The English Geek

Advil, Nevertheless*

If you do a long Saturday run without stopping for water, you're going to get a headache.

If you get a long-Saturday-run-without-water headache, it will be of the mildish sort, so you'll take a few Advil.

If you take a few Advil, they'll cure your mildish headache but not the general energy drain that comes from forgetting your Cliff Blocks.

If you're experiencing general energy drain, it'll affect your creativity, so you'll decide to abandon your scrapbooking project in favor of a trip to the fabric store.

If you take a trip to the fabric store, you might just find the exact fabric you didn't know you needed in order to finally make that really cute witchy Halloween quilt.

If you find the exact fabric, you'll buy it. You'll take it home and cut it up and start working on the witchy quilt and a new table runner for your kitchen pretty spot.

If you're caught up in sewing excitement you're going to stay up far too late for two nights in a row. You'll finish the table runner and start on the witchy quilt.

If you stay up far too late for too many nights in a row, you're going to get a very non-mildish headache. The kind of headache that lasts for three days and makes even thinking difficult. The kind that no known medication even touches. Especially not Advil.

If you get a non-mildish headache, you're going to be nauseated by the thought of running. Running will be the last thing you think you could ever deal with, down there on the bottom of the list underneath things like scrubbing toilets, eating anything, or moving without wincing.

If you can't deal with running, you won't run at all. Even though there's not that much time left before your next half marathon.

If you don't run enough before your last half marathon, you'll feel anxious about the upcoming race. You'll probably decide, once your headache has finally and blessedly gone to wherever headaches go, that you need to put in one more long run, preferably ten miles.

If you decide to put in one more ten miler (after not running for 8 days), your ITB is going to flare up. On both legs. You'll have to stop running with a mile left to go, cursing your stupidity and your weakness and your *&$#%* headache, not to mention witchy quilts and table runners and the general need to always be working on some project or other you seem compulsively unable to avoid. You'll want to cry.

If you manage not to cry, and if "Authority Song" happens to come up on your random playlist, you'll at least be able to run the last half mile of your long run. Without crying.

If you finish your run without crying, you will still want to when you stop, because your knees will hurt and your legs will hurt and the back of your hip bones will hurt and you'll be exhausted because you'll realize that again: you ran too far without stopping for water. Or any Cliff blocks.

And chances are, if you ran too far (again!) without water, you're going to have a headache along with all those other aches.

Nevertheless, at least it's the kind of headache that Advil will cure.

*with apologies to Laura Joffe Numeroff, whose rhetorical style I have (none-too-successfully) hijacked for this post.

Ever have...

one of those days when you think: wait a second, all sarcasm aside, maybe I really AM the worst mom in the world?

And then you think: ok, I'm going to try extra hard today to make things right and good. I'm going to be a super mom: make dinner and dessert.  Get the kids to church almost on time. Not lose my patience, not even once.

And then despite all the resolutions and the squaring of shoulders, the renewal in your spirit to try harder and be better: everyone still complains at dinner, and one kid even pukes he thinks it's so disgusting. The husband yells, the kids remind you that if you'd just made mashed potatoes no one would have thrown up, and even someone offering a tentative "I liked the dinner, Mom" doesn't make things feel any better?

And suddenly you start to realize that maybe, despite all the crazy in your house, it wasn't ever the crazy, it was always you, you were the problem all along? Walking around, thinking you were doing OK, thinking you were a good cook, a good wife, a good mother, and yet look at how it's all messed up, despite all your best efforts.

Feeling like someone should have told you, only: someone did tell you, only you didn't believe them, you tried to argue your innocense.

And all you'd like to do, really, is crawl into bed and sleep for, like, forever?

Yeah.

Having one of those.

Before.

I was thumbing through some photos this morning—older, pre-digital photos—looking for a picture I haven't found yet. I came across this one, though:

That's Nathan, barely six months old, with my dad, in Hobble Creek canyon. Kelly's Grove to be exact. I've forgotten the family function we had that picnic in the canyon for. Father's Day? My mom's birthday? Just because? I don't remember.

