Hot Chicken, invented by Thornton Prince in the 1930s, is the mostly-true story of how Nashville’s infamous “Hot Chicken” came to be.

The restaurant Thornton opened, Thornton’s BBQ Chicken Shack, is still open today. His signature dish, or imitations thereof, can be found on restaurant menus across the nation.

Read the full story in WELL READ Magazine here »

The American dream is just that: a dream. For most in the middle class, it is out of reach. For the poor, the safety net has been so shredded they face the bleakest of futures.

Both parties have been complicit in this. The last president we had who truly cared about the people and delivered for them was FDR. It was the programs he fought for that brought us out of the depression: financial reform, public work projects, Social Security, the Civilian Conservation Corp, unemployment insurance. The GI Bill of rights, signed into law in 1944, provided for low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, dedicated payments of tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college, or vocational school. These programs, and the concomitant rise of unions, transformed America.

Our political parties, both Republicans and Democrats, have watered down, fought against, or eliminated nearly all these things. Is it any wonder so many voted for a man who promised he would change all that? He would “drain the swamp?”

(Never mind that he intended to do none of these things, that he had no moral compass, that he cared for no one but himself.)

Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan to address climate change, rein in the cost of prescription drugs and health care, close tax loopholes, lower child care and education costs, provide clean energy jobs, invest in teachers and schools, these things come closer to the transformational changes we need than anything since FDR assumed the presidency on that cold, rainy day in March of 1933.

There’s no way to know if the picture C.W. Gortner paints of Lucrezia in The Vatican Princess is real or not. Did this girl of Spanish origin “suffer repeated washes of ash and lemon juice to bring out the gold in (her) hair?” Was she raped by her brother, Juan Borgia, and did she become pregnant as a result of that single encounter? Did she then allow her father to claim paternity of the child, thus giving credence to the rumor that Lucrezia had slept with her father? Was her love for her older brother, Cesare, as innocent as she professed?

The historical record is silent on these matters. The truth is unknowable. But recent studies suggest Lucrezia was not the femme fatale she has been portrayed. Rather, she was a pawn used by her family to advance their political standing.

In The Vatican Princess, Lucrezia is well-educated, perceptive, and intuitive. A true Borgia, she is as capable of intrigue as are those around her, yet there is within this slender girl a core of integrity and morality that will not bend. While she values family above all else, she is not willing to sacrifice her own happiness in order to advance the power and prestige of her father and brothers.

Throughout the book, it is striking how closely Lucrezia observes the people around her. What she sees in their eyes is often an indication of their true motives, their intent, their secret plans and yearnings. For C. W. Gortner and the character he has created, the eyes are indeed the mirror of the soul.

Of Rodrigo Borgia, Lucrezia’s father, she says: “His eyes were intensely alive despite their small size, examining me as if for visible wounds.”

Of her brother Juan: He “shot her an insolent grin, his blue-green eyes gleaming in his swarthy face.”

Of Michelotto, the mercenary employed by Sforza: “He had strange eyes, neither blue nor gray but a subtle color in between, like dusk.”

Again and again, the author focuses on that feature: “his slitted eyes displaying the contempt,” “gazing into his magnetic, dark eyes,” “eyes shining in illicit excitement,” “a small trim man with protuberant eyes,” “her eyes stalked him,” “his eyes gleamed ebony-black,” “his eyes, usually so lucid, were red-rimmed,” “his cat-green eyes gleamed,” “eyes closed as if in ecstasy,” “eyes at half-mast…”

Such careful observations redound to the character Gortner has created: the reader sees the world as Lucrezia sees it. We sympathize with her; we rejoice when she rejoices, we mourn when she mourns.

Though still a child, Lucrecia accedes to her father’s wishes: in a lavish ceremony she weds Giovanni Sforza. Five years later, the marriage is still not consummated, Lucrezia is hidden away in a convent pregnant with her hated brother’s child, and the Sforza family is out of favor. Lucrezia’s father secures for his beloved daughter an annulment.

She is quickly betrothed to another man, and this one is to her liking. Lucrezia’s marriage to Alfonso of Aragon is another attempt on the part of the Borgias to solidify their power and extend their control over warring parts of Italy. But times are unsettled. Alliances are broken. Loyalties change. Power slips away. Alonso is condemned as a traitor, and he dies at the hand of Lucrezia’s brother.

“He was laid to rest in the chapel of Santa Maria della Febbre near the basilica, under a slab of stone, the funeral Mass and tapers mocking the very faith they purported to exalt.”

Lucrezia leaves Rome, believing she has “left nothing behind, that Rome, with its savage entanglements and lethal secrets, held no more power over me.”

Safe in the castle of Nepi, she devotes herself to the child fathered by Alfonso and to healing: “Grief is selfish,” she says. “It enshrouds us, clutches us to its desiccated breast like an anxious mother.

“I suffered every night as darkness encroached, after the servants cleared dinner from the table and then heaped kindling on the fire… before finally leaving me with the castle dogs at my feet. I made myself remember, no matter how much it hurt. I wanted to feel every moment, from that day I first saw (Alonso) on the road, his smile resplendent, dazzling all who beheld him.”

