Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Relationships

CERTIFIED by Roger Wilson-Crane – Family & Relationships, Humor, Modern Life

Certified by Roger Wilson-Crane is a multi-award-winning comedy-drama, following one man down three sharp turns in his life trajectory.

Based on real-life events, Certified shows the narrator’s birth, marriage, and death, three of the most significant milestones in human life. The book is divided into three sections.

“One Unexpected Birth” explores his flawed string of relationships until he meets Dawn, the love of his life. However, a woman from the past makes a comeback, threatening to shatter his newly found happiness.

“One Hapless Wedding” careens about his well-planned wedding in Puglia, Italy, which is trampled by Justin Timberlake who wants the same venue. “One Bizarre Death”, on the other hand, follows the loss of the narrator’s loved one and the pain and confusion that surrounds an unexpected death. Certified is full of humor, heart, and unexpected gems that one might find in a trunk of well-lived memories.

A work of depth, this story is carefully wrought with nuance and wisdom, serving up a worthy exploration of the human imperfections in our contemporary world.

With honesty and sensitivity, Author Crane makes this chronicle of a man’s choices inviting and restorative. Even with our best efforts and good support, the myriad attachments we develop over a lifetime, to desires, expectations, people, possessions, and ideas, all keep circling back to clutter the pathway and entangle us. Crane’s novel manages to give an empathic portrait of the struggle to break free and find peace.

Backstory weaves naturally with the narrator’s present life, making the plot easy to follow and understand. Dialogue and prose are well-balanced, working together to show the emotional depth of the characters. The most striking aspect of Certified is the quality of writing, which is original, fresh, and unique. Every word counts throughout the protagonist’s thoughts, emotions, and opinions on life.

With its stellar prose, the text introduces new characters along the way who are equally fleshed out.

Certified emphasizes the impact of small, seemingly insignificant moments on its characters, showing their capacity to change people and the world around them.

It takes natural talent for an author to make a fictional narrative appear to be a real-life story. Crane offers readers this rare experience, prompting readers to see themselves in the story. Themes of hope, heartbreak, loss, love, and change flow seamlessly, leaving no cliffhangers as they propel toward the end.

Overall, this is a tightly woven and intelligent comedy-drama that, despite its length, is compelling enough to binge-read in the course of a weekend. Comedy fans will enjoy Certified by Roger Wilson-Crane along with the heartfelt lessons that it imparts.

Certified by Roger Wilson-Crane won Grand Prize in the 2021 CIBA Mark Twain Awards for Humor and Satire Fiction.

November 7, 2022
A WEEK at SURFSIDE BEACH by Pierce Koslosky, Jr. – Short Story Collections, Vacation Stories, Family & Relationships

Vacationers from all walks of life converge on Portofino II-317C, South Carolina, a quaint blue beach house, in Pierce Koslosky Jr.’s short story collection, A Week at Surfside Beach.

From May 30th-December 26th each group of people comes to stay one week at a time, to forget their cares of the big city, to work, to celebrate, or to simply get away. Surfside Beach has much to show them, including temperamental weather.

The small town itself offers a charming supermarket where fishing supplies, whoopie pies, and local southern favorites can be found. The Christmas vacationers, the final of the thirteen beach house renters, struggle to find a tree in time; a real tree simply wouldn’t allow enough space for the family to sleep, and the fake tree would cost too much. But they find arts and crafts supplies in town, to fashion a paper Christmas tree during a day of rainy weather.

We all know that during vacations there are disagreements, lover spats, lessons learned, stolen kisses, and many other moments for a reader to see through the eyes of the characters at Surfside Beach.

The house itself exists in the real world, as does the town of Surfside Beach. Koslosky purchased the actual house after Hurricane Hugo hit the coast of South Carolina. The short stories connect the characters through this realistic setting.