What I do remember is being the woman who took that photo. Twenty something. Surrounded with little kids. A baby in my home who I could scoop up and kiss, rock and nurse and snuggle and smell, whenever I wanted. Having my dad around to talk to, even when his hour-long phone calls secretly made me a little bit crazy. Secure—absolutely, stupidly secure—in my faith in the future. Not even hopeful, really, but certain that life would give me exactly what I wanted. I thought that because the desires of my heart were righteous ones, I would be able to achieve them.

I know we're supposed to feel grateful for the knowledge life brings us. I know that the struggles we experience make us wiser, and that that wisdom is supposed to be good. Wisdom is supposed to make up for the anxiety, disappointment, and heartache. The struggles are supposed to be valuable because somehow they transform us into better people.

And yes: I do know much more than I did the summer day I took that photo of my dad and my Nathan. I've had experiences I never imagined I would have, and joyful, unexpected surprises along the way. I have also struggled, and I have come out of the dark times with more wisdom. But I don't know if the wisdom has made me a better person. It has hollowed me out. I have become jaded and brittle along the edges, quick to answer any real question with sarcasm. Quicker to push life away, to pull into myself, to not reach out.

What I know now that I didn't before is that trying to do the right things, to have faith and hope, to make sacrifices, isn't a pathway to what you desire from your life. Sometimes you can do everything as right as you possibly can but you still are going to be left wanting what you wanted in the beginning—and you'll keep wanting it even when you can't have it anymore. And I didn't know that my great struggle would be balancing all those hopes I had—the things I didn't even question I would be able to have—with the reality of what I would be given instead.

Part of me wants to think that I was stupid for ever being as hopeful as I was, before. But what I sometimes wish is that life would have taught me something different. That I could have learned that hope was enough. Or that I would have hoped for the right things. Or that I had known how to make the transformation—better person by way of struggles—work for me. More than anything, right at this moment, I wish I could be the person I was that day, behind the lens. I wish I could set my camera down on the picnic table, sit down next to my dad—my rotund, never-afraid-of-an-off-color-joke, talkative dad—and laugh over Nathan's chubby body together. Tell him I love him and know that he understood instead of flinging the words down a dark well, hoping he catches them.

I wish I could put my knowledge down and not have to pick it up again. Just for today. I wish I could feel like I used to: certain that life would fulfill my hopes, simply because they were good, honest ones. I wish I knew how to return to that feeling I had, before my life turned itself upside down and shook me out here, where I have landed with experiences I had no idea I would need to have. Even though, as I write that, I am filled with knowing that, even if I couldforget what I have learned, I couldn't, because along with it came those unexpected joys—even though I know that, I still find myself weeping, full of longing. Wishing I could go back to my before self, shallow and clueless, if only to keep part of that hopeful surety to bring back with me, a bright feather to keep with my dark stones.

Just to return to myself a little bit of the hope I used to fly with. Before.

Snobology

Maybe my last post was ill-advised.

Mean.

Snarky.

I mean, I never considered that the author of the book I was writing about would read what I had written. Honestly: I'd be embarrassed to point out just how many hits I get on my blog, because it would be pointing out how few people actually read what I write. Why would an author read my blog?

Of course, I'm pretty sure that she doesn't read it regularly. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) She is a writer and, as such, has put herself out in the world for criticism. Nope: more important to me are the people who do read my blog regularly. My friends, neighbors, family. People I've never met in real life but whom have a place in my heart.

The ones who did leave a comment or send me an email suggesting that my post made me sound like a snob. Plus the ones who didn't, but who might have thought that anyway.

So today I've been thinking about the word snob. I even read about it in the OED. Originally, snob referred to the last sheep left in the pen, the one that was so difficult to shear he was left till the end; then it referred to a person of very low class, and only recently took on the two meanings it has now: Someone who tries to only associate with people based on a certain social superiority, and a person who is proud to show her self-satisfied superiority. Am I a snob? A book snob? Do I think I'm better than other people, simply by weight of my taste in reading?

