Review: THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

Book Beginning/ First Line Friday quote:

December 1981: I stood on the lacquered floor -- a small woman in black with a rectangular name badge on my chest. 

Friday56 quote: 

Lionesses. Us. Can't you see it, Ellie? Someday -- you and me -- we'll do great things. We'll live lives for ourselves. And we will help others. We are cubs now, maybe. But we will grow to be lionesses. Strong women who will make things happen.

Summary: Set in Tehran, Iran in the years 1950-1980, The Lion Women of Tehran tells the story of two girls who meet when they are in primary school and then follows the ins and outs of their lives and their friendship as they grow and change. There is Ellie who is raised to be a princess, to fulfill her mother's ideal of what a young woman can become -- a pampered wife and mother herself. And there is Homa who is raised by a communist father and a mother who loves to cook. She dreams big of what a woman's life could be outside the cultural norms. Both girls are brilliant and work hard at their studies. One day, while in college with the political turmoil roiling through the country, an innocent slip of the tongue leads to a betrayal that will have lifelong consequences. The novel is full of love and courage, "and is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young" (Publisher).

Review: The Lion Women of Tehran was a book club selection for January's meeting. Every woman in the club liked the book, which rarely happens, yet no one spoke of it in gushing, rhapsodic terms. It was a good, but not clutch-the-book-to your-chest-and-sigh good book. The publisher compares this book to The Kite Runner, set during the same time period in Iraq. But I argued this book, though very impactful, did not have the same emotional punch as its predecessor. One thing we all agreed upon, the book really highlights food and Iranian cuisine well. The descriptions of the food in the book made all of our mouths water. I wanted to try everything.

It was an excellent club choice, however, because there was so much to discuss about women's rights and how women have fared throughout history at the hands of men involved in extreme, fanatical wings of religions. Homa, who fights for women's rights in Tehran, because women are not allowed to keep their children if they get divorced in the 1960s, is shocked when the government is overthrown in the late 1970s and women are sent packing back to the middle ages, requiring women to cover themselves, not allowing most women to even work outside the home. Here we are in 2020s USA, and we can feel these same breezes blowing on our cheeks. Our grandmothers won the right to vote. Our mothers won the right for women to use contraceptives and to have equitable division of property and children after divorces. Now we are being threatened by Christian Nationalists, currently in charge of our government, that women will need to revert to old family values -- staying home and raising children -- which all they purport women are good for! See what I mean? We had a lot to discuss.

One woman reviewer on Goodreads said this about The Lion Women of Tehran:

While this novel didn't deliver the emotional punch I was expecting it to, it does fulfill its promise at providing a story filled with feminine courage and moral fortitude. Ellie and Homa are good examples of what women have always been fighting for and will continue to do so, especially in places where it is dangerous to do so. 3.5 stars

I agree with her estimation of the book. I liked the feminine courage and moral fortitude of the story. I liked the message of about important good friends are for us. I gave it 4 stars.

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Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

-Anne

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Classics Club Spin #43

It is time for another Classics Club Spin. 

The spin happens on Sunday, February 8th. At that time a number will be announced and I will have until March 29th to finish that book. All you have to do, if you want to join in, is create a numbered list of 20 classics you still want to read and wait for the announcement, then commence reading.

My One-Big-Book of 2026 is Moby-Dick, so I honestly hope to have that book win the spin. I also have my own copies of Madame Bovary, The Good Earth, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes so those books would be a cinch for me to start. We'll see where the spinner stops.

CC Spin # 43

1. The Good Earth by Buck

2.   The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov

3.      Death Comes for the Archbishop by Cather

4.      Don Quioxides by de Cervantes*

5.      The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov

6.      Heart of Darkness by Conrad*

7.      The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle

8.      Invisible Man by Ellison*

9.      Madame Bovary by Flaubert*

10. The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne

11. The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway

12. Siddhartha by Hesse

13. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Highsmith

14. On the Road by Kerouac

15. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair

16. Moby Dick by Melville*

17. Midnight’s Children by Rushdie*

18. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Sparks

19. Dracula by Stoker*

20. Scoop by Waugh

*Books in the top 30 classic books list.

-Anne

TTT: Books with Cool Typography on Covers

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Cool Typography on Their Covers. 

All read by me in 2025.

(I wouldn't say these are the world's best examples of cool typography, but apparently I didn't read great examples of typography last year.)

