Other books that might interest you

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  Among the Living and the Dead -...

  Inara Verzemnieks

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  "It's long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born . . . that at some point each year the dead will come home," Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story of war, exile, and reconnection. Her grandmother's stories recalled one true home: the family farm left behind in Latvia, where, during WWII, her grandmother Livija and her grandmother's sister, Ausma, were separated. They would not see each other again for more than fifty years. Raised by her grandparents in Washington State, Inara grew up among expatriates, scattering smuggled Latvian sand over the coffins of the dead, singing folk songs about a land she had never visited. 
   
   
   
  When Inara discovers the scarf Livija wore when she left home, in a box of her grandmother's belongings, this tangible remnant of the past points the way back to the remote village where her family broke apart. There it is said the suspend their exile once a year for a pilgrimage through forests and fields to the homes they left behind. Coming to know Ausma and the trauma of her exile to Siberia under Stalin, Inara pieces together Livija's survival through years as a refugee. Weaving these two parts of the family story together in spellbinding, lyrical prose, she gives us a profound and cathartic account of loss, survival, resilience, and love.

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  Never Know Your Place - Memoir...

  Martin Naughton

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  Every young person is looking for freedom,
  
  but some have to fight harder than others …
  In 1960s Ireland there was a special place for disabled children: behind the walls of an institution, cut off from the rest of society.
  At just nine years old, Martin Naughton was one of these children. Along with his younger sister Barbara he was sent to a Dublin institution, far away from his Irish-speaking home in Spiddal.
  But Martin wouldn't be sidelined. With the help of some unexpected characters – and an unlikely encounter with his Celtic Football heroes – he began to change the way a generation of young disabled people saw themselves.
  This is the story of a boy who not only won his own independence, but also led the fight for freedom for all disabled people.
  'Martin was a formidable and tireless campaigner for the right of people with disabilities to live in their own communities and homes.' President Michael D. Higgins
  'Martin Naughton was a protector, a leader, a gamechanger. In reading this narration of his life, tears filled my eyes.' Dr Rosaleen McDonagh, playwright, rights activist and author of Unsettled.

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  Little Boy I know Your Name - A...

  Mitchell Raff

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  Breaking the Inherited Cycle of Trauma
  In his unflinchingly honest memoir, Mitchell Raff candidly recounts his journey to overcome generational trauma and break free from decades of addiction. With raw vulnerability, he lays bare his destructive coping mechanisms and the far-reaching consequences they wrought on his life and on those around him.
  Beaten mercilessly as a child by his Holocaust-survivor mother, Mitchell was later kidnapped from Los Angeles to Israel before finding refuge with loving relatives back in America. In his adult life, the echoes of trauma forced Mitchell into patterns of substance abuse, sexual vices, and toxic relationships. But at a certain point, Mitchell explains, you need to own your decisions, for better or worse. After years of painful self-examination and work, Mitchell settled into a healthy relationship and found the strength to endure blows that once would have destroyed him. 
  Mitchell’s unfiltered account of his trials, failures, and ultimate breakthrough to become the man he always wanted to be is living proof that cycles of generational trauma can be broken, that even the deepest wounds can soften, and that though the road is difficult, it is within reach to not only survive but thrive.

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  The Ballad of Karla Faye Tucker

  Mark Beaver

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  On a June night in 1983, twenty-three-year-old Karla Faye Tucker and her boyfriend, fueled by a sinister cocktail of illicit drugs, broke into a Houston apartment. "We were very wired," Tucker later testified, "and we was looking for something to do." Though they later claimed they entered the premises with no murderous intent, they ended up slaughtering two people—one a sworn enemy, the other an utter stranger. The weapon: a pickax they found in the apartment.
  
  Fourteen years later, in early 1998, Tucker was facing lethal injection. But after her religious conversion in prison, Texas would be executing a different woman than the one who'd committed the murders. Her change was so dramatic that the most powerful and influential voices in American televangelism—Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell among them—were urging viewers to contact Texas's governor, George W. Bush, and plead for clemency. One follower was author Mark Beaver's father, a devout Southern Baptist deacon who asked Beaver to put his fledgling literary ambitions to work by composing a letter on his behalf to Governor Bush.
  
  Through a merger of true crime, social history, and memoir, The Ballad of Karla Faye Tucker illustrates how a seemingly distant news story triggers a national reckoning and exposes a growing divide in America's evangelical community. It's a tale of how one woman defies all conventions of death row inmates, and her saga serves as an unlikely but fascinating prism for exploring American culture and the limits of forgiveness and transformation. It's also a deeply personal reflection on how a father's request leads his son to struggle with who he was raised to be and who he imagines becoming.

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  Normandy to Nazi Surrender -...

  Patrecia Slayden Hollis, Colonel...

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  The late Van Slayden trained on the PT-3 kite-like biplane in 1937, but he learned fighter pilot operations flying "by the seat of his pants," walking away from five crashes. Shortly after the invasion of Normandy, he landed on Utah Beach to help establish a US Army Air Forces' (AAF's) presence in Europe. He flew the P-47 Thunderbolt, a fighter-bomber, in combat over Northern France and commanded the 36th Fighter Group-the "Fightin' 36th-at Batogne, St. Vith, the Bridgehead at Remagen, Operations Grenade, Clarion, Varsity and other missions. His 22nd Fighter Squadron was the first in the AAF to land voluntarily on German soil. 
   
   
   
  He was deep into Germany when the Nazis surrendered on May 8, 1945, which was remarkably anticlimactic. Van Slayden, a country boy from rural Tennessee, like so many of his contemporaries, stepped up to the challenge as part of the Greatest Generation.

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  Life As I See It - Finding...

  A.R. Harris

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  We’ve all had our good days where we’ve wished for time to freeze and wanted some memories to stay with us forever. Life changes and this is inevitable. We cannot always get what we wish for and acceptance of this fact is wherein lies the beauty of it all. It takes knowing sadness to know what happiness is, listening to noise to appreciate silence, and dealing with one’s absence to value presence. Some people just want to live a happy life, and Angela was certainly one of them. Living her life to its fullest, she was convinced that it couldn’t get any better or any worse. That was when fate decided to prove her wrong. A vibrant young lady with great passion and joy, Angela was left shattered when the diagnosis of a brain tumor turned her world upside down. “Life As I See It: Finding Strength Through Adversity” discusses Angela’s struggles and highlights how she coped with trying times. It shows her resilience, her fortitude, and her optimistic approach toward life despite all the difficulties she faced. Her arduous journey took her to unprecedented lows but Angela always looked at the positive side of life and tried to overcome every challenge fate threw in her path. “Life As I See It: Finding Strength Through Adversity,” shows you the rare colors of life from the perspective of a person who sees the world around her in a special way. Join Angela on her journey to see how she develops skills and learns to navigate the world after losing her vision.

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