I don't know. On one hand, I do wish more people read literary fiction. I wish more attention was paid to more difficult books. I wish there weren't 9 bajillion holds for the newest Dan Brown novel while Margaret Atwood's sits, gathering dust, on the New Book shelf. Does wishing that mean I am showing off my self-satisfied superiority?

I hope not.

Because that would be as dumb as, say, feeling superior to someone because your house is cleaner than theirs, or you have more money, or you run a faster mile. Or because you're better at living the gospel, or more slender, or drive a nicer car. Not that I have ever felt smaller, because of those things, in comparison to someone else. Never.

Or maybe we're just all snobs about something. Take rice, for example. I will confess that maybe I am a rice snob. I think Minute Rice is gross, and I don't understand why anyone would eat it, not only because it tastes like small, damp pieces of cardboard but because it's nutrionally bankrupt. Maybe I am snobby about rice. But books?

Really: if I thought I was better than other people, based on my reading tastes, then I wouldn't feel so strongly that wished-for readerly companionship. Because then we'd all be reading the same stuff and how I could I feel superior?

Maybe I am pulling the wool over my own eyes, but I don't think I'm a snob. I have opinions on which books are worth my reading time, and which aren't. Having an opinion doesn't make me a snob, and I don't think I should apologize for my opinions. More relevant, maybe, is the fact that I don't think I'm better than anyone else because of those opinions. I don't think less of a person because her reading tastes are different than mine. I do wish more people---friends, neighbors, family members, and complete strangers---would come to the dark side with me. But only because I love it so much.

So, let it be stated: if you read fluffy murder mysteries, I love you.

If you think the Twilight series are the best books ever written, I still value our friendship. (Even though I happen to disagree with you.)

If your favorite genre is romance novels, complete with heaving bosoms on the covers, that will not affect my affection for you.

If you read westerns compulsively, I will confess that the only Louis L'Amour I've ever read was Haunted Mesa, which isn't really a western anyway, and I will tell you that I have no desire to explore the genre any further. But I will continue to be your friend.

And let me set another record straight: I am rejecting the "snob" label. (Unless you're calling me a rice snob. That's OK. I think you should try real rice.) But if you're simply calling me snarky? Well, OK then. Sometimes I am a snark. I have embraced my inner snarkess, in fact. Although: I'm not realy sure if "snark" is an official word or not.

I'll have to check the OED.

The Scrapbook Kitsch Factor

You know that I love scrapbooking, right? It is nearly the perfect craft for me, a space for combining words and photos with something pretty and colorful. It speaks to my odd and nearly-compulsive need to remember things, a need that continues to grow in light of Dad's Alzheimer's . I don't want to forget; I don't want my children or family to forget. My layouts tend to be less about reciting what happened and more about how I feel about what happened.

Every time I scrapbook, though, I am nagged by a little voice that reminds me: scrapbooking is sort of kitshy. That it's getting in touch with my inner kindergartner---coloring, and playing with shapes and letters, and carefully cutting stuff out---in the weirdest sort of way. Even though I love scrapbooking, I can confess that there is something mockable about it. Even though I am a self-confessed whiz with an exacto, I can't help but question: is this a dumb way to spend my time? Is it silly? Will it mean anything to anyone but me? And even with that other inner voice---the one that reminds me I am making sure that some things will be remembered---I can't completely discredit the threat of cheesiness that hovers over scrapbooking. (Hence, I am convinced, discussions about things like design, and visual triangles, and creating balance, and becoming a typesetting genius; they are a way of validating, of keeping the threat from descending.)

Yesterday at work, setting out books on the new book display, I discovered something that made me fear the cheese: Joanna Campbell Slan's series of novels based on, get this: scrapbookers. Scrapbooking detectives who solve murder mysteries. Seriously? I didn't know whether I wanted to laugh or to groan.

