Fran Wescott

I confess, much as I’m drawn to a bottle of wine with a provocative label, I’m also attracted to a book with high-profile accolades. So, when I was handed a copy of Elaine Neil Orr’s new book, Swimming Between Worlds, I flipped it over as a matter of habit to peruse those high-profile accolades, and found […]

On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.[1] That is one American every 12.5 minutes, a staggering statistic. As a public health professional with over a decade experience in injury and violence prevention, which includes poisonings such as drug overdoses, reading Saving Bobby: Heroes and Heroin in One Small Community provided me a rare […]

In the tradition of classic essayists from Virginia Woolf to Annie Dillard, Meghan Florian combines personal narrative with careful analysis, taking the ordinary material of undramatic daily life and distilling it into moments of clarity and revelation. Centering each essay in this collection on a different aspect of coming of age as a feminist woman […]

One of the most useful terms I’ve learned, passed on to me by Kari Barclay, is “Kingsplaining.” It’s a verb that describes the process by which people in power use misleading representations of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work to claim that contemporary activists’ techniques are illegitimate. For example, during the Charlotte Uprising, some white guy […]

In the 70’s, we boomers raged and sneered about the Generation Gap. Those we now call ‘the greatest generation’ appeared to us youngsters as blind to the present and busy with traditions and values that had nothing to do with what we saw around us. Rachel Held Evans’ latest book reminds me that the gap […]

I didn’t expect to like this book. I started it only because the author is a fellow board member at RCWMS and reading it seemed like the congenial thing to do. Plus, the title caught my attention. Erin and I have at least one thing in common; I, too, am a commitment phobe. Unlike Erin, […]

I wish God’s Hotel were a book with pictures. No matter how precise Victoria Sweet’s descriptions, the world her words conjure is difficult to imagine. A hospital that looks more like a peach-colored, red-roofed monastery. Turrets, archways, and a tower with tucked-away priests’ quarters. Sixty-two acres of land, complete with a greenhouse, solarium, an aviary, and two […]

It seems like every time I turn around these days I run into another story about vaccination. To me the message seems clear: everyone without a contraindicating medical issue should get vaccinated, especially for measles, but probably in general. Refusing to do so endangers the health of those who can’t. It seems pretty straightforward to […]

Last fall, a small group of women at RCWMS read The New Jim Crow together over several weeks. This was after the shooting of Michael Brown, before decisions by grand juries not to indict the police officer who killed him, nor the officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner. The book, which came out in 2010, […]

I just finished Rebecca Solnit’s luminous new book, The Faraway Nearby. It is so brimming with breathtaking passages that I am tempted to just line up quotations so that you can see for yourself: “Books are solitudes in which we meet.” This is the final sentence of Solnit’s essay, “Ice,” on the allure of the Far […]

I first encountered Ann Patchett when my book club chose her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, for our monthly conversation. This quirky novel about Sabine, the widowed assistant to her magician husband, enchanted me. I was drawn both to the characters and the limpid prose. She had me. I have read all of her subsequent books—three […]

“It’s 1968 and four young, talented Australian Aboriginal girls learn about love, friendship and war when their all girl group The Sapphires entertain the US troops in Vietnam.” (IMDB) The Sapphires, which is based on a true story, also addresses racism in Australia. The film features gorgeous renditions of several classic soul hits and engaging performances […]