Bryan Stevenson's book JUST MERCY is absolutely a book well

worth reading. Bryan reveals behind-the-scenes insights into the justice system and the truth that it does not always work. I know that is a truth we cannot deny, but it is still a bit of a shock to the system to read about how bad it really is. 

What concerns me about JUST MERCY is the fact that there are so many people who already distrust the justice system, especially in regards to policemen and women. While I know that injustice is a reality, it takes a lot away from when it does work as well as from amazing police work that is done every single day.

Of course, I am a person who likes to focus on the positive, so reading JUST MERCY was difficult for me because it has many stories of injustice that are heart-wrenching. I WANT to read happily-ever-after stories and believe that when push comes to shove, all stories end with the "hero[es]" riding off into the sunset. Reading about the reality is difficult for someone like me, but necessary.

Please don't let the fact that I only gave JUST MERCY 3 stars keep you from reading this book or make you think that I did not like it. It most certainly is well worth reading. I just want to try to hang on to my belief in the innate goodness of humanity for as long as possible.

**My second reading: JUST MERCY is better the second time through. As much as I wish we had chosen WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE by Angela Pisel for our Interdisciplinary Read at CVCC, I am glad that we have chosen JUST MERCY for the 2017-2018 school year. This book will be a wonderful asset to our program and to our school as a whole. The good news is that I'll be able to use WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE as a discussion point because it is also about injustice--someone being wrongly accused and condemned to die. :) 

I also plan on using BILLY BUDD by Herman Melville in my American Lit for comparison points. Melville is really for modern American Lit, but at least it's American Lit! 

And I also hope to set up a discussion--round table--where we watch movies like LAW ABIDING CITIZEN and maybe other stories of social injustice and discuss them with a panel of community leaders and maybe even a few folks who have been involved in the prison system. I haven't mentioned this yet to the Interdisciplinary Read Committee [chairperson], but we had thrown around such ideas previously.

Personally, I want to do more research on Marsha Colbey. As a woman who has suffered a stillbirth and 2 miscarriages, the THOUGHT of being arrested and then condemned to die because someone thought I had.....I can't even type the words. Wow. It really makes me appreciate the support team I have always had, including doctors, family, friends, and just my community as a whole. I want to talk to Marsha personally and to hug her tight and tell her that she is a hero of mine. It was difficult enough grieving under "normal" circumstances; I can't even begin to imagine grieving under circumstances where people believed that I had......ON PURPOSE.

May Mercy be just and fair.


Bryan Stevenson has renewed in me a strong desire to be a stonecatcher--to help others grieving the loss of a child (children) in whatever way possible. That is MY purpose. It is what I am to do. I will let them lean on me--even if only for a moment.

Justice for the Mom

SMALL GREAT THINGS by Jodi Picoult is another book with which I have a love-hate relationship. I don't even know where to begin with what I want to say about this new book. I realize that this is a book that has racism/inequality--well, inequity--as its main focus/purpose/point/plot. It is what Jodi has been talking about in her interviews and statements about SMALL GREAT THINGS. It is in everything I'm reading about the book. It is the focus of just about single review I have read so far of the book.

But for me, SMALL GREAT THINGS is not a story about race. For me, this is a story about child loss--the devastation of child loss for ALL involved: the mom, the dad, the nurse(s), other health care staff, grandparents, and on and on the list goes. Losing Davis is certainly incredibly difficult for Brit and Turk, the parents. 

Brit is so incredibly devastated, she never recovers from the horror of the loss of her Precious. 

Turk deals with the loss the only way he knows how: with hate. 

Ruth is the consummate professional, attempting to over-ride her hurt at being mistreated in order to do what is best for the innocent in her care; when that falls apart, she grieves his loss as only one who fights for the life of another is able to grieve. 

The rest of the hospital staff is able to get on with their lives and put the death of Davis in whatever place health professionals do when a patient doesn't make it. They do their jobs. 

No one deals with the loss of this tiny, 3-day old baby in a so-called "typical" manner.

As someone who has experienced child loss myself (3 times), "typical" grieving is an oxymoron. There truly is NO "typical" grieving when it comes to the death of a baby--for anyone involved. What makes the grief that much more difficult to deal with is are the words--the insensitive words spoken in a vain attempt to comfort the bereaved.