How Do You Spell Unfair? by Carole Boston Weatherford.
UNFAIR is the point!

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones.
There's an extra HUNTER in there.

Shackled: How Two Corrupt Judges Defied Justice, Made Millions, and Harmed Thousands of Children by Candy J. Cooper.
$HACKLED by or for money.

Flamer by Mike Curato.
It was the summer of campfires where the Mike came to self-acceptance.

Road Home by Rex Ogle.
How do you find the way home when you've been kicked out?

How to Write a Poem by Kwame Alexander and Deanna Nikaido
Imagination is the focus on these poems.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley.
The typography wins for the batch I've shared.

Tilt by Emma Pattee.
The whole world is tilted after an earthquake.

Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout.
Hmm. Can't remember what blackbirds have to do with this Holocaust story.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Iconic cover.

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- Songs for Now

Weather: Overcast, foggy, potential for rain. A very grey day.

Songs for Now:

Proud to Live in Minnesota by Tim Sparks

Streets of Minneapolis by Bruce Springsteen

Won't You Be My Neighbor? by Lady Gaga "We need Mr. Rogers at this time." (The second half of the video is the whole song.)

Lift Us Up: A Song for America by Bethany and Peter Yarrow. An oldie but a goodie for this time.

Soldier of Fortune by Marie Gauthier. Think of the ICE agents as she sings, compare them to Roman soldiers crucifying Jesus and the Nazi Gestapo hauling people off to sure deaths in concentration camps.

🠞And this song. Follow this link to Facebook to hear Philip Labes sing "Jesus" about how Jesus was an immigrant and now he is being deported from our country and our hearts. 

🠞Late addition. Ice Out Now by Mandy Dean. The movement is being propelled by music.

________________________________________________________

And a poem about now:

* If you don't recognize the name of the poet, Amanda Gorman is the woman who read a lovely, hopeful poem, "The Hill We Climb," at President Biden's Inauguration.

A new word for now: from "There is a Word for What is Happening in Minneapolis" by Gal Beckerman, published in The Atlantic, Jan. 30, 2026.

"The fight against ICE in Minneapolis defies easy categorization. Is it activism? Protest? Political opposition? Resistance? None of these terms quite captures what we are seeing: people putting their bodies on the line to care for immigrants and impeding the operations of a paramilitary force in their city. My colleagues have come up with their own, apt ways to describe it: Maybe this is “neighborism,” or a movement for “basic decency.” I like the way an elderly couple named Dan and Jane, in one dispatch, explained their motive for joining the effort: “humanist.”... The word that comes to mind is dissidence...Dissidence is not revolution; it is is not political opposition. It's something much more elemental. It emerges  in environments where power -- usually government power -- tramples on the basic conditions of life as people know and value them. We recognize what that means in Minneapolis: People do not like to see their neighbors terrified and rounded up. They do not like to see masked men with guns acting with impunity. They do not like their children being afraid to go to school...The movement that has arisen on the city's frigid streets is about defending what any reasonable American would call "normal" -- the expectation of a life without the threat of violence and coercion."

 Books read in January (hyperlinks to my reviews):

• Worth Fighting For: Finding the Courage and Compassion When Cruelty is Trending by John Pavlovich -- essays on motivation for Christians (not Christian Nationalists!) to keep fighting for justice. My first book of 2026. 4 stars.
• The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende -- Two stories of children separated from parents, one because of the Holocaust, the other through cruel policies of separating families at the border. Their stories coalesce. A book club selection. 5 stars.
• Wreck by Catherine Newman -- a woman, Rocky, is navigating through her life after the death of her mother and the diagnosis of a serious disease. She's a wreck. 5 stars.
• So Far Gone by Jess Walter -- An audiobook with Don. A man who has hermited himself away from the world is called upon to help his grandchildren and find his daughter, who is married to a man deeply involved in the Christian Nationalist movement. The book has serious themes, but is quite humorous. 5 stars.
• Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy -- a memoir by a favorite author of The God of Small Things. Her life and this memoir is also very wrapped up in Roy's relationship with her mother, Mary. Another audiobook with Don. This was the #1 best book of 2025. I see why. 5 stars from both of us.
• A Passage to India by E.M. Forster -- a classic set in India in the 1920s. this is my first classic of the year and my first Forster book. 4 stars. (Review pending.)
• The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali -- an epic tale of two girls/women who become friends in childhood and remain so throughout their lives as Iran goes through political turmoil. A powerful story. A book club selection. 4.5 stars. (Review pending.)
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans -- a story told through letters, emails, and notes. We get to know a woman, Sybil, through the letters she writes and receives. Another book club selection. 4.25 stars.
• Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach -- The funniest science writer alive. I've read several of Roach's books and always enjoy them. This book however was a little over my head in places. An audiobook-with-Don selection. We just finished it yesterday to avoid the looming deadline at the library. 3.5 stars. Don rated it 3 stars (he doesn't do fractions). (Review pending.)
• Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid -- Two female astronauts fall in love but it is the early 1980s and they cannot be open about their relationship. I really liked the space information. I gained some new thoughts. Audio. 4.5 stars. (Review pending.)

