INSPY Shortlists and Judges

Apr15

The shortlists and the judges for the INSPY Awards have been announced, and I am honored and pleased to be one of the judges for the category of Literature for Young People.

Here are the shortlists. The links are to my reviews of three of the books on the shortlists. I have a lot of reading to do if I want to read all of the shortlisted books —and I do (except for romance, which doesn’t interest me a a genre).

General Fiction

• Into the Free by Julie Cantrell
• Promise Me This by Cathy Gohlke
• The First Gardener by Denise Hildreth Jones
• The Messenger by Siri Mitchell
• Stardust by Carla Stewart

Romance

• To Whisper Her Name by Tamera Alexander
• Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden
• Love’s Reckoning by Laura Frantz
• Breath of Dawn by Kristen Heitzmann
• My Stubborn Heart by Becky Wade

Mystery/Thriller

• Gone to Ground by Brandilyn Collins
• A Plain Death by Amanda Flower
• Placebo by Steven James
• Trinity: Military War Dog by Ronie Kendig
• Proof by Jordyn Redwood

Literature for Young People

• Wreath by Judy Christie
• With a Name like Love by Tess Hilmo
• Dead Man’s Hand by Eddie Jones
• There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones
• Cake: Love, Chickens, and a Taste of Peculiar by Joyce Magnin

Speculative Fiction

• Caught by Margaret Patterson Haddix
• The 13th Tribe by Robert Liparulo
• Freeheads by Kerry Nietz
• Soul’s Gate by James L. Rubart
• Daystar by Kathy Tyers

Because I am a judge I feel I must say that the reviews I linked to are my own opinions and should not be taken as any indication of what books will win the INSPY Awards.

Reinventing Rachel by Alison Strobel

Apr15

Rachel just got hit with a triple whammy: her fiance is cheating on her, her parents have been keeping a big (BAD) secret from her, and her best friend and Christian mentor has a drug problem. So, Rachel goes off the rails, leaves her faith, and moves to Chicago.

To my discredit, I am normally impatient with characters and even real people who “lose their faith.” Like what, you misplaced your lifelong, deep-seated commitment to the God of the Universe who was so committed to his love for you that he became a man and died for you, kind of like you sometimes misplace your car keys? Did you spend any time looking for that “faith” you so conveniently mislaid? Did you ask any questions? Pray? Wrestle with God like Jacob did?

I know, I know. I’m unsympathetic. I blame it partly on the terminology. One doesn’t really lose faith. You decide, for whatever reason, to leave it behind, to repudiate it. And in Alison Strobel’s Reinventing Rachel, the title character does exactly that: her faith wasn’t working out the way she thought it should, so she leaves it behind to try out a new, God-free life of pleasing herself and avoiding annoying Christians. God didn’t keep his end of the bargain that Rachel thought she made with Him: she’d behave, and He would make everything work out right. Instead, Rachel decides she’ll have to work out her own life without God’s help or intervention.

At first, after Rachel moves to Chicago to live with her old friend Daphne, things do work out pretty well, without church and without God. Daphne is a free spirit and lots of fun. Rachel finds a job right away. And she even gets a new boyfriend who’s handsome, attentive, and willing to take it slow and easy. However, when you leave one idol, Christian legalism and bargain mentality, behind, you’re likely to pick up another idol before long because we human beings were made to worship someone or something. Rachel finds comfort and sustenance in some not-so-unusual places, and then she finds that the idols she’s chosen are just as fallible and entrapping as the “Christianity” she left behind. By God’s grace, she also meets few people who show her what true commitment to Christ really looks like.

So, the conclusion is that Rachel didn’t really lose her faith in Christ; she never had faith in Christ’s grace in the first place. She was trusting in her Christian checklist to keep her on God’s good side, and when life came at her with a whole lot of hard stuff, Rachel’s make-a-list of rules didn’t begin to answer the questions or provide the strength she needed.