Brit experienced such, but not one person cared enough to focus on her and what she may have needed. Not even her husband who supposedly so desperately wanted to help her through her time of grief. SMALL GREAT THINGS makes me angrier than I can possibly say for the sake of Brit--the Mommy who went into the hospital with a baby in her womb only to come out of the hospital with empty arms--the WORST, most WRONG thing that can ever happen to ANY parent. 

Yes, Brit is a White Supremacist who demands that black Ruth be taken off the care of her son, but like Ruth's color, that is NO reason to make Brit suffer even more than she already was. Casting blame didn't do Brit any good. It only fueled her hatred and intensified her grief.

Ruth loses her job and is dragged through the gutter all because those involved want SOMEONE to blame--to pay for--something that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I'm here to tell you that the blame game only causes more problems and continues the hurt and devastation. I blamed my husband for our loss for a very long time. It almost ruined our marriage. It almost led me to do something similar to what Brit does. It fueled my rage and gave me something to hang on to since I didn't have my baby to hold in my arms. But in the long run, all I got out of it was a lot of physical and mental health issues--that I will probably have to deal with the rest of my life.

The grief will ALWAYS be there, but forgiveness is freedom. Blaming wraps the blamer tight in shackles and imprisons him/her worse than grief ever will.

My compassion goes out to Ruth, of course it does. I want Ruth vindicated with every fiber of my being.

But my real heart goes to Brit, the mom who is ignored and misunderstood as well as mistreated. 

SMALL GREAT THINGS by Jodi Picoult is another story that demonstrates the truth that we, as a society, have NO IDEA what to do with mothers who are not mothers with physical, live children in her arms. We treat these mothers even worse than we treat women like Ruth. Do you realize that there isn't even a name for parents (men or women) who suffer the excrutiating loss of a baby/child???

So Jodi, in spite of the fact that I am fan of yours, have been a fan, and always will be a fan, I want "justice" for Brit more than for Ruth in SMALL GREAT THINGS.

Loving from the Outside

WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE by my new favoritist author, Angela Pisel--and my new best friend--is better than a 5-star book. Wow. I haven't cried this hard over a work of fiction since Snape died!! This may be Angela's first published novel, but it clearly demonstrates her amazing writing ability--her awesome storytelling skills. Wow.

I had the wonderful joy of meeting Anglea at Barnes & Nobel in Hickory, NC the evening of the release of WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE, Tuesday, August 9. My counselor had told me about the release of Angela's book and suggested that I might like to meet Angela, especially since she's from Hickory and is a writer--and I am, too. (I just don't have anything published beyond my blogs.) So I ordered her book from Amazon, put the date on my calendar, and waited anxiously to meet a local author.

I was so excited about meeting Angela, I was there--with my friend--at 4:30 even though she wasn't scheduled to be there until 7:00! I even got a front row seat!!! Angela shared some facts and statistics and other interesting information about her book and then she read a few passages--both of which were really intriguing. The irony is that when I read the 2nd passage myself just a day later, even though Angela had read it the night before at her reading, I bawled like a baby--as if I'd never heard that section!

And I didn't stop crying throughout the whole book. In fact, I kinda-sorta cried the first 3/4 of the book, but from about page 250 on, I cried non-stop. By the end of the book, I was sobbing so hard, I couldn't see the words on the page through my tears. I had to stop and allow myself a good five-minute crying-fest where I went through about 10 Kleenex.

Don't let the tears keep you from reading WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE. The tears were because this is an AMAZING story. Part of the reason why we love stories such as HARRY POTTER as much as we do is because of the tears we shed over beloved characters; it's the same with Angela's book. I CARED about the characters in this book. They became REAL to me. I want, so desperately, to hold both Sophie and Grace--and Thomas and Max and Roni and others--in my arms and let them know how powerfully their story has affected me.

I can't help thinking about Roni just a little more than other fairly minor/background characters. I want to know Roni's whole story. I may have to explore some more about this amazing woman on death row--even though she's a work of fiction. Angela did say that many of her characters in this book are based on real people, so I'd love to hear more about the real woman Roni is based on, as well as more about Roni herself.