These thirteen stories are rich with emotion and relationships. Even in just one tale, two families quarrel over a better view, a better beach house, an entrée item at dinner, their kids fighting, and a lack of parental approval of the feuding families’ son/daughter Romeo and Juliet hidden romance. Human compassion shines through these conflicts, such as in a later story where a father shows his son kindness and understanding when a gang of locals leads him astray, presenting a strong faith in humanity.

Koslosky creates a believable work of fiction which flows from story to story, recreating a well-known setting of a beach house, the characters playing out a reminder that while nothing is perfect even in paradise, nothing needs to be perfect.

A Week at Surfside Beach by Pierce Koslosky Jr. won Grand Prize in the 2020 CIBA SHORTS Awards for Short Story Collections.

July 22, 2022
The SATISFIED INTROVERT by Benjamin Plumb – Memoirs, Vocational Guidance, Family & Relationship Advice

From his earliest days, author Benjamin Plumb understood he was an introvert, someone who, described in a classic definition, feels more comfortable with their inner thoughts and ideas rather than what is happening externally.

In his well-written memoir, The Satisfied Introvert, he tells us his life story through the lens of his introversion. He explains how he coped, often poorly, with his solitary nature in both his personal and business life, applying a variety of processing mechanisms that he describes as “recipes.” He explains that those processes didn’t apply to every life situation and sometimes kept him from seeing the possibility of making better decisions that would have made much of his life more gratifying.

The purpose of his book, he explains, is to help fellow introverts find safety in an extroverted world and gain more satisfaction in life. “The recipe,” he explains, “is a coping mechanism that works in some situations, but you can’t stay dependent on it. To feel truly safe, you must move beyond your winning recipe and take off on your own.”

The book takes the reader on his journey, from being the introvert in a show business family through his early romances, his education at Stanford and Harvard Business School and various entrepreneurial attempts around the world.

He describes in detail how he found both success and failure in the business world, due, in his view, to applying and mistakenly depending on the defensive processes he acquired to protect himself as an introvert in an extroverted world.

How he finally found peace and the success he hoped for in his professional and personal life is one of the achievements of this detailed personal memoir.

People who identify as introverts will find this an excellent read because the writer is unafraid to expose the details of his life focusing on how he coped with his introverted nature.

It is more of a cautionary tale, not a how-to manual. Whether it’s setting up businesses in South American jungles or revealing the dynamics of a marriage gone sour, The Satisfied Introvert is a series of life lessons learned along the way.

For non-introverts, it’s a cogent description of a personality bent that may be misinterpreted or misunderstood in friends, colleagues or even family members. It may help you to see someone in a different light you may have thought to be stand-offish. unlikeable. Rather than a tell-all confession, it’s written by someone who hopes the sharing of his life will be of help to others.

Overall, it offers a clear insight to a personality trait that is often misunderstood and little discussed. A read we are happy to recommend.

April 27, 2022
ACROSS the DISTANCE: Reflections on Loving and Where We Did & Did Not Find Each Other by Christina A. Kemp – Memoirs, Biographies of Women, Dysfunctional Families

In her nonfiction debut Across the Distance, Christina Kemp showcases a collection of eight personal stories that delve into the most poignant relationships throughout her life.

The well-crafted narratives encompass relationships with her parents, brother, childhood friends, boyfriends, and mentors as they moved in and out of her life. Themes of love, loss, distance, self-preservation, and healing rise to the surface.

Within the book, Kemp ponders the course of a romantic relationship as she realizes that love cannot make underlying differences disappear. At thirteen years old, her father died, and Kemp analyzes how she was able to come to terms with his death, reflecting on his kindness and heroic deeds. Several years later, she is diagnosed with the same condition that took her father; she feels as if she carries her father’s memory in the cells of her own body.

There is a clear distance between herself and her mother. Harmful and passive-aggressive tendencies placed the two at odds. While Kemp appreciated the Saturday morning conversations they often shared, her mother seemed more concerned with criticism than connection. The woman could shove her daughter across the room without reason. Regarding her rage, the author aptly describes it as “hot explosive sandbags that otherwise leaked at the seams.” Eventually, Kemp learned to accept the child/parent schisms.

