FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL

FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL
  Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
  By Sheri Fink
  Illustrated. 558 pages. Crown Publishers. $27.
  Eight years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Floodwaters rose in the Uptown streets surrounding Memorial Medical Center, where hundreds of people slowly realized that they were stranded. The power grid failed, toilets overflowed, stench-filled corridors went dark. Diesel generators gave partial electricity. Hospital staff members smashed windows to circulate air. Gunshots could be heard, echoing in the city. Two stabbing victims turned up at this hospital, which was on life support itself, and were treated.
  By Day 4 of the hurricane, the generators had conked out. Fifty-two patients in an intensive care wing lay in sweltering darkness; only a few were able to walk. The doctors and nurses, beyond exhaustion, wondered how many could survive.
  When evacuations were done, 45 patients had not made it out alive. The State of Louisiana began an investigation; forensic consultants determined that 23 corpses had elevated levels of morphine and other drugs, and decided that 20 were victims of homicide.
  In her book “Five Days at Memorial,” Dr. Sheri Fink explores the excruciating struggle of medical professionals deciding to give fatal injections to those at the brink of death. Dr. Fink, a physician turned journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for her investigation of these events in a 2009 joint assignment for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine. This book is much more than an extension of that report. Although she had the material for a gripping disaster story, Dr. Fink has slowed the narrative pulse to investigate situational ethics: what happens when caregivers steeped in medicine’s supreme value, preserving life, face traumatic choices as the standards of civilization collapse.
  This approach is a literary gamble,

In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance

From Wilbert Rideau, the award-winning journalist who spent forty-four years in Louisiana prisons working against unimaginable odds to redeem himself, the story of a remarkable life: a crime, its punishment, and ultimate triumph.

After killing a woman in a moment of panic following a botched bank robbery, Rideau, denied a fair trial, was improperly sentenced to death at the age of nineteen. After more than a decade on death row, his sentence was amended to life imprisonment, and he joined the inmate population of the infamous Angola penitentiary. Soon Rideau became editor of the prison newsmagazine The Angolite, which under his leadership became an uncensored, daring, and crusading journal instrumental in reforming the violent prison and the corrupt Louisiana justice system.

With the same incisive feel for detail that brought Rideau great critical acclaim, here he brings to vivid life the world of the prison through the power of his pen. We see Angola’s unique culture, encompassing not only rivalries, sexual slavery, ingrained racism, and daily, soul-killing injustices but also acts of courage and decency by keeper and kept alike. As we relive Rideau’s remarkable rehabilitation—he lived a more productive life in prison than do most outside—we also witness his long struggle for justice.

In the Place of Justice goes far beyond the confines of a prison memoir, giving us a searing exposé of the failures of our legal system framed within the dramatic tale of a man who found meaning, purpose, and hope in prison. This is a deeply moving, eloquent, and inspirational story about perseverance, unexpected friendships and love, and the possibility that good can be forged under any circumstances. (amazon) - 

Random Family

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Scribner, $17). LeBlanc spent a decade following a South Bronx, N.Y., family in order to create this beautiful book, a riveting tale that captures the human drama of poverty’s challenges. [Reporter Emily Brady embedded in an insular community for a year to produce “Humboldt,” her book-length portrait of a California region getting rich on marijuana farming. Here, she names some favorite books that served as inspiration.]

Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, $27)

 “Novelists get called master storytellers all the time, but Curtis Sittenfeld really is one,” said Maggie Shipstead in The Washington Post. A tale about clairvoyant twin sisters may sound like an excursion into soapy melodrama, but the author of Prep and American Wife makes readers feel as if they’re listening to the long, candid outpouring of “a matter-of-fact but mesmerizing friend.” As adults, Violet and Kate Shramm have adapted to their shared gift in diametrically opposed ways—one becoming a professional psychic while the other, the book’s narrator, has chosen to suppress her premonitions and live as conventionally as possible. But after Violet appears on national TV predicting that a catastrophic earthquake will soon strike St. Louis, Kate is forced to decide what she truly believes in. In the suspenseful tale that follows, plain, likable Kate serves as an indispensable “anchor of realism,” said Trine Tsouderos in the Chicago Tribune. This is what Sittenfeld has always done best: “She makes plain riveting.”

The Fall

The Fall by Albert Camus
You enter a bar in Amsterdam. A man begins to speak to you, his strange, seductive confession suggesting that you are somehow complicit. This 1956 novel is a masterpiece. It taught me that the relationship between reader and writer could be explored explicitly on the page. I’ve practiced my craft differently ever since [Mohsin Hamid’s acclaimed new novel, “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,” charts the rise of a young man in today’s Pakistan. Here, the author of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” names six books that taught him how to write.]

Use of Weapons

Use of Weapons by Iain Banks (Orbit, $15). An engrossing meditation on love, relationships, betrayal, and the true price of winning at all costs. Banks uses well-drawn characters to make his science-fiction fantasy worlds compelling and believable. All of his books are excellent; this just happens to be my favorite [NFL punter Chris Kluwe, whose scathing letter to an anti-gay-marriage state lawmaker became an Internet]

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

by Karen Joy Fowler 
(Marian Wood/Putnam, $27)

“This brave, bold, shattering novel reminds us what it means to be human, in the best and worst sense,” said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. Karen Joy Fowler, who’s known for the breezy 2004 best seller The Jane Austen Book Club, has this time created “a different sort of beast.” Rosemary Cooke, a 22-year-old student, is looking back on her upbringing to explain how her once-happy Midwestern family was torn apart. “Some startling facts emerge” before the story’s crucial reveal, said Michael Upchurch in The Seattle Times. Rosemary’s sister disappeared when Rosemary was 5, and her brother later went AWOL as a radical animal-rights activist. Fowler uses the mysteries of those events to explore weighty questions about the ways humans and animals differ, but the “big, warm, loudly beating heart” of the novel is in “its gradually pieced-together tale of family togetherness, disruption, and reconciliation.”