Currently reading:

• Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy -- A family on a remote island, caretakers of the planet's seed bank. A strange woman who washes ashore. A storm on the horizon.

Up Next:

• Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
• Detransition, Baby by Terrey Peters
• Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

I'm not sure the first half of the last line of our national anthem rings true today:

"O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave". 

Everyone is not free in America anymore, but that means we all need to embrace the second half and be BRAVE for what is ahead.

This week let's all find ways to show our "neighborism!" I love you all, dear readers, and wish you a peaceful week.

-Anne

Review: THE CORRESPONDENT (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Book Beginning/First Line Quote:

Felix, my dear brother,

Thank you for the birthday card, the fountain pen, and the book, which I started the day it arrived (Thursday) and finished today.

Friday56 quote:

Dear Sir or Madam:

SHAME ON YOU. I am writing in regards to the article printed on page 2 of the Life section this morning, June 10, 2013, regarding the death of a young girl in Timonium.

Summary: 

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness. (Publisher)

Review: The Correspondent is one of those books I meant to read in 2025 because everyone was raving about it here on the blogosphere. I got in line for it at the library and was over 1000 places back. When we selected it for book club, I worried I would have to purchase it to read it on time -- and I really don't like buying books I can check out from the library. So when I finally got my turn, I was ready to relish the book. I was prepared for the style -- epistolary -- with the whole story being told through letters, emails, and notes. What I wasn't prepared for was a very crabby, inflexible main character -- Sybil, the writer of the letters. You get a taste of this crabbiness in the quote for Friday56 above. I always struggle with books where I don't like the main characters, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I struggled with this book. To be fair, Sybil does make progress and actually makes amends for her wrong-doings late in the book. So we know a good person was inside, it was just hard to see that for most of the story.

Crabby old woman aside, I did like the epistolary style, finding it very easy to read. It made the reader responsible for filling in the blanks, since often letters aren't answered or not in a timely manner. If Sybil didn't write about an event she mentioned in one letter to someone, we had no idea what happened. For example, she traveled to Texas to visit a possible love interest. But Sybil wrote no letters about her experiences there. It wasn't until many letters later that a few details of the trip dribbled out.

Based on this review, it will surprise you that I rated the book with 4 stars. Sybil made growth, the writing style was fun and easy to read. Plus I cried at the end because at the heart of the story is a dead child, deep grief, and crippling guilt. Did you read it? What did you think?

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Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Bookish-related events of 2025

Top Ten Tuesday: My favorite bookish-related events of 2025

In no particular order:

1. Discussing All My Knotted-Up Life: a Memoir by Beth Moore with my sister-in-law, Becky. She and I do not share the same taste in books so it was fun to find one we were both passionate about.

2. Going to new bookstores in my own town. We've lived in a book desert for around ten years, ever since Borders Books closed in the mid 2010s. This year my community got three bookstores in one year. Feast or famine.

3. While attending my 50-year high school reunion, I overheard one classmate asking another classmate if she'd read my blog and then she called me the Book Lady. Ha! I didn't even know the first gal was a reader of my blog.

4. While on a whole-family vacation it was such a treat to hear my daughter read bedtime stories to our grandchildren. Books are important in their home, too.

5. Visiting the "library" at the retirement home where my Mom now lives. She is so proud of their little library which is well stocked and well kept. One point, however, they shelf all the books by author instead of segregating fiction from nonfiction. They are all jumbled together. Picky-picky.

6. Starting "Audiobooks with Don" this year. My husband willingly listens to audiobooks with me when we take road trips. This year I made it official and included his thoughts and opinions in my reviews. It has been a fun exercise for both of us. Today I completed a new "Audiobook with Don" review of Mother Mary Comes to Me. Please visit the link so you can see how we do as co-reviewers.