With a background in counseling psychology, Christina A. Kemp delivers an in-depth assessment of her personal connections that will resonate with readers.

Examining these relationships brings clarity to familial ties and how they affect every other relationship in life. Indeed, Kemp better understands how to love on her own terms and realizes when to leave a relationship. One could spend a lifetime attempting to understand the landscape of relationships that make us who we are.

Each of the stories opens with a simple black & white photo.

The magpie cat, Lucy, stretches on hind legs, looking for an escape beyond the confines of her new island home. The model beauty of Kemp’s mother shows with full wavy hair and makeup, a scarf tied jauntily around her neck. A lone sailboat on distant waters captures the lingering loss of her father. Each image renders a stark, yet ethereal quality connected to Kemp’s life.

Kemp’s styling renders the beauty and harshness of significant moments in artful detail.

One day, the author overhears a lively conversation between a father and daughter about college plans; it is with shame and sorrow that Kemp realizes she’ll never share that experience. And then, amidst the rural surroundings of a northwest island, she considers the natural beauty of the changing seasons. The colorful descriptions and intimate detail throughout the text prove refreshing. Consider, “the island winds playing like a symphony.”

Across the Distance is most definitely a personal journal. However, even as the author finds catharsis in her stories, readers, too, will find meaning in the telling.

Readers are invited to take the book as a sequential whole or read one story portrait at a time. Either way, they will gain insight and understanding as they journey through this book and explore the intimate workings of relationships.

Across the Distance will appeal to those who seek to understand the connections and divisions we so often encounter in our lives.

February 21, 2022
BEEBE and BOSTELMANN by Kent Politsch – Historical Fiction, Historical Biographical Fiction, Deep Sea Exploration

Dive deep into a three-part saga illuminating underwater discovery in Kent Politsch’s historical fiction novel, Beebe and Bostelmann.

Well-researched with a strong environmental focus, Beebe and Bostelmann captures the incredible accomplishments of a multi-faceted naturalist and adventurer. But this charismatic man, Will Beebe, navigates his own emotional journey as well as the deep sea. Collaborating with him, Else Bostelmann brings life to his oceanographic discoveries through her artwork.

In 1929, Will Beebe, newly wed to a young female writer almost half his age, sets out to understand the deep sea. As an ornithologist and explorer, he ventures nearly half a mile beneath the ocean’s surface.

In his passionate quest, he connects with Otis Barton. The famous fortune seeker designs an enclosed submersible able to withstand the pressure of record-breaking dives.

With entertaining pitches and backing from various patrons, the project begins south of Bermuda. Once there, the research team gathers at a laboratory set up on Nonsuch Island. However, technical delays, necessary testing, precarious refinements, and a stock market crash threaten the completion of the “bathysphere.” But Beebe and Barton persevere. They put their trust, and lives, in the hands of the invention.

Politsch delivers brilliantly detailed descriptions of Beebe’s various sightings. Whether “coral clinging, weaving seaweeds dangling … tissue-thin pearl shells … ” an unknown quartet of fish, with “bird-like beaks … standing upright on a thin tailfin … colors brilliant” or bioluminescent fish in an abyss likened to “a moonless starlit night” – the intricate illuminate the nuances of this far-reaching, mysterious seascape.

Politsch weaves themes of love, loss, and heartfelt burdens through his story.

While Else Bostelmann employs her unique ability to translate Beebe’s reports into beautiful artistic renderings, Beebe enjoys an open marriage – disregarding his wife’s feelings on the matter; indeed, he has several romantic liaisons. Bostelmann proves a character with the skill to observe human dynamics taking place within the island and its work. And, ultimately, this story shows the need for forgiveness and letting go of resentments.

Beebe clearly possessed the ability to charm and attract women through both charismatic and intellectual means.