Ms. Strobel is a good writer, particularly in the area of character development. I wouldn’t mind checking out others of her novels, which I suppose is the reason I managed to snag a free copy of Reinventing Rachel for my Kindle when it was being offered as a “special deal.” It’s full price now, but I recommend it as worth the money or the time it takes to hunt down a library copy. (I’m not a fan of the half-a-face picture on the cover, but ignore that and read the story.)

Disturbing, Grotesque, Horrific: God Have Mercy

Apr13

WARNING: The following quotes and observations are disturbing, grotesque, horrific, and any other really bad adjective you want to use to describe mass murder and the ignorance and hard-hearted elective apathy that allowed it and continues to ignore the pain of women and children. If you are an adult American, you should read about the Kermit Gosnell murder trial and the awful acts that are alleged to have taken place at Mr. Gosnell’s “clinic” in Philadelphia.

JD Mullane: Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing seven born-alive babies and causing the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, an immigrant from Nepal who had sought an abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. The clinic was busy, doing brisk cash business.

Trevin Wax: “The Gosnell case involves gruesome details about living, viable babies having their spinal cords “snipped” outside the womb.”

Kirsten Powers: “Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.”

Conor Friedersdorf: “It is also a story about a place where, according to the grand jury, women were sent to give birth into toilets; where a doctor casually spread gonorrhea and chlamydiae to unsuspecting women through the reuse of cheap, disposable instruments; an office where a 15-year-old administered anesthesia; an office where former workers admit to playing games when giving patients powerful narcotics; an office where white women were attended to by a doctor and black women were pawned off on clueless untrained staffers.”

Mark Steyn: “This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale – and it barely makes the papers.”

Andrew McCarthy: “Stephen Massof, one of Kermit Gosnell’s fellow butchers,. . . described for the jury the chamber of horrors that was the ‘Women’s Medical Society’ on Lancaster Avenue. There, scores of babies — perhaps hundreds of them — were willfully mutilated after being born alive.”

Finally, this video is called 3801 Lancaster:

“He was respected. This was not a back-alley operation.”

“He was running a . . . late-term abortion clinic.”

I know this is mostly a book blog, but just as I would have been morally culpable to have lived in Hitler’s Germany and to have been silent as Jews were being rounded up and killed, I cannot be silent when we as a nation continue to murder our own children. The killing of newborn and pre-born babies happens every day in abortion “clinics” around the nation. Some of them are just cleaner and more law-abiding, a bit more “humane”, than Gosnell’s torture chamber.

Pray for the women, the people who worked at that abortion mill, Dr. Gosnell, the journalists who covered the story and those who ignored it, and for all of us. May this horror be a turning point that will touch hearts and change minds and bring us to repentance.

Saturday Review of Books: April 13, 2013

Apr12

“Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian.” ~Thomas Brooks

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Susan@ Reading World (Middlemarch)
2. Becky (Disappearance of God)
3. Becky (Les Miserables)
4. Becky (Little House in the Big Woods)
5. Becky (Little House on the Prairie)
6. Becky (Invention of Hugo Cabret)
7. Becky (Whatever After: Fairest of All)
8. Becky (Rainbow Valley)
9. Susan@ Reading World (Soulless)
10. Susan@ Reading World (Z.A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald)
11. Susan @ Reading World (Going Vintage)
12. Thoughts of Joy (Out of the Easy)
13. Thoughts of Joy (The Thing Around Your Neck)
14. Thoughts of Joy (Tuesday’s Gone)
15. Barbara H. (Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story)
16. GuiltlessReading – The Prisoner of Heaven
17. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Ink by Amanda Sun ARC)		 18. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Love Unscripted by Tina Reber)
19. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare)
20. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (The Collector by Victoria Scott ARC)
21. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima)
22. Girl Detective (How to Be a Woman)
23. Girl Detective (The Unwritten v7 GN)
24. the Ink Slinger (Humble Orthodoxy)
25. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Envy the Night)
26. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Blessed Are Those Who Thirst)
27. Beth@Weavings (The Reb and the Redcoats)
28. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (The Gate Thief)
29. Carol in Oregon (Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed)
30. Yvann @ Reading With Tea (Unwanted)
31. Yvann @ Reading With Tea (The Etymologicon)
32. Hope (Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment)
33. Peaches for monsieur le Cure (Lucybird’s book blog)
34. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Stress Test)		 35. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Angel Falls)
36. Beckie @ ByTheBook (One for The Books)
37. Monkey and Rabbit Together (Lucybird’s Book Blog}
38. Helene@Maidservantsofchrist (God’s Mighty Acts of Salvation)
39. Lazygal (Game)
40. Lazygal (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea)
41. Lazygal (Golden Boy)
42. Lazygal (I’ll Be Seeing You)
43. Lazygal (Last Summer of the Camperdowns)
44. Lazygal (Another Little Piece)
45. Lazygal (Otis Dooda)
46. Lazygal (Sky on Fire)
47. Sharon @ Leaning Into LIfe
48. a barmy bookworm (Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
49. A Cast of Stones