7. My SOTH book club has been meeting since 1995 and we are still going strong thirty years later. We get a kit of books/discussion guide from the library so no one has to spend money on books. This year the library changed the rules on placing holds on the kits and it was topsy-turvy for a while until we settled into a new routine. The favorite book we read this past year was The Book of Lost Names. It is a WWII story told in France about how forgers help get Jewish children smuggled out of the country to safety and how they kept track of who was who by codes hidden within books. 

8. At a end-of-the-year meeting I was given a gift for serving as a leader at our church for six years and was now going off the board. The pastor gave me a gift of book and book counter as a gift. I didn't need anything. It was an honor to serve, but I thought the gift very thoughtful. See photo above.

9. The annual reading of How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss is always an event. It also reminds me of my Dad, now gone, who always read it with relish, using for silly voices.

10. My second book club is made up of teachers and retired teachers. We all worked together at RHS at one time. We meet once a month and always have a such a good time catching up on our lives and the lives of our old colleagues. Sometimes the news we share is sad, like the death of beloved teacher or administrator. This group's favorite book of the year was James by Percival Everett. We had the most hilarious discussion over the book Names by Florence Knapp. It has three storylines running concurrently and we kept getting mixed up on the details. It became ridiculous.

-Anne

Nonfiction review: MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

Scribner, September 2025.

Arundhati Roy's memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, tackles her writing career, India's turbulent politics, and a reckoning with her larger-than-life mother, Mary Roy. It covers the author's rocky childhood, her break from her mother and life as an architecture student, the stardom that followed the publishing of her first book, The God of Small Things, and finally how she settled into her role as a reporter and activist for social justice causes all around her beloved India and how she reunited with her mother.

I became a Roy fan back in 1997 after I read The God of Small Things. The story, about two young twins and the caste system in India, captured my imagination. The book won the Booker Prize that year and catapulted Roy into instant fame. Everyone read her book. Everyone wanted another, including me. We were all in for a long wait since she didn't publish another fiction novel for twenty years. When The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was published in 2017, I remember reading an article about what Roy had been up to in the intervening years. She'd turned her attention from fiction to all kinds of people's movements throughout her country. All of her passions are included in the book: displaced villagers, Indian occupation of Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Maoist insurgents. Her second novel was a lot. With explanations of multiple causes and two main storylines curling around each other, all set in an exotic land (to us) on the other side of the world, few women in book club had patience for this book. But I did. I loved Utmost Happiness as much or more than Small Things. I felt like I WAS in India, the writing was so descriptive. 

My husband, who listened to the Mother Mary audiobook with me, commented the book should have been not just Arundhati's memoir but her mother's, too. We figured out that was the point. Mary Roy was such a dominating figure in the author's life that their stories were all tangled up together. Mary, who started a school for girls in their village, Ayemenem, ruled the campus as the queen bee. But whenever she got frustrated by one of her students she would take that frustration out on her daughter or son, not the offending student. Arundhati could never seem to escape her mother's wrath, even when she was a model student. 

Arundhati recounts that after publishing her first book, Mary saw herself as the protagonist in the story. In one scene the twins are being shoved back and forth from one parent to the other with one parent saying, "You take them, I don't want them." Mary wondered how Arundhati remembered that from her childhood. Arundhati said she thought it was fiction and didn't remember such a thing happening to her, but it actually had. She had internalized this ambivalence her mother felt toward her from the beginning.

After the dust settled from the fame that followed winning the Booker Prize, Roy decided to see where life would take her, instead of sitting down and trying to write another novel. She found herself in all corners of India -- trying to help villagers who were doomed to lose their ancestral homes from the flooding caused by a huge dam project; marching around the jungle with Maoist insurgents; nearly getting shot in Kashmir. She spent a night in jail on a contempt of court charge because she wouldn't apologize after being cited for criticizing a judicial ruling and leading a demonstration at the supreme court. Whenever she would talk about differences between gender roles and expectations she would repeat a line said to her earlier -- "Because it is India, my dear." Roy, who narrated the audiobook, said this phrase with such an affected, snobby accent, Don and I found ourselves laughing and repeating the phrase every time we'd hear it.

