MADreads

It's a bit of misnomer to call Kwana Jackson’s newest novel, Real Men Knit a romance. It’s being billed as such by its publisher, but this is really more the story of a family with strong elements of romance intertwined. And unlike many other romances, this one begins with a tragedy: Mama Joy Strong, a foster-turned-adoptive mother to four boys and the proprietor of Harlem’s Strong Knits knitting store, has suddenly died. Her boys, now all grown and more or less launched into life with varying degrees of success, are left stunned.

I don’t often re-visit the children’s books I’ve read, but Echo Mountain is worth taking a second dip. In 1930’s post-depression era Maine Ellie is the middle child of a white family displaced by the depression that moved to the mountains to start fresh. Ellie’s father has been in a coma after an accident for which Ellie has been silently (and mistakenly) blamed by her elder sister and her mother. The family has been in survival mode ever since, with both Ellie’s mother and older sister fervently wishing to return to the town they left.

I absolutely love Maira Kalman’s artwork. Colorful and sweet with an endearing naivete, her work is like a cotton-candy version of a better life but with melancholic undertones. I love it and I want to live in it. So when I heard Kalman had illustrated one of my favorite books, Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I was thrilled. This is the crossover event of 2020 as far as I’m concerned.

Sadie is a teenager who is missing. She's been living in an economically devastated town in rural Colorado, raising her younger sister Mattie on her own after their addict mother takes off. Their situation is stark. Then 13-year-old Mattie goes missing and is found murdered. The story follows Sadie's chase to locate her sister's killer and a reporter's race to find Sadie.