounts her story with frankness and vulnerability, catching the reader up in her story despite the fact that its outcome is revealed at the beginning.
An emotional and educational account of one woman’s journey toward motherhood.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63299-497-4
Page Count: 232
Publisher: River Grove Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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