In December of each year I attempt to uncover the best 50 books published that year by doing a "Best Books Roundup." This past year, 2025, Mother Mary Comes to Me was at the top of my list. (See list here.) This surprised me because it is nonfiction and delighted me because I've loved Roy's novels so much. I immediately added the book to my TBR. When the audiobook came available from the library I invited my husband to join me in listening to it. Now he is a fan of the author, also. Listening to Roy narrate her own life's story was such a treat. The story is so wrapped up in the setting it was appropriate to have the story read by an Indian and why not the author? Now Don wants to read her fiction, once again using the audiobook format. If you haven't read any books by Arundhati Roy, I recommend you start here with this memoir. Her novels are very complex and knowing their back story will likely help you understand aspects of each novel's complexity.

Both Don and I rated the book with 5 stars.

-Anne

Sunday Salon --- Minnesota!

Standing up against tyranny in Minneapolis. Photo: Reuters.

Weather: Cold and clear. Look at a weather map of the US. We are in the part with regular cold weather, but not the extreme cold and snow. Right now it is sunny but it won't get above the 30s today.

Minnesota: My heart is with those in Minnesota who are fighting for humanity. Here I sit comfortably in my warm house and can look outside on a calm environment. Minnesotans, particularly Minneapolitans,  are out in the bitterly cold weather right now fighting for our whole country against the authoritarian activities of the ICE agents. Some have put their lives on the line, with another person being murdered just yesterday. (CNN) As I pondered how I could help, the thought occurred to me maybe I could do something through my Presbyterian denomination. I found an article "A Church at the Center of the Crisis Speaks." The church is Westminster Presbyterian in Minneapolis. They made a statement of faith which really moves me. (Read it all on the above link,) Here are a few highlights:

• Those who are, and have been, exercising their right to support, observe, protest, and peacefully assemble are also being subjected to harm by government actions. We believe these actions are motivated and informed by white Christian nationalism in our country and its influence on our federal government’s elected officials. We believe white Christian nationalism furthers the sins of systemic racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism in the United States, and carries assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism. It threatens the very core of our democracy. It is counter to God’s hope for the world and how God seeks for us to make our life together.
• Jesus teaches us through Scripture to love our neighbors as ourselves, with no exceptions. We commit ourselves to the way of Christ—nonviolent and courageous love, especially toward those most at risk. We proclaim a God who values the full humanity and inherent dignity of all people.

Today I commit: to take action within my congregation to send support to our brothers and sisters in Minneapolis and to work with those who have a larger megaphone than I do to spread the word, to try and activate other congregations to join us. If no one is moved, I will lend my support alone. 

Now I urge you: to find out what your church, synagogue, temple, mosque, or other community centers are doing to end the trouble with ICE and how you can send financial or physical support. Figure it out and publish your actions on your blog. It is time for us behind the scenes book-bloggers to get activated! We can't sit this one out. 

A declarative statement: I am a Christian. I believe that God loves me and you, and you, and you. He calls me to love my neighbors as myself. No one falls outside God's love, so if something happens to my Hispanic, Black, Native American, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ, or immigrant neighbor, it happens to me. If I can do something to help, I will! 

I’m done trusting in what’s sinking
These boats weren’t built for me
I’m done drifting on the water of insecurity
In the noise and the distractions
In the storms of arguing
I hear Your voice callin’
And I’m gonna fix my eyes on Jesus
Walking with the One who walks on the sea.

Lyrics: "Wherever You Lead."

Laugh or Cry? Cry/Cringe while laughing?

It sure seems like this is who they are hiring for ICE.

This is not funny. It is frightening.

Amen!

Sometimes the only news I can stand is from the comedy channels. This SNL segment of Weekend Update features Tony Brennan on Trump's ICE Deployments in Minnesota.

For those of you who know the Hamilton musical. King George singing "You'll Be Back". First verse: "I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love."  And the the second verse: "I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love."

I will update what I am reading tomorrow and will post on: It's Monday. What Are You Reading.

Stand up. Speak up. Do what you can!

-Anne

Review: SO FAR GONE

Title: So Far Gone by Jess Walter

Book Beginning/ First Line Friday quote:

A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick's front porch. Next to her, a cowlicked boy shifted his weight from one snow boot to the other snow boot. Both kids wore backpacks. On the stairs below them, a woman held an umbrella against the pattering rain.

Friday56 quote: 

Technology, as he saw it, had finally succeeded in shrinking the globe, so much so that every news story felt dangerous and personal, every war a threat to his family, every hurricane, firestorm, melting ice cap a local disaster, the seas boiling up around them, every cynical politician and legal maneuver part of the same rotten fabric -- and half the country somehow seeing it exactly the opposite way.