Probably both.

That's all scrapbooking needs: a series of fluffy murder mysteries.

We're all now permanently assigned to the "kitsch" section of the world.

I guess you could look at it like this: the fact that someone's writing murder mysteries based on scrapbooking means that the craft has arrived. Because (I discovered) there are murder mysteries written about tons of crafts: knitting, and cooking, and card making. Quilting. Home repair. Crocheting. Pottery.

Glass blowing.

But that hardly makes me feel better about my favorite craft's ability to avoid being kitschy. None of those other series makes me admire the crafts they focus on, either. Part of it has to do with the attitude non-scrapbookers have about scrappers. Take the review of the first book. "Scrapbookers will love the whole idea of forensic scrapbooking." Really? I'm a scrapbooker, and I don't love the idea. I think it's kind of silly. And please: don't lump me into the group of people who read fluffy murder mysteries (not that there's anything wrong with that), just because I scrapbook.

Of course, now my book snobbery is showing, isn't it? And part of my reaction probably has to do with me not liking mysteries in general. But, really, why: why fluffy murder mysteries? Would it be possible to write a novel based on scrapbooking that wasn't cheesy? (I'm thinking about the novel Friday Night Knitting Club now, which, while somewhat formulaic and unsatisfying, at least tried to avoid fluffiness.) I guess Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, sort of. But I can't imagine a serious novel about scrapbookers. Can you? With a front-page review in the NY Times Sunday book reviews?

Maybe the problem is with me. (Isn't it always?) Maybe I worry too much about "serious." About reading meaningful stuff and spending my time wisely. Maybe it would be OK for me to get over being worried about the scrapbooking kitsch factor and just enjoy it without any qualms. Maybe I'm just jealous that a fellow scrapbooker (who used to write scrapbooking how-to books) is a published author, and am poking fun out of spite.

Probably that.

I just think that...well, if you're going to all that effort to write a novel, and you love scrapbooking, you maybe should try to de-cheesy it, rather than reinforcing the cheesy. (mmmmmmm...reinforced cheese!)

Just in defense of our craft. That's all I'm saying.

The Guacamole Secret

Remember how I used to hate avocados, and then I had a spiritual awakening and began loving them? Well, when Jake and Haley and I were in Mexico, they had a similar awakening. The little restaurant by the pool served chips and guacamole, with the chips all poked into the guac on the plate. One of our fellow travelers got Haley to try it, and she liked it, and then Jake wasn't going to be outdone so he tried it, and he liked it.

My previously guacamole-abhorring children clambered for it every day of the trip.

I usually said yes because that guacamole was perfect. And because I wanted some, too. (And because I understand. When you discover deliciousness that you'd previously turned up your nose to, you want to begin, immediately, catching up on what you've been missing.) When we got home, they converted Nathan to the guacamole faith and I began trying to recreate what we'd had in Mexico.

I don't think I've got it exactly the same, but I do have to say: I make some fairly delicious guacamole.

Here's what makes me crazy, though, about the guacamole. I like to make a big batch (5 avocados' worth) and keep it in the fridge, so that if the urge strikes, it's already made. Only the top always turns brown. No matter how much lemon or lime juice I use: brown goo you have to scrape away to get to the good, bright green stuff.

But last night, in an inspired moment of avocado genius, I discovered the secret to keeping the brown stuff away. After you've made your guacamole, and everyone has eaten some and is groaning with post-guacamole euphoria, here's what you do:

1. Use a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl, then smooth the top.
2. Get a piece of plastic wrap.
3. Smear some lemon or lime juice on one side of the plastic wrap. You don't need gallons of juice...just a glaze.
4. Place the wrap, juice-side against the guacamole, right on top. Smooth it down so that the edges are covered.
5. Put the lid on your container, then refrigerate.
6. Stir before you eat any more.

Voila! Green-goo-free guacamole!

Here's my recipe. Maybe you know a secret ingredient I am missing? If so, it's only fair to share!