I hope and pray that WITH LOVE FROM THE INSIDE by Angela Pisel becomes a top ten best-selling novel and that it stays in the top ten until hundreds of thousands of millions of people read it. I also hope that Angela Pisel will allow me to be one of her groupies and to "stalk" her--but in a good way....if she can agree with me that there is a "good" way to stalk someone!!!!  ;)

My heart....

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M. L. Stedman is not a book for light-weight readers. It is important to know going into this book that it is deep and incredibly heart-wrenching. It deals with loss--extreme loss--and not only the feelings that come from experiencing such incredible loss, but the actions such losses lead to that never would have occurred without the deep pain and soul-wrenching sorrow experienced.

I saw that THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS is being made into a movie--or has already been made into a movie. It apparently will be released on September 2 this year. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnBMGa6z-Bg> I bought the book online; it was here two days later. I read it in 3 days. I would have finished it on the 2nd day, but we had a birthday party to go to.

I don't know how Stedman got the idea for this book, the research required, or anything beyond the fact that she was born and raised in Australia (the setting for the novel), she now lives in London, and that THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS is her first book. I normally try to find out as much as I can about the authors of the books I read, but Stedman remains a mystery that I would love to solve. I will continue to research her until I know more. 

I want to know how much loss she herself has experienced. I want to know what research she had to do to write this novel. I want to know how she got the idea for this story. I want to know her writing process--her writing journey. I want to know how hard she had to think to come up with her amazing poetic language throughout the novel--language that speaks volumes that mere words can't convey. 

This is a beautifully written book, but very difficult to read--as one who has experienced child loss similar to that of Isabel. My heart was wrenched out of my chest with the turning of each page, but I was powerless to stop reading. If you choose to read it, go in with your eyes wide open, knowing that the story is gut-wrenching.

*As kind of a side-note, I couldn't help thinking of THE MEMORY-KEEPERS DAUGHTER as I read THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS. Both dads make decisions that impact not only the futures of their families, but the futures of others. Both dads are tortured for many years by that one moment of decision. Both stories in as happy an ending as is possible with such stories--with a reminder that no matter how difficult life gets--no matter what life throws at us--life does go on and we can only choose what we're going to do with our lives each moment. One major difference between the books that makes THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS definitely the better book of the two is that in THE MEMORY-KEEPERS DAUGHTER, the author always told me what to think and explained certain parts of the story as if I was unable to read between the lines. For example, one scene I remember specifically is when the dad goes to a bridge and stands on the edge with his toes sticking out over the edge in the pouring rain. It's a powerful scene, of course, demonstrating the difficulty of the dad as he struggles with the decision he made all those years ago. What ruins the scene, though, is that the author then takes two pages to explain to the reader how the dad was on the bridge because he was considering suicide and, just in case we had trouble figuring out why, she reminds us of the dad's horrific decision all those years ago. As a reader, I love minimalism. I love being allowed to figure out what's going on inside a character from inference rather than being blatantly told by the author, "Hey, idiot reader! Just in case you didn't understand, here's what you were supposed to GET from that scene you just read!" 

Jodi Picoult seemingly can do no Wrong

Jodi Picoult has the power, like no one else, to convince me that what I am reading at the time I reading HER book is THE GREATEST book I have ever read in my life as well as the most realistic story I have ever read.  Wow.  I had a difficult time getting started with LEAVING TIME.  Not because of the story, but because I was very busy with the end of the semester.  Once I had a few minutes to sit down and actually read the book, though, I found it next to impossible to put down.  Wow.  As I was nearing the end, I felt that I should have seen THAT ending coming, but wonderfully, I did not.  I love it when I get to the surprise without having figured it out.  I can still enjoy a book when I have figured out the surprise before getting there, but for me, it is simply more fun being able to read the surprise and experiencing it in its full force and effect.  Wow.  Great job, Jodi.  

I have always loved elephants, but LEAVING TIME has given me a much greater appreciation for them.  Wonderful.  

LEAVING TIME is a wonderful reminder of the fact that we have to be careful to pre-judge someone or simply to pass judgment on people before we know the whole truth.  There are certain characters in this book who I found myself drawn to and others I wanted to disappear simply because I didn't agree with them, didn't like their philosophy, or more importantly, I didn't like or agree with something they were doing.  But by the end of the book, I found myself changing my way of thinking about each of those characters!!!  

