On hearing that his wife is pregnant with their sixth child, a father in a black rural family in Mississippi announces he will give the child to his sister as he cannot feed more mouths. This is bad news for the mother because the sister is an abusive and dishonest woman. It is also bad news for the girl in the mother's womb who narrates the story.
From the acclaimed author of Sailing Lessons and Mystic Summer—a “charming gem of a novel” (Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author)—an evocative and moving tale about what it means to be a family, set over the course of one unforgettable Connecticut summer. Siblings Perry, Jake, and Phoebe Goodwin were raised on the shore of a beautiful Connecticut lake in a close-knit family. The eldest of the family, forty-two-year-old Perry has long craved order as surely as his charismatic younger brother, Jake, has avoided it. Phoebe, their baby sister, courts both. As adults, the Goodwin siblings could not be more different. Perry is as married to his career in New York as a risk analyst as Phoebe is to her college sweetheart, but both have returned to Connecticut to raise their young families. Charismatic Jake, however, has spent his years living away wanderlust and unable to settle. The three have not spent much time together…until this summer. On the afternoon of their grandmother’s ninety-seventh birthday party, the siblings reunite at the lake house where Jake stuns the family with a stranger on his arm and an announcement. Olivia Cossette, daughter of a French chef, does not share the traditional Goodwin New England upbringing or sense of family. What she does share is parenthood, as the single mother of a little girl who does not speak. While the Goodwin family struggle to welcome the newcomers over the course of the summer, a series of bad choices made by each family member finally unravels, leaving them all to question just what truly makes a family. Can one fateful moment on a July afternoon undo a lifetime of good intentions? Only one thing is for certain—this extraordinary summer has irrevocably changed the Goodwin family and all that remains is the uncertain future. With Hannah McKinnon’s signature “enticing and refreshing” (Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author) prose, this is a warm-hearted novel that is perfect for fans of Mary Alice Monroe’s the Beach House series and the works of Elin Hilderbrand.
Must we always later regret actions that were wrong for us to perform at the time? Can there ever be good reason to affirm things in the past that we know were unfortunate? In this original work of moral philosophy, R. Jay Wallace shows that the standpoint from which we look back on our lives is shaped by our present attachments-to persons, to the projects that imbue our lives with meaning, and to life itself. Through a distinctive "affirmation dynamic", these attachments commit us to affirming the necessary conditions of their objects. The result is that we are sometimes unable to regret events and circumstances that were originally unjustified or otherwise somehow objectionable. Wallace traces these themes through a range of examples. A teenage girl makes an ill-advised decision to conceive a child - but her love for the child once it has been born makes it impossible for her to regret that earlier decision. The painter Paul Gauguin abandons his family to pursue his true artistic calling (and eventual life project) in Tahiti--which means he cannot truly regret his abdication of familial responsibility. The View from Here offers new interpretations of these classic cases, challenging their treatment by Bernard Williams and others. Another example is the "bourgeois predicament": we are committed to affirming the regrettable social inequalities that make possible the expensive activities that give our lives meaning. Generalizing from such situations, Wallace defends the view that our attachments inevitably commit us to affirming historical conditions that we cannot regard as worthy of being affirmed--a modest form of nihilism.
Teetering confidence levels, feeling different and living as the "other" are stories we often do not hear from Black men. These remnants of inadequacy seep into their evolving identities and highlight differences as deficiencies. Standing at 7'2, NBA athlete Alexis Ajinça, shares intimate confessions and personal stories of growing up as an outcast and the impacts it has had on his mental and emotional wellness since childhood. From avoiding public appearances so people won't sneak a photo or make comments about his large stature to overcoming feelings of social anxiety and insecurity, in this book, he highlights the challenges that were birthed from living in a body that very few can relate to. Taking readers on a candid journey of self-acceptance and using self-mastery as a way to regulate his emotional responses, Ajinça details the practical tools and mindset shifts he has developed in order to build his confidence. Through his own hardships with being tall, he shares an engaging and powerful message for anyone who has ever felt broken, less than or different. He reminds readers that no matter how successful you may become, feeling good about yourself is a prerequisite to happiness and fulfillment that far outweighs any accolade or dollar amount.
