July Reviews

July has been busy. Last week I was in a town a couple hours north of here officiating the junior provincial tennis tournament for 18- and 16-year-olds, which meant long days outside on the courts. Some days were freezing, and other days were frying. Ha, it’s one of my retirement jobs and I’m enjoying it so far. The kids are good and competitive and I just need to make sure the matches are played by the rules and fairly … that all line balls are called good etc. I survived a week’s worth and now I’m glad to be home again. 

We’ve been back just a few weeks from Montana, so I thought I’d include a couple more photos (at top, and left) from the trip. It’s still on my mind how great Montana is, so if you get a chance, check it out. 

I hope everyone is enjoying their summers so far, amid all the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and heat waves: take care out there. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee / Crown Publishing / 2017 / 300 pages 

Admittedly I’m an animal person, whether wild or domesticated, large or small, I’m an admirer, but you don’t have to be to get hooked by this nonfiction book. Wow I had no idea it was this good— I just picked it up to read while at my brother’s house in Montana recently and I’m so glad I did. 

It tells the story of the U.S. government’s reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and the decades that followed for the species in and around the park. It does so in a way that grippingly zeroes in on the lives of one such wolf pack in the park’s Lamar Valley led by a dynamic alpha female known as O-Six, for the year she was born. Holy smokes, she’s something to behold: a mother, fighter, protector, hunter, and glue who holds her pack together. From early on she becomes beloved by a group of avid wolf watchers that includes park ranger Rick McIntyre, who meticulously note the pack’s lives on a daily basis. It’s thanks to them that her story unfolds. 

And it’s not an easy one. O-Six and her pack must fend off other wolf packs that will kill to get their territory, and must contend with cattle ranchers and hunters if they cross the park’s boundaries who also want them dead. It’s a gripping narrative that as it goes on ropes you more into the intricacies of O-Six’s pack dynamics and the wolves’ lives while at the same time revealing such interesting information about the animals that you never knew before. In a wolf pack, for instance, there’s just one alpha male and alpha female pair and usually they’re the only ones who mate within the group; they breed once a year; and are said to mate for life unless their partner is killed. Both female and males take care and hunt for their young and they depend on the pack for survival. 

The book also delves into the politics surrounding the Endangered Species Act and the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho that have delisted and re-listed the species from time to time and have allowed annual hunts for the wolf. The protected Yellowstone packs haven’t been immune, many — even the ones wearing tracking collars — have been killed upon crossing the park’s boundaries. The narrative, though appreciative of the wolf, includes the anti-wolf side as well not shying from hunters and the killing that goes on. For any wolf fan, the story will infuriate you and break your heart on numerous occasions. I’m not a typical crier, but this one moved me to tears. 

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim / Sarah Crichton Books / 2019 / 355 pages

Synopsis: It’s a novel about a group who’ve been seeking help at a special treatment center — an oxygen chamber operated by a Korean family — for afflictions ranging from autism and other developmental disorders to infertility. But when an explosion at the chamber occurs and two are killed, a court case a year later ensues  to get to the bottom of who was responsible. 

My Thoughts: I know everybody loved this immigrant family and courtroom drama but for whatever reason the story wasn’t a huge hit with me like I thought it would be. To me, the crime or accident was horrific, and the cast of characters was unlikable in their flawed ways … the swirl of lies was nonstop, and it went round and round with everyone having a motive to possibly causing what happened to happen or playing their part in it. Usually I like having lots of suspects but not particularly this time.

It’s good the story highlighted the care of special needs children who were taken by their parents to sit in the chamber multiple times a day for months on end — though it was mostly about the lengths mothers will go to treat their kids and how they are driven crazy by the health needs and their kids’ disorders. I kept thinking about the kids sitting in the submarine chamber and autistic Henry in particular and it disturbed me what happened, along with various other things with the characters as well, such as between the infertile patient Matt and the Korean owners’ daughter Mary, and the relationship of the Korean owners. I might have felt for their situations, but I did not exactly like these individuals and spending much time in their wakes.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak / Little Brown/ 2017 / 320 pages

This novel is about two recent college grads, Evan is from a small town in Canada and Julia from an affluent family in Boston. They meet at Yale, Evan plays on the hockey team and they become a couple. Afterwards they move in together in NYC and find jobs — Evan at a hedge fund and Julia an assistant at a foundation. They try to make a go of their young lives together but they become more separated as time goes on. 

The financial meltdown of 2008-2009 in NYC plays prominently in the book as a backdrop, as huge layoffs are happening and Evan’s boss makes a shady deal with the Chinese. Both Evan and Julia, who narrate the story in alternating chapters, are pretty selfish and unlikable characters yet I still found the story an interesting look into young adulthood and the mistakes that are made in one’s early 20s. 

You can sort of see where the story will lead before it gets there but it’s a train wreck that you keep watching. What happens between Evan and Julia seems real and affecting, but the later transformation of the characters in the year or so that follows, I wasn’t totally sold on. Still I thought the debut author did a nice job with all the young, privileged angst in the story and the feelings that were prevalent during the financial meltdown of 2008/09.

I hope to read the author’s new novel “Necessary People” sometime so I thought I’d start with this one, which I listened to as an audiobook. 

The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle / Bantam / 2012 / 290 pages

Next up is a memoir my husband and I listened to as an audiobook while on our road trip to Montana. We were headed on a week’s bike ride, so I thought it’d be sort of inspiring to hear what’s cycling is like on the pro tour … going up long mountain passes and over hill and dale racing, but it’s a lot — more than I realized it’d be — about the doping shenanigans that went on in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Still it’s quite a potent story. Even this many years later, after the whole doping scandal of Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Postal team has been revealed, the memoir opened my eyes to elements I hadn’t known before. Just the scope of doping within professional cycling seemed universal at the time, it wasn’t just one team doing it, it was rampant among all the top cycling teams. This memoir was actually published a year before Lance’s 2013 confession so the lowdown of all that was going on behind the scenes is explosive stuff. The author was a teammate of Lance’s for three years when Lance won the Tour in 1999, 2000, and 2001.  

Whoa. Tyler tells the story from the beginning of his cycling life in the 1990s and gives an insider’s view of his career and wanting to compete at the Tour de France. It all started out so innocently just being an athlete and cyclist — but then he got roped in like so many others — basically given the ultimatum: you either dope or go home. 

The story unfolds chronologically of Tyler’s years at the Tour de France and the teams he doped with, revealing the secrecy and lengths of hiding the doping, the types of drugs — EPO and blood transfusions — the shadowy doctors, and the team players. It was quite an operation and is unreal they were able to beat the drug tests for so long and so often — before testing was adequate enough to detect most of it. It’s still not 100 percent; there could be various dopers today trying to beat the odds of being caught. 

In Tyler’s memoir, Lance Armstrong comes off as quite the nutcase with no longterm loyalty to friends and with a vengeance toward anyone who’d stand in his way or taint his reputation. It’s disconcerting and illuminating. Tyler also seems to hold himself accountable; he could’ve stopped or told the truth or blown the whistle so many times years earlier but he covered the doping up just like so many others in pro cycling. There was an unspoken oath of secrecy among all the cyclists to keep quiet. It was only when Tyler was subpoenaed in 2010 did he finally tell the truth, which led to him writing this book. So while the general knowledge of doping has been known now for several years, I found parts of this memoir still quite riveting and revealing about the whole operation from racing to behind the scenes. It’s a train wreck that’s quite hard to fathom. 

What about you — have you read any of these, or have any thoughts on them?