Summary: Seven years after a fight with his son-in-law, which caused Rhys Kinnick to move to a cabin in the woods off the grid, his grandchildren show up on his doorstep. Rhys barely recognizes them. Their mother has disappeared, and they need a safer place to stay than with their father, who has taken up with a Christian Nationalist militia. Rhys’s cabin has no electricity or indoor plumbing is not exactly the type of place to raise children, but he is determined to try. He'll do whatever he needs to for these sweet kids.

But when the militia members, from the group the father is mixed up with, show up and kidnap the children, Rhys realizes he'll have to re-enter the world (and get a cell phone.) With the help of a bipolar retired detective and his caustic ex-girlfriend, Rhys reluctantly heads off on a madcap journey through the rubble of the life he left behind to rescue the kids and locate his daughter, their mother.

Review: My first book of 2026, Worth Fighting For, was a serious collection of essays about how Christian Naturalists are warping Christianity and what concerned folks, like me, can do about it. As I read through the essays I got more and more weighted down by the increasing realization of how bad things are in our country. By book's end I wanted to go to bed and pull a blanket over my head. Something which was meant to be helpful made me more discouraged than ever. 

Next I picked up a fiction book by a favorite author, Jess Walter, called So Far Gone. Within a few pages I realized that Christian Nationalists also populated the pages of this book but every time the topic was mentioned I found myself laughing. Jess Walter has a way of making his readers laugh, rather than cry, at the absurdities of our current situations. 

So Far Gone is set mainly in Eastern Washington around the city of Spokane, where Walter lives. The Christian Nationalist's compound is set in the panhandle of Northern Idaho, right across the stateline. Nearby in the NE part of the state is the Spokane Indian Reservation, where another part of the story takes place. One of the reasons I enjoy reading Jess Walter books is because he always sets them in my state, often mentioning places I've visited. 

The main character, Rhys Kinnick, was a journalist writing for the Spokane newspaper focusing on environmental issues. As the newspaper downsized, Kinnick lost his job and his identity. Instead of sticking around and trying his hand at something else, he retires to a cabin in the woods built his grandfather and does little to improve it and he completely unhooks himself from technology which he views with skepticism (see quote from Friday56). Living in such isolation seemed good at first, perhaps Rhys would finally find time to write the book he has been researching for years. But the isolation grows to the point Rhys is almost a hermit, even losing touch with his only daughter and grandchildren, until that fateful day when they show up on his porch steps. Walter knows what he is writing about since he began his writing career as a journalist, writing for the Spokane-Review newspaper. In an interview about this book, Walter said being a journalist "made me more outward-looking than I would have been otherwise. Journalism allowed me to look at systems and institutions, and to now take fictional characters and put them into worlds that I covered as a reporter. So, for me, I think it really opened my eyes to what my fiction should be about."  As a reporter he covered the Ruby Ridge Standoff, also in Idaho, in 1992.  He certainly brought a journalist's eyes and skills as he crafted this story.

So Far Gone is full of dark humor which propelled the story through its darker parts. Since I've read several of Walters other books --Citizen Vince, Cold Millions, Beautiful Ruins, The Financial Lives of Poets -- I knew this about his books. I also knew that nothing terrible, terrible would likely happen. Good. What a relief. Humor without horror. There is enough "terrible, terrible" in the world right now without having to confront it on the pages of books, too. Don listened to the audiobook with me. It was narrated by Wil Patton, another favorite. Don was completely invested in the story. I think he laughed harder than I did and he clearly admired Walter's writing style. Both of us remarked how refreshing it is to read a book set in our state. (Apparently, this is theme in our family! Ha) We talked a lot about the way fiction can often have a bigger impact on readers than nonfiction, perhaps because the packaging makes the bad news more palatable -- as So Far Gone did for me compared the book of essays on a similar topic.

Here is one of the funniest quotes I remember from the book. Don and I both thought it was so funny, we had to rewind the audiobook to hear a few more times before we were ready to move on and then we kept repeating it to each other for the rest of the day:

“As a journalist, as an American, as a rationalist, Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then, in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency, Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he’d thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family.”

So Far Gone has it all -- great writing; vivid settings; a mystery (where is the daughter?); quirky characters; timely satire about socio-political, religious, environmental, and technological issues; dark humor, and a unique plot. Don and I both recommend this book to you. 

We both rated the book -- 5 stars.

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