5 ripe avocados
1 T whipping cream
1/4 red onion, diced very, very small
1/2 small tomato, seeds removed, diced very, very small
juice of 1/4-1/2 lemon or lime
cilantro (fresh is the best, but dried is a reasonable substitute)
chili powder
red pepper
red pepper flakes (just a couple)
salt
black pepper

Mix diced onion and tomatoes with the cream. Squish avocadoes out of their skins, then mash everything together with a potato masher. Don't mash too much; you want some small avocado lumps left. Add lemon or lime juice and spices to taste. (Start small with the spices and go up. You can't, I don't think, put too much pepper in!) Serve with chips.

Randomalities: Last Day of September

• It's raining right now. Snowing in the mountains. It might even snow in the valley later today. I can't believe I'm writing this, but everyone cross your fingers in hopes of no snow! There are too many leaves left on the trees and my flowering plum, especially, can't take it. There are still apples in the trees and pumpkins in the fields. No snow!
• A conversation this morning: "I love the rain. It makes me so happy," said Nathan. "Not me," said Jake. "Rain makes me sad." I thought about explaining that I love the rain because it makes me sad---a combination of both of their feelings---but it seemed too complicated.
• Another conversation in the car this morning, this one between Kaleb and his cousin Jace, who comes to our house before preschool some mornings. "Moms! Moms are just great!" Kaleb said, completely out of the blue, and I don't think he thought I was listening. "I love my mom so much. Do you love your mommy, Jace?" "Yes!" he replied. "I love her a lot." "When I really love my mommy is when I call her mommy," Kaleb continued. "When I don't love her as much I only call her mom." Jace had no comment.
• About three months ago, Kendell got a wild hair to organize the bookshelf where we keep our movies. He pulled out all the Disney VHS movies because we don't have a VCR hooked up to a TV anymore. They've sat in plastic bags underneath the sofa table in my front room ever since then. (Lovely decorating skills I tell you!) We can't decide what to do with them. Part of me is thinking "just donate them to the library," but then I find myself thinking. Remember how hard it used to be to get ahold of Disney movies? You could only buy each one for the space of like, a month, and then it was gone again. I worked hard to find some of those movies! And how can I get rid of, say, Winnie the Pooh, which was Haley's favorite movie in the entire world? She'd carry it around with her, tucked into her little blue purse. On the other hand, I don't really want to store them all. So there they sit, and I refuse to get out my Halloween decorations until we've done something with them. Tell me: What did you do with your VHS tapes?
• Can you stand one more Kaleb conversation? He's been whining quite a bit lately, and I am working on not giving him what he wants if he asks in a whine. A few nights ago, he whined for me to go get his white blanky for him. "I won't get it if you ask me like that," I said sternly. He took a deep breath, sat up in bed, and said, "OK then. Go look around in all the rooms of all the house until you find my white blanky. Please." I don't think he was being sarcastic...
• I think that sleeping when it's raining is always the best sleep. Even when the thunder wakes me up, I still sleep well. Last night's thunder was so loud I got out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to stand on the back porch and listen to it. I put a load of laundry in before I went back to bed.
• One thing that says "fall's here!": all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster. Don't get me wrong, though. I think seafood in general is disgusting and anything in the crab/lobster/shrimp realm disgusting and horrifying. I mean: you're eating sea bugs. Gross. Luckily they have a steak I like, and the Red Lobster mashed potatoes are my favorite. We went last night with Kendell's sister Melissa and her husband. I didn't have all-you-can-eat shrimp, of course. But I did get seven refills on my drink. Whooooops.

I Wish I Had a Picture

This morning while I was driving the boys to school, Jake asked me what car he would drive once he gets his driver's license. Amid my horror at the thought of any of my children driving, a vivid little image popped into my brain: the car I was privileged to drive as a teenager.

I didn't take driver's ed until the summer after I turned sixteen. Since I left school early, right after third period, to go to the gym, I didn't have room in my schedule for it. Plus there was the fact, the rusty, brown, embarrassing fact of the car I was going to have to drive.

