California Through the Eyes of Lonely Planet

California Trips: 68 Themed Itineraries, 1147 Local Places to See (Regional Guide)
Lonely Planet
ISBN: 978-1-74179-727-5

This is not your Momma’s Fodor’s or your Daddy’s Frommer’s. For those who are not familiar with the publisher, Lonely Planet has a different take on the travel business. For those in the market for traditional guidebooks, this quirky take on a guide for a “stranger in a strange land” will likely prove disappointing. For those looking for a new twist on a state full of surprises, there’s a lot to like.

The book, as Lonely Planet itself describes it, is “68 of the best trips for spa seekers, beach bums, wilderness hikers, celebrity spotters, family road trippers, city hipsters, and heritage lovers. Our trips range from San Francisco alleys to lost deserts, from Hollywood glitz to Highway 1 bliss. You can find a burrito, hang ten, run a river, ride Amtrak, and maybe even discover gold.”

Mixed in the book are eco-friendly and sustainable options for restaurants and hotels, and Lonely Planet makes it all easier to seek out by providing a “Greendex,” in addition to the regular index. Trips are divided by themes (iconic trips, routes, food and drink, outdoors, history and culture, offbeat, cities, and day trips), as well as by region and season. The book is best used as a source of inspiration for laid back travelers, who are looking for new sights to explore. It also works well as a supplement to a more traditional guidebook for those planning longer stays.

California Trips instead offers burrito quests and swimming holes, literary trails like Steinbeck country or routes for earthquake faults, suggestions for great theme park rides or an afternoon on the Central Coast looking for a great pinot noir. It’s the special stuff that California is famous for, but gets sidelined for more traditional “must see” lists by other guidebooks.

The book would best serve someone who lives in the state or makes frequent visits. Perfect for weekend trips, perfect for travelers familiar with the state who would like to seek out something new on the next visit. For those (like me) who don’t want or need a guidebook running down the top 100 hotels and motels in San Diego, but would be interested in locating a great new restaurant in the LA area serving organic produce or interesting Beat hangouts in the Bay Area, this is the book. It’s fun, informative, and the kind of book to enjoy browsing through as you plan your next exciting adventure to the Golden State.

One Mother's Search for Her Child

Destruction of Innocence: A True Story of Child Abduction
Rosalie Hollingsworth
ISBN: 978-1-4401-2502-7

In the United States alone, a child is kidnapped every 40 seconds. This means that about a million children each year are removed from their homes, and have their lives thrown into turmoil. The majority of these (approaching 80 percent) are children kidnapped by one parent seeking to take the child from the other, custodial parent. Sadly about half of these cases are never solved. In the Destruction of Innocence, a desperate mother could not rest until her daughter was rightfully returned home.

This true story (written by the abducted child’s mother), however, is even more unsettling than the norm. In the case of Triana, the daughter of author Rosalie Hollingsworth and her estranged husband Franco, the child was abducted by Franco not once, but twice.

Like many foreign-born parents, Triana’s father was Italian, and when Franco first kidnapped his child, they left the United States to resettle in Italy. This was only the beginning of the story, however. Within a relatively short time frame, the child was re-taken by Rosalie and returned to California. Eventually the father returned from Europe as well, and began building a new life in California with another woman, who had two daughters of her own.

The second kidnapping, whose story forms the majority of the book, chronicles the second abduction and four-year pursuit of Triana by her mother Rosalie, after her father Franco and his new family disappear again with the kidnapped child. This second, longer search tells the story not only from the mother’s point of view, but lays out the heart wrenching facts of a life on the run and its consequences on the innocence of the child caught in the middle.

Beloved by both parents, Triana was nonetheless subject to circumstances and situations that no child should face, including dangers to her own life. Even amidst the final return, her safety seems elusive. Particularly compelling is the “happy ending.” No child who has witnessed and experienced such trauma could ever simply “turn the switch” and return to a happy life she barely remembered or a mother who had been so tragically portrayed by a vengeful ex-husband. Even so many years later, the scars and confusion linger.

Still, the story is a compelling one. Never did the mother lose hope, give up, or let another person (even her own child) deter her from finding her daughter. This is a story of amazing courage and bravery in the face of so much difficulty and disappointment. Parents everywhere will thank their lucky stars never to have to face such trauma. Those who do are probably the few that can truly understand the depths of despair and the elation of hope that mark Rosalie’s life story.


This review first appeared on Book Pleasures on July 4, 2009.

Tale of Two Spies

Absolute Friends
John Le Carre
ISBN: 0-316-00064-7

The old spy game is taken up a notch in Le Carre’s Absolute Friends. Here the intrigue and spying are not merely about competing Cold War ideologies, but the friendship of two men who came of age and connected as friends amidst the radical student movement of the 1960s in West Germany. The friendship continues throughout the novel, as the friends meet and drift apart again over the years, but never lose the ultimate bond (estranged boyhoods and youthful idealism) that united them in the first place.

