Review of The Truth About Fire: A Novel (Hardcover)

Gillian Grace is a professor of modern German History who ends up teaching in rural Michgan to avoid her separated but un-divorced husband--with her troubled mixed- race daughter in tow.A graduate student talks her into helping him as he pursues the Far Right who may be responsible for the murder of his friend.Alternates with sections written from the point of view of Lucy Wirth whose husband has unwittingly allowed the Sons of the Shepherd to use his sporting goods store to stage their arms build up and plans for biological warfare.Interesting parallels between her relationship with her husband and with the graduate student--where the tables are turned and she now becomes over involved with a student.Fascinating development as she realizes that the student is as crazed as the neo-nazis he pursues.The bioterrorism angle seems too far removed from the action of the story for me to really care, but the characters and the struggle to understand evil are compelling enough to make up.



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Review of Capote: A Biography (Paperback)

I ran across this book and hadn't thought about Capote in years and got it on impulse. It is just a wonderful bio and captures what Capote was and why he attracted such attention. It is hard to imagine what a youngster he was when he came on the scene and how he was so very loved. The book is full of lovely stories and famous people. The chapters on the "swans" was my favorite but his relationships, the accounts of his writing, his amazing ambition and ability to have devoted friends and ultimately his terrible end are written like a novel. Capote was generous, brilliant, kind, warm, seductive,vicious at times and utterly captivating. I now want to reread his books. But the accounts of his travels abroad, his long stays at wonderful quaint places and the "moveable feast" of his early life made me long to have been there. I loved this bio.



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