Author: Suzann Ledbetter
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 9781460308806
Category: Fiction
Page: 358
View: 907
Halfway to happily ever after…probably. Hannah Garvey, the resident manager of Valhalla Springs, an exclusive retirement community, thought she had this love thing all sewn up. She's engaged to David Hendrickson, the hunky Kinderhook County sheriff, and thinks the future looks pretty rosy—until one of Sanity, Missouri's most esteemed citizens becomes the county's latest homicide victim. Meanwhile, Delbert Bisbee and his gang of senior gumshoes are driving Hannah nuts, doling out advice, delving into an old missing-persons case and digging dirt where they don't belong. Literally. And no matter what they unearth, there's just no halfway about it…life has a funny way of happening when you're making other plans. "A crowd-pleasing, lightweight whodunit filled with unabashedly wacky characters…a comic romance mystery that gives equal weight to all three elements and caps it with an ending that doesn't disappoint." —Publishers Weekly on Once a Thief
Author: Jennifer Morales
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 9780299303648
Category: Fiction
Page: 203
View: 469
When Johnquell, an African American teen, suffers a serious accident in the home of his white neighbor, Mrs. Czernicki, his community must find ways to bridge divisions between black and white, gay and straight, old and young. Set in one of the nation’s most highly segregated cities—Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Meet Me Halfway tells stories of connections in a community with a tumultuous and divided past. In nine stories told from diverse perspectives, Jennifer Morales captures a Rust Belt city’s struggle to establish a common ground and a collective vision of the future. Morales gives life to multifaceted characters—white schoolteachers and senior citizens, Latino landlords, black and Puerto Rican teens, political activists, and Vietnam vets. As their lives unfold in these stories, we learn about Johnquell’s family—his grandparents’ involvement in the local Black Panther Party, his sister’s on-again, off-again friendship with a white classmate, and his aunt’s identity crisis as she finds herself falling in love with a woman. We also meet Johnquell’s mother, Gloria, and his school friend Taquan, who is struggling to chart his own future. As an activist mother in the thick of Milwaukee politics, Morales developed a keen ear and a tender heart for the kids who have inherited the city’s troubled racial legacy. With a critical eye on promises unfulfilled, Meet Me Halfway raises questions about the notion of a “postracial” society and, with humor and compassion, lifts up the day-to-day work needed to get there. Runner-up, Short Story/Anthology, Midwest Book Awards Best books for public & secondary school libraries from university presses, American Library Association Wisconsin representative for “Great Lakes Reads,” Library of Congress Center for the Book and its affiliated Midwest centers Outstanding Achievement Award, Wisconsin Library Association (one of ten 2015 books chosen)
Author: Mariana Caplan
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 9781935387510
Category: Religion
Page: 259
View: 759
Caplan (TO TOUCH IS TO LIVE) asserts that "the reality of the present condition of contemporary spirituality in the West is one of grave distortion, confusion, fraud, and a fundamental lack of education." She claims that, as positive as the tremendous rise in spirituality is, there is not any context for determining whether any particular teaching, or teacher, is truly enlightening. Caplan compiles interviews with such noted spiritual masters as Joan Halifax, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi on the nature of enlightenment. In the first section, Caplan examines the motivations people have for seeking enlightenment and contends that very often they seek this state as a means of gratifying the ego. This "presumption of enlightenment," she says, often afflicts teachers masquerading as spiritual leaders. These teachers sometimes look down on their students and gloat over how far they have come and how far the students have to go. A second section focuses on "The Dangers of Mystical Experience," in which Caplan claims that many seekers mistake the mystical experience itself for enlightenment; she and the teachers she interviews all assert that enlightenment always involves gaining some knowledge about self and others. The third section, "Corruption and Consequence," focuses on the nature of power and corruption; the fourth section, "Navigating the Mine Field: Preventing Dangers on the Path," provides a survey of the ways in which practitioners can avoid the "pitfalls of false enlightenment." A final section, "Disillusionment, Humility and the Beginning of Spiritual Life," concludes that "the Real spiritual life [is] the life of total annihilation and the return to just what is." Caplan's illuminating book calls into question the motives of the spiritual snake handlers of the modern age and urges seekers to pay the price of traveling the hard road to true enlightenment.
