In October 1945, a one-year-old boy was abandoned in a freight car at a railroad station in a small Hungarian town. The events of this book are based on the life of the author, who was that abandoned baby, and the life of the loving family who adopted him. He was Such a Lucky Boy. The child grew up during the turbulent years of post World War II Hungary. The Communist ideology changed everyone's life, especially religious Jews. Laszlo Kadar's life was complicated by the philosophy of his religious father, which was in direct opposition to the philosophy of his Communist teachers. They promised the good life and a great future without religion. Following World War II, the Soviet Union was the liberator of Hungary and forced communism on the Hungarian people, whose lives were made miserable. This is the true story of the plight and hardship of one orthodox Jewish family living in a provincial city in Hungary.
A gripping tale of adventure and searing reality, Lucky Boy gives voice to two mothers bound together by their love for one lucky boy. “Sekaran has written a page-turner that’s touching and all too real.”—People “A fiercely compassionate story about the bonds and the bounds of motherhood and, ultimately, of love.”—Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans Eighteen years old and fizzing with optimism, Solimar Castro-Valdez embarks on a perilous journey across the Mexican border. Weeks later, she arrives in Berkeley, California, dazed by first love found then lost, and pregnant. This was not the plan. Undocumented and unmoored, Soli discovers that her son, Ignacio, can become her touchstone, and motherhood her identity in a world where she’s otherwise invisible. Kavya Reddy has created a beautiful life in Berkeley, but then she can’t get pregnant and that beautiful life seems suddenly empty. When Soli is placed in immigrant detention and Ignacio comes under Kavya’s care, Kavya finally gets to be the singing, story-telling kind of mother she dreamed of being. But she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else’s child. “Nacho” to Soli, and “Iggy” to Kavya, the boy is steeped in love, but his destiny and that of his two mothers teeters between two worlds as Soli fights to get back to him. Lucky Boy is a moving and revelatory ode to the ever-changing borders of love.
This is a story about shared custody. Having always had the desire to write thought, I would start out with this book for my youngest grandson, Bryce, who is my sons child. Unfortunately, he and his wife split up. This is hard for everyone, especially for the children. Thank goodness, these days more fathers are seeking equal time with their children, and the courts are much more apt to distribute the time between both parents. My hopes in writing this story is that it will help other children and their families out there who are going through similar events in their lives. It is hard time for all, especially the children. Look forward to sequel to Lucky BoyLucky Kids.
At the ripe old age of 100, the last man on earth finds himself surrounded by seven beautiful scientists. Unfortunately they want nothing to do with him.
Corden has written a charming and insightful account of his professional and personal life, from his childhood in Breslau, Germany, until his retirement in Melbourne. The book is divided into two parts. Part I considers Corden's early life, from a young boy growing up in Nazi Germany, to his immigration from England to Australia and what that means for the author's self-identity. Part II addresses Corden's work on the Australian Protection Policy for which he is perhaps best known, before reflecting upon the author's time at Oxford University and the Australian National University, and, finally, moving on to review contributions made at the IMF, Johns Hopkins University, and The World Bank. This book will be of interest to all aspiring economists, as well as established economists familiar with Corden's work. It is an inspiring and profound record of the intellectual journey made by one of Australia's best known economists.
LUCKY GUY marks a return to Nora Ephron's journalistic roots. The charismatic and controversial tabloid columnist Mike McAlary covered the scandal- and graffiti-ridden New York of the 1980s. From his sensational reporting of New York's major police corruption to the libel suit that nearly ended his career, the play dramatizes the story of McAlary's meteoric rise, fall and rise again, ending with his coverage of the Abner Louima case for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, shortly before his untimely death on Christmas Day, 1998.
This is the story about a guy in his twenties who was looking to break out of the repetitive routine, and acted upon this by moving to Europe and sought out irresponsible pleasures. It was inspired by his own personal experiences while traveling recklessly with all sorts of characters. He eventually travels to Central and South America, where he became immersed in these cultures while learning the languages, and making long lasting bonds with the local people. Finally he returns to the USA, but not without the allure he acquired while on his never ending adventure, and the knowledge that he had become a man of the world who had lived his dream. This is the fascinating story about everything that happened in between on the journey.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J’Ouvert can’t help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history. Jamel Brinkley’s stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class—where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