As this political thriller opens, Sasha (the crippled son of a German traitor whose life he is always trying to atone for) comes looking for his old friend Ted Bundy (son of an old Colonial officer serving in India during the time of the partition with Pakistan). By now they are middle aged men and have a long history together. After setting the scene of the present day, the book harkens back to their shared past, recounting their early days as radical college students in Germany.

After they part company in West Germany, Sasha leaves with his radical theories for what he believes is a more egalitarian society, defecting to the East. As he learns more of his own father’s history and experiences the brutality of life in East Germany, Sasha soon realizes his defection is an ideological mistake, and thus decides to correct it by becoming a double agent for the West, while “working for the Stasi (East German intelligence).”

Meanwhile Ted has returned to England and found a good life for himself--a wife he loves, the birth of their first child, and a job with the British Council, working with traveling arts groups who journey across the Iron Curtain in a gesture of friendship and cultural exchange. Just as he comes to recognize his own happiness with life as he knows it, he is recruited into the world of intrigue and deception by none other than Sasha himself. True to the friendship, Ted too, soon becomes a double agent, ultimately succeeding brilliantly and becoming a valuable asset to British intelligence, even as his personal life falls apart.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, everything changes yet again, and the two friends, no longer needed in the roles they played as Cold War spies for so many years, drift apart again. When Sasha comes looking for Ted this time, it’s with a proposition that appeals to both their idealistic tendencies…but is it legit? Sasha has always been blind-sighted by his own idealism, and Ted is finally reconnecting with a new family life as an ex-pat, working in Germany as a guide to British tourists after the failure of his English school.

Ted is wary of the offer, and he soon discovers he’s in too deep. More than that, he keeps trying to discern whether Sasha, too, has changed and is lying to him. As with any true spy story, there are multiple layers to all these situations, but when the one true friendship is tested, there’s no going back.

Le Carre has brought this spy tale up to the present day and the Iraq War for his finale, and shown just how dated the rules of Cold War spying have become. The enemy is no longer the “other,” and what does friendship and loyalty mean in the end? Le Carre tackles the big questions, never shying away from what makes us uncomfortable as a society. He’s as meaningful and brilliant a writer as ever, and Absolute Friends proves that.

Straddling Two Worlds

Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me
Alice Pung
ISBN: 978-0-452-29000-6


There’s something about the tale of a new immigrant that allows us to see our own world in a new way. In this debut nonfiction memoir by Alice Pung, the stories contained within Unpolished Gem reflect the conflicts (both internal and external) of a person straddling two worlds, the ultimate outsider, never comfortable in either. Even though Pung herself was born in Australia (her parents landed there from the killing fields of Cambodia when her mother was eight months pregnant with her), her life was confined to a very small world in the suburbs of Melbourne, populated by other refugees.

She would remain caught in this “middle world” growing up, never comfortable in either. She also lived in the middle world within her own family, where she was the “word-spreader,” relaying stories of what her mother and grandmother (long at odds with each other but forced to live under the same roof) each had to say about the other. Torn by love for both, she could never satisfy either woman.

The memoir is also about the place of women generally. Indeed the very title captures a Cambodian proverb that reflects the fact that “a girl is like white cotton wool--once dirtied can never be clean again, whereas a boy is like a gem--the more you polish, the more it shines.” Even in the Western world of Australia, where Pung has become a lawyer in her own right, she is constricted by the expectations of family and culture even in the 21st century.

Pung is not afraid to reveal the estrangement, the push and pull of Australian life and immigrant demands. Her writing is sure and true and compelling. Each person is fully drawn, and the stories flow seamlessly. Perhaps the only disappointing part of the book is the fact that Pung is still so young that her story has yet to come full circle. She still has a lot of life to live…and share through her writing. What is clear is that she has given her first book a strength and honesty that makes her story worth knowing. You can’t ask for more than that!

New Thriller on Global Warming

Ultimatum
Matthew Glass
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1888-2


While the US government today tackles a problematic economy, nuclear proliferation, and conflicts in the Middle East, some of the problems looming on the horizon may dwarf those we find overwhelming today. Two in particular are brought to the fore in this stunning first novel by British author Matthew Glass. Ultimatum is a novel set 24 years into the future, when American President Joe Benton was just been elected to office.

Even before assuming the presidency (for which he has grand goals of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and tackling the issue of relocation of thousands of Americans along the nation’s coastline), Benton learns that, in fact, the situation of global warming is far worse than anticipated. In addition, secret negotiations have been under way between the outgoing administration and China to deal with this pressing issue.

In fact, the book is an interesting look into life inside the White House: competing factions, pressure from the media, multilateral negotiations that go nowhere, and a lot of competing egos within the administration. Add to that, the negotiating style of China vs. American penchant for honesty, and you’ve got a fascinating book that tackles two looming issues. The primary issue is the lack of action on global warming that has lingered for years until it’s reached epic proportions, and the secondary is the rise of China, a nation whose political style is very different from the West’s, yet whose growth cannot be denied.

