Style and Savings Reads: July 2020

The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin, 2018
Short Synopsis: Emma and Zadie, best friends (and medical professionals) thought they had buried a painful experience in the past until their former chief resident from medical school moves to town.

This book felt like Grey’s Anatomy in book form. I’m not a fan of the show and I can’t really say that I enjoyed this book. Since it is centered around a pediatric cardiologist and a trauma surgeon, there are descriptions of gory medical procedures and literal life and death situations. The medical theme was present throughout the book and not just when they were at work. Saving a choking man at the country club and staying home to care for sick kids when they all catch the flu showed that a doctor’s work is never done. I admire the dedication, skill and sacrifice it takes to have this type of career. I also found it happily surprising that their friendship could survive the decades and the competing commitments of marriage and motherhood.

The author did a great job of keeping The Secret until the end of the book. Each chapter alternated between Emma and Zadie and between present day and their med school years. The short chapters kept me turning pages as pieces of the past were uncovered. The suspense of wanting to know what happened was really the only reason I kept reading.

Purchase Here

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, 2019
Short Synopsis: As a consequence for a class presentation gone wrong, high school senior Alaine Beauparlant’s dad sends to to her mother’s family in Haiti to complete a volunteer immersion project and learn more about her family’s history and culture.

Alaine is a high school senior at a Catholic school in Miami, Florida looking forward to graduation and college. She hopes to attend Columbia – her famous journalist mother’s alma mater. “Call me Rumi and Sir, because the Ivys are calling my name”. Alaine is confident, smart, and funny making her a character readers will care for and want to see succeed.

The framework for the story is her Latin American History/Creative Writing class project to write about and present on notable individuals in a country’s revolution and to highlight their defining moments and claims to fame. Being Hatian American, Alaine chooses to learn about Haiti. I really loved that this book was told through journal entries, letters, postcards, group chats, and emails in Alaine’s unique voice.

Alaine’s Tati Estelle (her mother’s twin sister) is a prominent person in Haiti as both the Minister of Tourism and also as CEO and Founder of the nonprofit where Alaine interns to complete her volunteer assignment. When she’s not working, Alaine spends time getting to know her mother, the famous Celeste Beauparlant who has spent most of Alaine’s childhood in D.C. or travelling the world as a political journalist. ( I really think Estelle and Celeste are gorgeous names for sisters!)

“History is a Compass if You Just Know How to Read It”, is the chapter title that most resonated with me. I generally don’t take much interest in history, but I have been told that it is important to learn about the past to avoid making the same mistakes or to understand why things are the way they are today. Through her school project and spending time with her family, Alaine learns about Haiti’s history and uncovers past and present family secrets. Having arrived at a turning point in her career, the story ends with Celeste and Alaine begin working on a new project together.

Purchase Here

Lakewood by Megan Giddings, 2020
Short Synopsis: When Lena’s grandmother dies, she discovers how much debt her family is in. Lena drops out of college to financially provide her sick mother by taking a job as a medical research subject for a secret government program.
I immediately noticed some similarities with The Circle by Dave Eggers with the main character being a daughter who takes a job that has great pay and health benefits to care for an ailing parent. In exchange for financial security, she sacrifices both privacy and the separation of work from her personal life.
The compensation Lena receives is a relief, but she also becomes increasingly aware that it is a form of exploitation.

“If Crooked Nose hadn’t been sitting there, Lena would have said, “I think having my teeth for as long as possible is more valuable than money.”

I have to wonder if the participants would agree to these risks if they weren’t in financially desperate situations. Most participants in the The Lakewood Project are are Black, Latinx, or of Indian descent, while researchers are White. The book confronts the history as recent as the 1970’s of unauthorized medical experiments performed on African American people. For this reason, Lakewood has been compared to both The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the 2017 film Get Out.

I can also see similarities to the Amazon Prime series Homecoming.

There is a lot to think about in regards to the ethics of medical research. Participants in The Lakewood Project are told that they are serving to improve the lives of future generations. We have to wonder – at what cost to themselves?

Lakewood unexpectedly shares a commonality with Dear Haiti, Love Alaine, in that both stories emphasize the importance of family passing down knowledge and not keeping secrets so that the next generation doesn’t repeat the same mistakes.

I was excited to find out that Megan Giddings lives in Indiana and earned her MFA at Indiana University. Her writing is imaginative, descriptive and haunting to the point that I found myself thinking about the book in between reading its chapters. If you haven’t read this book yet, I recommend it!

Linking up with more book bloggers at Show Us Your Books and Modern Mrs Darcy