However, Politsch distinguishes him as a mentor who gave women opportunities in the scientific field. The idea that “There is nothing about science that makes a man wiser than a woman …” may have been Will Beebe’s attitude regarding gender equality at the beginning of the 20^th century, though his many liaisons would certainly cloud a person’s image in society today.

Politsch’s final pages include short biographical sketches of the real-life individuals from whom this work derives. In addition to the intertwining human interest aspect of Beebe and Bostelmann, the author details the many dangerous dives far beneath the water’s surface. These dives highlight the significance of the ocean in the origins of life on our planet – and our ultimate future.

Amidst the wonder of the sea, Will Beebe and Else Bostelmann play an essential part in the advancement of oceanic science. Beebe and Bostelmann serves as an artful and engaging odyssey introducing their important work to an audience that might otherwise be unaware of their significant place in history.

January 10, 2022
JERKWATER by Jamie Zerndt – Native American Fiction, Friendship Fiction, Ethnic & Regional Fiction

Three friends in Mercer, Wisconsin find ways to deal with their problems amid a racist town in Jamie Zerndt’s Jerkwater.

Shawna Reynolds’ life changed when her white stepdad murdered her Ojibwa mother. Now living with her Naan (grandmother), Shawna surrounds herself with those who make her feel most comfortable. Besides Naan, she clings to her horse Seven, her behind-the-scenes Ojibwa boyfriend Elmer, and two white friends: Kay O’Brien and her son Douglas. But racial tension cuts through the town of Mercer itself, galvanized by a fight over fishing rights.

Soon after the death of her husband Norm, sixty-four-year-old Kay O’Brien learns that she nears the late stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Norm’s sudden demise shocks her and Douglas to the point that she withholds her recent diagnosis from him. Kay has a few church-lady friends, but feels closest to Shawna, spending time together drinking foul-tasting Manhattans. Shawna divulges that she’s been accepted into veterinary school, and in turn, Kay discloses her Alzheimer’s.

Douglas, who blames himself for his father’s death, takes over his dad’s unstable car repair business more out of guilt than aptitude. However, amongst the apparent doom and gloom of their lives, Shawna connects with animals, Douglas develops his art, and Kay still has enough wits about her to create positive change.

The three friends share something vital: they understand pain.

Each one struggles with their own unresolved issues: Shawna, anger over her mother’s death; Kay, health problems and the loss of her husband; and Douglas, caught between guilt and his desire to be an artist.

Jenna, a newbie who runs a hippish coffee house in town, takes an immediate interest in Douglas and his artwork. In the meantime, Kay discovers Norm’s poems written to a secret French love. But this upsetting news gets lost in the “Alzheimer” translation. She believes herself to be the secret love and takes off on Seven, babbling in nonsensical French. Although the situation is nothing less than strange, the friends have no idea that this bizarre moment will initiate a flurry of unforgettable and life-changing events.

Raconteur extraordinaire Jamie Zerndt produces a witty yet moving story of friendship.

Alternating his latest novel between three third-person narratives, Zerndt weaves in the local information about the Ojibwa and their constant fight with racist fishing rights in the highly-populated white town of Mercer, Wisconsin. Zerndt paints a convincing and visceral picture of emotion through his principal cast on many levels: low self-esteem, depression (leading to alcoholism), anger, and fear. His characters stay grounded, unremarkable, and relatable, especially Kay who struggles with the fact that she has no control of her mental state – something the older generation dreads.

Undoubtedly, sadness abounds from one page onward. But so does humor, love, and tenderness.

The humor arrives in darkness and sarcasm, as the characters face death and hate coming from a town dripping in racism. Sometimes, you have to laugh at pain in its face, and that’s precisely what Shawna, Kay, and Douglas do. Love unfolds awkwardly as an escape for Shawna and as a revelation for Douglas. Religion also comes into play as Kay bounces her thoughts of God between her relationship to the Catholic church, the church ladies she chums with, and a hippish priest who offers his services in an unorthodox way.