The book ends there, with Lucrezia in her castle, but her story goes on. She is a Borgia, and though she has renounced her family, Borgia blood still runs in her veins. There will be a third marriage, again arranged for political advantage, and other children.

Lay out the known historical facts about Lucrezia’s life, and it is difficult to see how she could ever be portrayed as a sympathetic character. Witness the scene when she lay with her beloved brother, and she felt passion rise within her. The idea of incest is so anathema to us we shudder at the thought, yet it is an integral part of the story.

Put down the book and consider the times. Picture a young girl who kept a kitten in her room for company. Think of how she idolized her older brother, would do anything to please him, and her carnal love for him is less reprehensible. Think of the later scene where Cesare admits he had his brother, Lucrezia’s rapist, killed. Consider his final visit to Lucrezia, his face pockmarked with syphilitic sores, his sorrowful reminisces of a time when they were both innocent children, until they were “shaped with (their father’s) illusions, his flaws, never once realizing that what he created was only a distorted reflection of his own self.”

C.W. Gortner has set about in this book to rescue Lucrezia from the harsh judgment of history: that she was a murderer, a whore, a witch. That she slept with her father. That she was as ambitious and unscrupulous as either of her brothers.

By his careful intertwining of known historical facts with fictional techniques, Gortner has created a narrative that would seem to more accurately reflect who Lucrezia Borgia really was. He has made Lucrezia’s story more complete that it might ever have been, more complicated, and utterly fascinating.

It has been a challenging year, but we all got through it, didn’t we? And there were lots of good things that happened.

In December I learned that Kylie’s Ark: The Making of a Veterinarian had been chosen as a Kirkus Best Indie Book of 2017. I am enormously gratified at how this book just keeps on keeping on. When we published it, we knew the odds were against us. How could we expect a novel about a young veterinarian to not get lost in the million or more books that are published annually?

Thanks to readers who posted reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, reviewers at Kirkus who loved the book, and librarians across the nation who added it to their collections, Kylie’s Ark has done very well. Better than I could ever have expected. I am thrilled, humbled, and hopeful my next book will be as well-received.

Books, I believe, educate us, soothe our pain, lift us to heights otherwise unattainable. These are a few I read in 2017. They kept me sane, they made me laugh, they elicited sighs and a deep sense of appreciation. All of them made me more attuned to the plight of others.

1. American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee: This is the story of O-Six, the alpha female of Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley wolf pack, the most photographed and surely the most beloved wolf in America. She was killed by a trophy hunter.

2. The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers: Inspired by a true story of a woman who bore an illegitimate child while her husband was away, the author has turned this sparse bit of Civil War history into a tale of enduring love that triumphs over the devastation wrought by war.

3. The Good People by Hannah Kent: This author just gets better and better. Set in the 1820s in Ireland, it’s the story of a woman left to care for her severely disabled grandson. Wow.

4. The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett: When a tiger turned man-eater in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, the people waited in stoic silence for someone to rid them of the scourge. Jim Corbett, British-Indian hunter and tracker-turned-conservationist, was that someone.

5. News of the World by Paulette Jiles: Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd may be the most endearing protagonist ever created. Tasked with returning a ten-year-old white girl recaptured from an Indian tribe to her relatives, these two unlikely characters set out on a four hundred mile journey.

6. A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams: What a cast of characters: the beautiful Mrs. Teresa Marshall who loves a man twenty years younger, Teresa’s brother, Ox, a man in desperate need of financial rescue, war hero Octavian Rofrano who falls in love with the girl Ox plans to marry. The plot is intricate, the love scenes sensuous, the characters so true you want to invite them to dinner, just to see them interact.

7. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall: Ever wonder why the United States is an economic power house, and Brazil, approximately the same size as the U.S., is not? Why France is a major European power and Spain is not? Why Russia is constantly seeking to expand its territory? This book will tell you.

All books are not meant for all people. We have different tastes. These are some I loved. What I learned from them has changed me, and isn’t that what reading is all about.

Martel must feel, deep in his soul, that animals are as deserving of our love, compassion, and care as are humans. How else to interpret the priest’s version of the crucified Jesus? The strange autopsy in the second section of the book? The love between man and ape in the third?

The book is not religious in the traditional sense. But it is deeply spiritual. The three stories, set years apart, are bound together by a quest for understanding loss, for coping with grief, and for learning to live in a world of unimaginable pain. It is possible, one must conclude, that the creatures over which we have “dominion” have much to teach us about life.

The High Mountains of Portugal deserves every prize out there, and more. I absolutely loved it.

Traveling along the canals and rivers with a young author seized with writer’s block, his beloved books, and his two cats, Perdu seeks to fulfill a promise he made to his lover, Manon, twenty years earlier. Only after reaching the home where she once lived can he find healing, acceptance, and a reawakening of his own sexuality.

Like the waterways Jean and his friends must navigate, the book moves slowly, but it is a lovely read.