I wasn't very excited about getting my driver's license.

Most of my friends had cars that weren't all that amazing. Well, Kristi had a new CR-X, but she was the exception. Chris had a Gremlin, I think, and we once had a terrifying moment driving up the canyon when we couldn't figure out why it had lost all its power (no one said you had to change gears when driving uphill!) Jenn had a Pinto. It seems like most of the boys I knew had old, 1950s-era cars, except for the guy with the Monza. The Monza! I can't even tell you how much stuff happened in that Monza. Second only to the Audi which came later. Amazing or not, though, the point was that I wasn't all that anxious to drive, since everyone else already had cars---cars that were less-embarrassing than the one I had to drive.

I wish, so badly, that I had a picture.

In fact, I wish I had a picture of all those cars, because they were each a fragment of our identities. A way of knowing who was who, the thing you looked for carefully when you were driving down the street, hoping to spot someone you knew. A space where things happened: conversations, crying, kissing. Music. A synecdoche object, car-as-person. Spot the little silver car, see Chris. Spot the Monza and your heart accelerated.

Since I don't have a photo, though, let me describe the car I drove once I finally got my driver's license. It was, as previously stated, brown. And rusty. The seats were black vinyl benches. The floorboards were covered with ragged rubber mats and there was a tear in the back seat. There was no air conditioning, of course, but it did have windows, the kind you rolled down with the knob, which was also black. It also lacked seat belts; some had been cut off by previous owners, and the rest were shoved down into that dusty, crumb-filled netherworld under the seats. It had an AM radio with a dial for tuning and those hard plastic knobs you'd push for your station presets. (If, that is, you could actually find a station you wanted to listen to. Not much alternative music was played on AM radio, even in the eighties.)

It was, dear reader, a 1972 Ford Torino.

I gave it a very foul name, as was tradition---all of my friends named their cars. Constantly shutgun (or shoved to the middle when I had passengers) was an enormous boom box, powered by batteries, so I was never without music. You'd think that black interior would make me happy, considering my black affection. After scorching the backs of my legs on the seats countless times, or the palm of my hand on the window knobs, however: not so much. It was old, and ugly, and unfeminine. I hated that car as much as I loved it.

Because it did have one redeeming quality: it was fast. Don't tell my dad, but sometimes I would race against the other fast cars. Sometimes I would be feeling desperate enough that I would win because I wasn't afraid of anything: police, or accidents, or the certain death that comes from high-speed impact. I would gun it, and I would beat the boys, and they would be both annoyed and sheepishly envious. Even the boy with the Monza. And as much as I wanted something new, and cute, and feminine, that ugly old car was often my refuge. It gave me a way to escape. If the odometer had worked, it would have counted all the miles I drove, drinking coffee and crying.

The odometer wasn't the only thing that didn't work, though. The gas gage, too, was broken. That car guzzled gas, and I was never sure how much it had. So I ran out of gas. Often. I'd have to walk to the nearest gas station, call my dad, and wait for help. And it didn't have brake lights, either.

Sometimes I'm not sure my parents loved me very much.

One of the first things I bought for myself once I had a job that paid decently was a car. Nothing new, of course; but it was, at least, small. The gas gage, odometer, and brake lights all worked. I think the Torino was handed down to Becky. It was a relief to give it up, but oddly enough I'd like to see it again. Down in that under-the-seats netherworld, mixed in with french fry bits, and donut crumbs, and dust and ash and seat belts, the cells of myself mingle with time. Awful and embarrassing and dangerous as it was, the Torino was, after all, a piece of my identity.

And I wish I had a picture.

What did you drive as a teenager?

Book Note: Little Bee by Chris Cleave

The jacket copy of Little Bee forbids me from telling you what the novel is about. "Once you have read it," the copy says, "you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds."

Hmmmmm.