Picoult's books never fail to keep me riveted.  The best part is that with LEAVING TIME, we also get the back story of her novellas that she published online prior to the release of the book!  Awesome.  I can't say enough good things about LEAVING TIME by Jodi Picoult.

How long before Immortality would bore you?

One question I wanted to go around the room and ask regarding Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's The Mortal Immortal that I ran out of time for is:  How long do you think it would take for you before you'd get sick and tired of being immortal?  A sub-question to that one:  WHAT would it take for Immortality to lose its appeal?  (Assuming, of course, that immortality is appealing and desirable.....)  Whether you read my post for this or not, I hope you'll answer this question yourself!!!!

(*I think the title is supposed to be in quotation marks rather than italicized....yikes!  That one's mine!)

For me, it would honestly be the same answer whether I'm immortal or not:  I wouldn't want to go on living if anything were to happen to my son, Samuel.  This isn't easy to write about, but I'm going to go ahead and say it--just so you know, this is going to get really personal, so if you don't want to read something really personal about your instructor, stop reading here. 

Anyway, I have, in my lifetime, dealt with death enough to last several lifetimes for one person.  Most significantly have been my child losses.  I had a stillbirth in March 1999.  (I was two weeks away from my due date, so I was full term.)  Later that same year, in November, I had a miscarriage.  Samuel was finally born in May 2001 after a long, difficult, scary pregnancy.  Then, in 2005, in November--yes, again, I had another miscarriage (that one actually started while I was here at CVCC--I was taken away via ambulance).  So, for me, Samuel is the light of my life.  Sure, my husband and other family members are very important to me.  I love them all very much.  But Samuel is IT.  I live for him.  My life does revolve around him.

Maybe it's wrong of me to put so much time and effort into my son, but after what I've been through, I simply can't help it.  I have always been a person who wanted children.  Yes, children.  Even though I went to college to get a DEGREE in teaching English rather than for my "Mrs." degree, I still knew that I would one day get married and have children.  Being a working woman was not going to keep me from being a mother.  I was living in the 20th Century, for heaven's sake.  Women all around me were having their cake and eating it, too (getting married and having families as well as jobs outside the home).  There was no reason whatsoever that I couldn't have the same.

(So why haven't I tried again since 2005?  Several reasons:  one, my husband is sick and tired of watching me suffer--which is ironic considering my recent health issues (I had a diverticulitus attack back in 2009--I almost died--I had two separate operations within 3 months--both to save my life, essentially) and two:  I can't because in 2010, I had something called an ablasion, which destroys the lining of the uterus, so I can't get pregnant--at all.)

Therefore, I'd be happy to have immortality as long as it means that I can be alive to see my son grow up, go to college, get married, have a family of his own, have a job he loves, and LIVE.  Otherwise, that's it.  My "bucket list" is void next to that.  Sure I'd love to write something that would actually get published and be successful as a writer.  That WOULD BE awesome--a dream come true.  But even that is insignificant next to being around for my son. 

I GET the whole idea that we talked about in class about the desire to end life, even an immortal one, because of loneliness.  There truly is nothing worse in this world than being alone.  My true worst fear in life is to die alone.  The saddest stories I've ever heard are the one about people who die and it's weeks before anyone even knows they've died.  Friends, family, and even acquaintances are more important in our lives than most people realize or even understand.  It's only when we are left standing alone, especially at times in our lives when we NEED our loved ones, that we truly realize how very important they really are.

The easy answer to the question of what would ruin immortality for me would be when I finally have read all the books I've ever wanted to read--several times.  Or when I've seen all the movies I'd ever want to see.  Sad that I couldn't write about those things instead, I know.....

I LOVE stories about immortality and Mary Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal" certainly fits into that category!!!!!! 

(Just for fun, if I can find it, I'm going to post a link to a clip from the movie Highlander with Christopher Lambert (one of my hotties) where the title line is "There can be only one!" and the way for the immortals in this story to die is via beheading.  It's actually the music video by Queen for the movie, but it's still worth watching!  Yeah, I know Queen!!!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYOE_b4aYD0)

Bibliography

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft.  "The Mortal Immortal."  The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  Eds.  Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch.  8th ed.  New York:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.  961-970.  Print.