While chapters close on cliffhangers and tension builds with each character, Zerndt offers very little in the way of clues to the story’s apex. Instead, he uses the element of surprise, which allows readers to experience the depths of Shawna, Douglas, and Kay in ways they may not think possible.

Kudos to Zerndt for a brilliant literary work! Jerkwater is an absorbing read from beginning to end.

Jamie Zerndt’s Jerkwater won 1st Place in the 2019 CIBA Somerset Book Awards for Contemporary and Literary Novels.

October 8, 2021
SUGAR BIRDS by Cheryl Grey Bostrom – Coming-of-Age Fiction, Small Town Fiction, Friendships and Relationships

Sugar Birds by Cheryl Grey Bostrom is a heart-pounding coming-of-age story about two heartbroken girls who land at crossroads during one treacherous summer, as one runs to a dangerous forest and the other to a dangerous relationship in the Pacific Northwest.

As the story opens, Aggie, aged 10, and Celia, 16, have something in common: anger at their parents. That anger takes each of them on roads through very dark places – roads from which they barely manage to escape.

Aggie accidentally lights her family home on fire, then watches in horror as firefighters extract her unresponsive parents from the burning structure. She loses herself in the woods, practicing the survival techniques her father taught her, afraid that she caused her parents’ death and certain that she will be sent to jail if she is caught. But the arrest, she soon learns, is the least of her worries, as dangers imperil her survival and as guilt threatens to undo her. She is desperate and in constant danger – not from the searchers who only want to help her, but from being alone in the woods that she has never truly faced without her father’s protection.

Celia is angry with her parents for lying to her about pretty much everything involved with her summer exile to her grandmother’s farm. It’s when she joins the hunt for Aggie that Celia meets autistic savant Burnaby and charismatic, sensual Cabot. As her relationships with both grow, she must choose between the one who can help her understand herself and the one determined to claim her.

Aggie’s story is one of survival, while Celia’s is a more typical story of rebellious adolescence – or so it seems at first. Despite the difference in their ages, Aggie and Celia start from similar places. They have both lost trust in the adults in their lives and don’t know where to turn. Neither is mature enough to deal with the situations facing them.

Both girls are lost – until they come together just in time to save one another.

Readers who like survival stories will love Aggie’s journey, while those who enjoy coming-of-age stories featuring heroines who learn to rescue themselves will resonate with Celia’s path. Bostrom takes her readers gently by the hand and plunges them into an immersive tale straight from page one. Sugar Birds is a powerful coming-of-age story of betrayal and loss, rebellion and anger, friendship, forgiveness and redemption, all woven into a testament to the wondrous natural world.

March 11, 2021
WHEN a CONSCIENCE KNOCKS by James G. Skinner – Romantic Literature, Marriage/Relationships, Alzheimer’s disease

One woman’s life follows a roller-coaster ride of love, political turmoil, and tragedy in James G. Skinner’s novel When a Conscience Knocks.

Jenny Robinson enters a confessional and falls apart. Sensing her distress, the Catholic priest encourages her to divulge her story, which she does. In 1976, at the age of twenty-two, Jenny left her hometown of Richmond, England, and took a teaching job in Iran.

It’s during this time where she meets Juan Miguel Ochoa, a Gallaecian. A diplomat at the Spanish Embassy, Juan is near twenty years her senior. Romance ensues, and within less than two years, Jenny and Juan marry.

Jenny has no idea what she’s getting into as she blindly trusts Juan’s lead throughout his diplomatic career. During their marriage, Juan’s work takes them to numerous trips through Europe, Central and South America, and the USA amid political tensions, wars, and terrorism. But as they approach their twenty-fifth anniversary, life throws a disturbing curveball. Juan’s erratic behavior heralds the early onset of Alzheimer’s. While Jenny’s life abruptly fills with uncertainty, the last thing she expects is to be involved in an affair.