Where do you want to roll today? Accessible travel writer, explorer, and photographer Sylvia Longmire asks herself this question every day as she lives her very active life from the vantage point of a power wheelchair. Despite having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2005 and being completely unable to walk, she refuses to let that slow her down. With her sense of adventure and camera in hand, she and her electric scooter have set out to see what the world has to offer while her body still lets her. In most cases, it s impossible to truly walk in someone else s shoes. But in The View from Down Here, you can finally see the world through the eyes of a wheelchair user. From the glaciers of Iceland to the ancient ruins of Greece, you'll be amazed at what a person with a physical disability can observe and experience today, despite all the obstacles that still remain. She has captured all the raw emotion of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the soothing sounds of crashing waves in Crete, and the patience of an elderly accordion player waiting for tips in Ljubljana. After absorbing Sylvia's stunning images from across the globe, you'll want to know how you can get there, too. Sylvia became a full-time power wheelchair user in 2014, and while she traveled extensively prior to her diagnosis, she only started traveling internationally with her electric scooter in 2016. Refusing to wait for someone to be available to accompany her, Sylvia usually travels the world alone. She has documented several of her wheelchair accessible destinations in vivid photographic detail in The View from Down Here, and also writes about their wheelchair accessibility in her travel blog, Spin the Globe.
A story about friendships and commitment to one another so incredible you wouldn't believe it if it wasn't true. Kevan is just one of the guys. It's impossible to know him and not become a little more excited about life. He is an inspiring man permeated by joy, unafraid of sorrow, full of vitality and life! His sense of humor is infectious and so is his story. He grew up, he says, at "belt-buckle level" and stayed there until Kevan's beloved posse decided to leave his wheelchair at the Atlanta airport, board a plane for France, and have his friends carry him around Europe to accomplish their dream to see the world together! Kevan's beloved posse traveled to Paris, England, and Ireland where, in the climax of their adventure, they scale 600 feet up to the 1,400-year-old monastic fortress of Skellig Michael. In We Carry Kevan the reader sits with Kevan, one head-level above everyone else for the first time in his life and enjoys camaraderie unlike anything most people ever experience. Along the way they encounter the curiosity and beauty of strangers, the human family disarmed by grace, and the constant love of God so rich and beautiful in the company of good friends. We Carry Kevan displays the profound power of friendship and self-sacrifice.
At 22, Frances was drifting, scraping by giving English lessons in Mexico, when she met a group of glamorous Americans staying in a mansion on a private beach. Two decades later in rural England, she discovers a love letter from a younger woman addressed to her husband at the same time she discovers she's facing a life-threatening illness. As life unravels, she searches for how to confront her husband's infidelity and finds herself haunted by the memory of a heady desert encounter with the charmed American family back in 1976 and is forced to face her own illicit secrets of betrayal.
A look at the history of the idea of the objective journalist and how this very ideal can often be used to undercut itself. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. At its core, this is a book about fierce journalists who have pursued truth and transparency and sometimes been punished for it—not just by tyrannical governments but by journalistic institutions themselves. He highlights the stories of journalists who question “objectivity” with sensitivity and passion: Desmond Cole of the Toronto Star; New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse; Pulitzer Prize-winner Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah; Peabody-winning podcaster John Biewen; Guardian correspondent Gary Younge; former Buzzfeed reporter Meredith Talusan; and many others. Wallace also shares his own experiences as a midwestern transgender journalist and activist who was fired from his job as a national reporter for public radio for speaking out against “objectivity” in coverage of Trump and white supremacy. With insightful steps through history, Wallace stresses that journalists have never been mere passive observers. Using historical and contemporary examples—from lynching in the nineteenth century to transgender issues in the twenty-first—Wallace offers a definitive critique of “objectivity” as a catchall for accurate journalism. He calls for the dismissal of this damaging mythology in order to confront the realities of institutional power, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation in the news industry. The View from Somewhere is a compelling rallying cry against journalist neutrality and for the validity of news told from distinctly subjective voices.
Named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists Anais Hendricks, fifteen, is in the back of a police car. She is headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders. She can't remember what’s happened, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and Anais is covered in blood. Raised in foster care from birth and moved through twenty-three placements before she even turned seven, Anais has been let down by just about every adult she has ever met. Now a counterculture outlaw, she knows that she can only rely on herself. And yet despite the parade of horrors visited upon her early life, she greets the world with the witty, fierce insight of a survivor. Anais finds a sense of belonging among the residents of the Panopticon—they form intense bonds, and she soon becomes part of an ad-hoc family. Together, they struggle against the adults that keep them confined. But when she looks up at the watchtower that looms over the residents, Anais realizes her fate: She is an anonymous part of an experiment, and she always was. Now it seems that the experiment is closing in. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content