This political thriller is a combination world-catastrophe scenario with hints of “The West Wing.” It’s not a perfect book; its greatest fault probably lies with its overabundance of characters populating the political story, some of whom are only tangential to the storyline. There are more names being bandied about than any reader can keep track of. Yet even this seems to make a point that, unlike the Chinese who can keep the inner circle of decision makers small, the American side is besieged with players, all of whom want in on the action or have a point of view to espouse. Then, too, is the overdramatic ending, which might make for a great box office scenario at the movie, but defies some political belief even in spite of the stakes of the game.

Despite these qualifiers, however, there is much more of value within this novel. There’s intelligent writing, important issues to consider, and a plot that keeps twisting along the way.

What the book does best is highlight some key issues that Americans and the global community will eventually have to face. Whether it’s the ice shelf in Antarctica breaking off or a political thriller like Ultimatum, it’s clear that the issue of global warming can have drastic consequences if we don’t act soon. Ultimatum puts it all on the table and lets readers have a glimpse into a world where the hard choices are put off for another day, and the day of reckoning has come.

Not to Be Confused with Chick Lit

The Only True Genius in the Family
Jennie Nash
ISBN: 978-0-425-22575-2

There’s a temptation to pass this book off as merely superior chick lit, and in some senses, it does contain similar characteristics. There’s a woman and mother at the center of the story, there’s family relationships, and a coming to terms with the death of a family member at the core of the novel.

Ah, but then, author Jennie Nash raises the stakes by introducing two very unusual subjects so rarely probed in such detail that bring her writing game to an entirely literary level. The first is just how parents injure their children, and how all of us carry the scars of childhood with us throughout our lives, reliving those same behaviors within our own family.

The second, perhaps more interesting is the study of creativity. Does it emanate from genius, or is it a seed that we all carry within us that some people are simply more free to express? In The Only True Genius in the Family, the central character Claire is a food photographer with a successful career. Unless you compare it with her father’s, of course. Her father is a true American icon, a landscape photographer in the tradition of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston.

Adding to this feeling of self doubt comes Claire’s daughter, Bailey, who not only has a special relationship with Claire’s impossibly difficult father, but is an outstanding artist in her own right. Bailey is just on the cusp of greatness as she puts on her graduate show for her MFA. A mother shouldn’t feel jealous, right? In fact, she is happy for her daughter’s success, but there’s this unhappy voice within Claire that keeps muttering that both her father and daughter “just had it so easy.” Everything they touch turns to gold, and in Claire’s case, genius seems to have skipped a generation (or so her father painfully notes).

With this rich material, author Nash never gets maudlin, but instead takes us into Claire’s world, and allows us to feel her pain, as she literally begins to lose her own creative vision with the death of her father. It’s a gripping story that will have you thinking about the characters long after you reach the last page. It’s a great read, even for chicks.

A Great Mix of Fashion and Mystery

Armed and Glamorous: A Crime of Fashion Mystery
Ellen Byerrum
ISBN: 978-0-451-22456-9

It’s hard to believe that fashion and murder would make a good mix, but in Armed and Glamorous, it’s a winning combination. Add to that the fashion-challenged setting of Washington, DC, and this is a book (and series) that is sure to please fans of “cozy” mysteries, and women readers generally.

The fashion columnist sleuth of the story is Lacy Smithsonian, who covers the Washington fashion beat for the local newspaper but longs for more challenging stories. She usually finds them, too, as she is becoming known as a “murder magnet” around the office. In this case, it’s the murder of a well-dressed Washington socialite she’s just interviewed, who is found dead right outside her night school classroom. (Lacey is taking classes to become a private investigator in the hope of improving her journalism skills and move herself into more serious reporting.)

When Cecily Ashton turns up dead in her Jaguar in the parking lot, not only do the instructors and students become prime suspects, there are a host of other possibilities as well. Ashton has an obnoxious ex-husband, a spurned love interest, and plenty of other people who might have reason to do her harm. Add to that a recent burglary and a missing vintage Louis Vuitton makeup case that once belonged to a famous movie star, and the leads point in all directions.

Leave it to Lacey and her Pink Collar Club girlfriends (the “armed and glamorous” of the title) to sort out the clues and bring down the killer. Readers will have great fun reading Lacey’s columns (sprinkled throughout the book) and trying to figure out who the real killer is among so many with motive.

This latest offering from mystery writer Ellen Byerrum is sure to result in more Lacey Smithsonian fans. Byerrum brings to her writing a great knack for spinning a story, whether it’s about fashion, human foibles, or the Washington scene. She combines that ability with an astute talent for laying a great trail of clues to make for an engaging mystery. Whether readers are fashion divas or hopelessly fashion challenged, there’s a lot to like about being Armed and Glamorous.


This review first appeared on Book Pleasures, March 25, 2009.