New author James G. Skinner opens with a conflicting scene as his principal character, Jenny Robinson Ochoa, confesses to committing adultery. At the same time, her husband slowly succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease in a nursing care facility. What follows in the twenty-plus chapters is the account she discloses to a Catholic priest.

Jenny’s feelings and thoughts about her husband’s involvement with the chaotic global events surrounding them dominate Skinner’s first-person British narrative. Her continual ponderings, covered within a chronological list of backstories, capture her personality’s development amid the ebb and flow of their marriage, travels, and political upheavals. Conversations between Jenny and Juan focus on explanations of world history and Juan’s diplomatic involvement to a politically uninterested wife. Although the many dialogue scenes that present facts tend to be a bit dry, Skinner does a decent job weaving in historical events.

As stated in the Dedication, the purpose of When a Conscience Knocks is to provide readers with an example of how Alzheimer’s affects intimate relationships. No one would dispute that Alzheimer’s disease is devastating to both victims and loved ones, and Skinner’s fictional character is not exempt. Rather than placing the debilitating disease front and center, Skinner pivots the attention upon the partner. Indeed, this is a coming-of-age tale—one’s woman’s struggle to find her identity, her voice amid conflict and relational codependency.

When a Conscience Knocks takes an alternate route, describing the pain and torment those on the sidelines experience when their partners succumb to Alzheimer’s disease’s devastation.

October 2, 2020
The ROMANCE DIET: BODY IMAGE and the WARS WE WAGE on OURSELVES by Destiny Allison – Memoir, Weight Management, Body Image

A woman struggling with external self-image finds that inner self-awareness is the true key to permanent, meaningful reshaping, in Destiny Allison’s unusual, memorable true story, The Romance Diet – Body Image and the Wars We Wage on Ourselves.

Happily married and successful, metal sculptor Destiny Allison was forced to give up her chosen profession when an unexpected health disaster—damage to her spine— took its toll. A year later, after fighting with pain and subsequent weight gain, she was further devastated to learn that her cholesterol was dangerously high. Fortunately, she found support from her husband, Steve, a thriving entrepreneur. Having gained a lot of unnecessary pounds himself, and concerned about his wife’s declining health, he agreed to go on a diet with her. At first, it didn’t seem too difficult; the couple would simply order or prepare one meal and split it. They took up dancing at nightclubs, reviving lost youthfulness as the pounds disappeared. The exercise made their bodies more attractive; their sex life regained its energy.

Gradually, though, the process began to fray. Destiny, now running her own business in cooperation with her spouse, wanted more credit for the work she did but began to notice that clients and colleagues always preferred to do business with the man. Steve, innocently, basked in the attention and took his superior status for granted. His wife began to suspect, was sure, that he was having an affair. As their relationship fractured, it became increasingly difficult, sometimes impossible, to communicate. Destiny felt that she was the one always conceding and sacrificing. Things came to a head when she was molested by a man in one of the bars where the couple liked to show off their sometimes suggestive dancing feats. The incident brought back memories of a rape that happened when she was still in her teens, and Steve’s attempts to console her turned into a shared nightmare.

Told with utter frankness, The Romance Diet reveals, what Allison describes as “…my personal hell, my deepest shame.” Women will recognize and learn from the many ways that this bold, feminist autobiographer examines her many rationalizations, her self-abnegating strategies for getting along with men, and most importantly, readers will share Destiny’s growing sense of pride and empowerment as she learns that these tactics are not necessary, either in casual social context or in the center of a hard-won, long term, committed relationship.

Author (Shaping Destiny, Pipe Dreams, Bitter Root) Allison has developed her artistry as a well-practiced wordsmith, but just as importantly, here she demonstrates her ability as an explorer of that perilous country, the mind. She and Steve lost weight, nearly lost their marriage, and were able to recoup the companionship and mutual sense of responsibility that marriage requires without the extra pounds—all in all, a truly remarkable accomplishment.