I, personally, need more than a vague recommendation before I check out a book. What the subject is, at least. Yet, I also feel like the not knowing helps the novel's joissance. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about it.

Little Bee is the story of Little Bee, a refugee from Nigeria who is stuck in a British Immigration Center. After two years, she manages to get out, and heads to the home of the only people in England she knows. Andrew and Sarah had visited Nigeria two years earlier, where they met Little Bee and her sister, and experienced something horrific on a beach there with them. What exactly happened on the beach is the point the novel unfolds toward, and the movement's tension, sadness, and confusion give the novel its power.

Little Bee is an extraordinary character. Because she is foreign, she interprets the British in surprising and unusual ways. The novel opens with her unusual statement: "Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl." Her explanation of why---freedom of movement across borders, and everyone is happy to see you, and power. Plus, it speaks with Queen Elizabeth's voice, a voice Little Bee tries to emulate. She figures out that appearing British in her accent and her way of speaking is the only way she can gain any sort of power in her new country. Lyrical, and intelligent, and also made fierce by wounds: Little Bee's character colors the entire novel with courage, humor, and despair.

Because while it's beautifully told, it's not a beautiful story. If you are looking for a sweet, happy ending, this is not the book for you. If you're looking for gentle story, for events that won't haunt you, this is not your book. But if you want a novel that explores consequence, and redemption, and the contrast of the ordinariness of everyday living with the pervasiveness of evil, this is a book you will want to read. If you want to be reminded that our lives in Western culture are a sort of illusion, built to keep out the mutilations of developing countries,this is a book for you. If you need to be reminded that even with that evil, and mutilation, and horror, there is still love and goodness and hope, you should read this book.

Booknote: Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

There are some subjects for books that seem to be irresistible to writers. There will always be love stories, of course, but I'm thinking more specific: the holocaust, and the world wars, and the Civil War; any war, for that matter. Or, think about American slavery, and I'm certain you can think of dozens of novels written about it. I think novelists return to these topics over and over because they hold a sort of power over our psyches. We want to understand the bad things that happened in the past because the difficult times are also extraordinary; they are where drama lies, waiting to fill us up with tension. Yet, because we know how events turned out, the reading is also tinged with a sort of learning: I knew there were slaves, of course, but I didn't know this thing happened to them.

It's when a novelist manages to uncover that unknown thing that I am able to love a book. Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Chains did that for me. Set in 1776, it blends both the slave experience and the Revolutionary War into a story full of those I-didn't-know-that moments. Plus, there's Anderson's characteristic fine writing; combined, it's one of my top-five favorite teen novels I've read.

Chains tells the story of the young slave Isabelle. Rather than gaining her freedom at her mistress's death, as she was promised, she's betrayed by the mistress's only relative and sold to a couple from New York. The Locktons happen to be Loyalists, working to undermine the revolution. They also happen to be cruel, both to each other and their slaves and servants. Isabelle fights back against their cruelty by spying on them for the revolutionaries, but it doesn't gain her much since they also see her as just another slave.

As you read Isabelle's story, the knowledge of how events work out---knowing that it will still be almost 100 more years before emancipation---is what makes you weep. The slaves who have been taught to read follow a certain logic: the revolution is based on the idea that people should be free. They are people, and hence: they'll be free, too. Knowing how long that will take, knowing how pointless their hope is, breaks the reader's heart.

In the end, I felt like this wasn't just another book about slavery. It is a book about overcoming obstacles and about finding your own inner courage. "Everything that stands between you and freedom is the river Jordan," an old slave tells Isabelle. "Look hard for your river Jordan." It takes Isabelle a while---and not a few excruciating experiences---to puzzle out the metaphor. When she realizes that Mrs. Lockton only has power over her physical body, the knowledge gives her courage. "She cannot chain my soul," she realizes. "What was one more beating? A flogging, even? I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. . . she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her." She's crossed her river Jordan. And we, slaves or no, are glad to be reminded, too, that the world will try to break our souls but is only successful if we let it be.