In order to do business in Russia, oligarchs like Berezovsky needed to control the government. They did it by cozying up to President Boris Yeltsin. With the government effectively in their pockets, they created monopolies, cornered markets, and controlled the media. When Yeltsin’s health deteriorated, they devised a plan to replace him with Vladimir Putin.

They knew not what they were doing. The man they put in power ultimately turned against them. And he brought his own style of KGB savagery and corruption to the country.
The world was shocked when former KGB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, died of polonium poisoning in London in 2006. But that was only the beginning. The country has today descended into kleptocracy. Journalists are routinely silenced. Political opponents are gunned down in the streets of Moscow.

Mezrich’s book can be read as a cautionary tale; if the oligarchs are allowed to control the government, as they did in Russia, who knows what havoc they may wreak.

Leviathan is the dramatic story of an auto mechanic, Kolya, who lives in a fishing village on the Berants Sea. The mayor wants his land, his business, and his house. When Kolya turns down his offer to buy the property, the mayor resorts to methods both brutal and deadly.

In a scene that is shocking in its viciousness and total lack of compassion, a giant construction crane destroys the house Kolya has built with his own hands. It crashes down onto the roof, then bites into the front of the building, swinging the maw from side to side, taking down whole sections, destroying everything in its path. The table where Kolya sat with his wife and son, the windows that looked out onto the water, the lace curtains, the flower pots, the dishes, all are destroyed.

A leviathan, you realize, is not simply a monster from the deep. It is a crane that destroys what a man has built. It is a government that tramples its citizens.

Leviathan was nominated as one of the best foreign films of the year. It is a masterful piece of movie-making.

There is brutality, there is cruelty, but there is also compassion, music, and story-telling. Werner’s job is to find and destroy the radios that are transmitting information to the British and the Americans. With the Allied forces landing on the beaches at Normandy and enemy planes in the air, Werner hears something on the radio that reminds him of the broadcasts he heard when he was a child in the orphanage.

It is the radio and the things Werner hears that bring him to the coastal village of Saint-Malo where Marie-Laure is hiding. The music she plays, the stories she “reads,” and finally, her cry for help, draw him to her. Ultimately, they cause him to reject the brutality of war and the role he has played in it.

Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is richly layered, intricately plotted, and breathtakingly beautiful. Reading it, you know you are in the hands of a master story-teller.

The world Anthony Doerr has created, though filled with the horror of war, is full of light.

This was the same route taken by a SWAT team of U.S. soldiers, medical doctors, and scientists twenty-five years earlier. In November,1989, an elite group of men and women made their way from Fort Detrick, an Army research facility near Thurmont, MD, to a “Monkey House” in Reston, Virginia. Inside that building, a quarantine center for animals destined for laboratories, were over 500 monkeys that had been infected with the Ebola virus. The operation to destroy the monkeys, clean, disinfect, and fumigate the house, would take eighteen days.

It is a horrifying story, one that is recounted in Richard Preston’s book, The Hot Zone. Published in 1994, this New York Times Best Seller sold over two and a half million copies.

Preston’s accounts of the deaths of the Charles Monet and Dr. Shem Musoke in Nairobi in the early 1980s is as frightening as any science fiction tale. Yet they pale in comparison to what might have happened had the never-before-seen strain of Ebola in the quarantine facility not been contained.

Despite stories that appeared in the Washington Post and other newspapers, the public was largely unaware of the danger posed by this new outbreak.The crisis was handled so expertly by the team from Fort Detrick, surely we had nothing to worry about. Ebola was an African disease, and these monkeys had been imported from the Philippines. There had been outbreaks of Ebola in remote African villages, but they had quickly died out, or been brought under control.

On September 19th, 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan boarded a commercial airline that would take him from Liberia to Brussels. The next day he flew to Washington, then on to Dallas. When he stepped off the plane, he carried within him the deadly virus.

Throughout the book Preston notes the similarity between the AIDS virus and Ebola. Both appear to emerge from ecologically damaged parts of the earth, i.e., rain forests that are disturbed and/or destroyed. These places, he argues, are “the deep reservoirs of life on the planet…. When viruses come out of an ecosystem (where they have lived for hundreds if not thousands of years), they tend to spread in waves through the human population, like echoes from the dying biosphere.”

The AIDS virus, experts believe, emerged from the African rain forest in the 1970s, jumped species, and is still burning through the human population. Ebola was first documented in 1976 in remote villages in Central Africa near tropical rain forests. Since then, it has appeared in waves in Africa and elsewhere, though none of these flare-ups approached the magnitude and severity of the 2014 outbreak.

In The Hot Zone, Preston  poses the question: Could our damaged earth be mounting an immune response to the human species? Do our slash and burn policies, our raping of natural resources, our belief in the value of the human species over all others presage a time when nature will find a way to bring back some semblance of balance to our planet?

Twenty years after its original publication, The Hot Zone is again a best-seller. The story Preston tells is as relevant today as it was in 1994. Like the canary carried into coal mines, Preston’s book is a warning of danger ahead.