In this highly emotive memoir, a couple’s shared commitment to improvement takes longer and hurts more than originally planned, but the result is a new, better and brighter promise—one that can endure in Destiny Allison’s The Romance Diet.

September 6, 2017
An Editorial Review of “Mixed Blessings” by Harriet Cannon and Rhoda Berlin

What genuinely makes a difference in a couple’s ability and willingness to nurture and maintain their relationship? Rhoda Berlin and Harriet Cannon, both highly insightful psychotherapists, address this significant question through a series of fictional case studies of multicultural and multiethnic couples.

Each couple’s story demonstrates a crucial concept, such as ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s own culture is always right; cultural universal, an element, pattern or institution that is common in some form to all human cultures, such as age-related roles; and acculturation, adapting to the patterns or customs of a new culture.

Other impediments to relationship harmony that are illustrated by the couples’ case studies include: cultural loss, the experience of moving out of one’s culture, social class or ethnic enclave resulting in a sense of estrangement; subculture, membership in an in-group within the majority culture, such as the military or a sorority; cultural grieving, the inability to overcome the loss from migrating to another country or marrying into a different type of family culture; cultural identity, the culture we identify with and feel as a “second skin;” and code switching, the ability to move fluently from one language and cultural context to another.

Children accomplish cultural shifts most easily, code switching from their family’s way of life to a new language or social mores within months. Middle-aged people tend to resist change, hanging on to their traditional life-ways. Older persons may never make a successful shift out of their traditional culture, religion or social class.

Particularly revealing is the notion that people socialized in an individualistic culture, such as America, Canada, the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand or Western Europe, have a demonstrably different social context for relating than people growing up in a collectivist type society. For instance, the extended family remains a major concern for persons growing up in such areas as rural China, Asia, Eastern Europe or India.

Rather than cherishing an improved career or making lifestyle improvements through geographic changes, as in individualistic cultures, extended family-oriented persons are unwilling to sacrifice traditional values of support, loyalty and social approval. For example, a partially acculturated wife who grew up with the expectation that she must cater to her culturally grieving mother’s unceasing demands will find her more successfully adapted husband very unsympathetic to such arrangements.

Multicultural and multiethnic couples get especially hung-up in the shift from early to later stages of their relationship, such as when they encounter the extended family. Let’s highlight one case. William, an American, had an uncle who served in World War II and had returned from that war profoundly impacted by years of internment in a Japanese prison camp. William’s implicit family rule of “never buy Japanese” proved to be a serious drawback for his new companion, Eve, a Japanese-American woman, who had suffered the indignities of living as a child in an American prison camp simply because she was Japanese. Eve experienced “hidden trauma” as she confronted the family’s prejudice and discrimination, contributing to her withdrawal, but William insisted they work out their difficulties. Through counseling, Eve and William developed a “big picture” of their situation, encouraging the extended family to leave their ethnocentrism behind. Now, family members even buy Japanese cars!

Social class differences can be nearly as disruptive as ethnic or racial distinctions. Take the situation of an Indian couple, one from a Brahmin family and the other from a middle class background. The authors portray how cultural differences in their parents’ cooking, gift giving, household décor or child rearing practices can readily upset a couple’s harmony.

Mixed Blessings is a fascinating and educational guide to understanding and healing couples’ relationships under pressure from ethnic, geographic, racial, social class and other cultural disparities. Not only do the authors provide incredibly lucid portraits of couples’ differences that make a difference, but they also indicate steps couples can take to minimize or eradicate apparent diversities.

I strongly recommend this book for its courageous leap forward to elucidate the “hidden culture” that separates and divides loving families and especially for the authors’ substantial skills in showing us the various ways of healing the breaches.

Travelers, educators and students going abroad, along with business people who want a better understanding of how to recognize and bridge cultural gaps would also benefit from reading Mixed Blessings.

November 23, 2014