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Code of Silence by Tim Shoemaker

Apr7

Living a Lie Comes With a Price.

This thriller is book with a moral, but it didn’t feel preachy to me, just real. Three teens–Cooper, Hiro, and Gordy—witness a robbery and attempted murder. Because Cooper and his family are threatened by the robbers and because they have reason to believe that at least one of the robbers might be a bad cop, the three decide on a”code of silence.” They won’t tell anyone about what they saw: not their parents, not their teachers, not their other friends, and not the police.

The rest of the story show the outworking and results of this decision. Although the moral of the story is “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, it’s never presented as an easy option. The truth is that it’s not always easy to tell the truth. And our motives for many of our decisions are often mixed at best. If I lie to protect myself and others, is it mostly for myself or the others? If I tell one lie, will it become easier and easier to tell more lies? Why do people lie, and how hard is it to disentangle oneself from a web of lies? What do lies told to others do to the trust between the friends who share in the deception?

Hiro is a little too hard on Cooper sometimes throughout the book. She rails at him over and over to end the code of silence before it destroys their friendship and puts them in the very danger they’re trying to avoid. But she agreed to the code in the first place, and she can end it anytime. Instead, she blames Cooper and tries to make him feel totally responsible for the trio’s joint decision. That aspect of the relationships in the novel felt wrong to me, somehow.

But overall, Code of Silence was an exciting middle grade novel that asked all the right questions—and gave some solid answers.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in March, 2013

Apr7

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones.
The Drowned Vault by N.D. Wilson. Sequel to The Dragon’s Tooth in the Ashtown Burials series.
Code of Silence by Tim Shoemaker.
Things I Can’t Forget by Miranda Kenneally. Ten drama/romance. Here’s my review at Breakpoint: Youth Reads.
The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle by Christopher Healy. I read an ARC of this hilarious sequel to The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. This second book is even more fun than the first. Look for my review closer to the publication date in late April.

Adult Fiction:
No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer.
Reinventing Rachel by Allison Strobel.

Nonfiction:
The Duck Commander Family: How Faith, Family, and Dicks Built a Dynasty by Willie and Korie Robertson, with Mark Schlabach.
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan.
Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger’s Love Story by Jerry and Mary Newport, with Johnny Dodd.

There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones

Apr6

The INSPY Awards are blogger-initiated book awards for fictional literature that grapples with expressions of the Christian faith. The awards were given in several categories in 2011, including the category of “literature for young people”, and I got to be judge in that category. The INSPY Awards took a break in 2012, but they’re back this year. And the list below is the “long list” of nominated books in the Literature for Young People category for this time around:

Wreath by Judy Christie
With a Name Like Love by Tess Hilmo. Semicolon review here.
Thundersnow by Sheila Hollinghead
Dead Man’s Hand by Eddie Jones
There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones
Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan. Semicolon review here.
Cake – Love, Chickens and a Taste of Peculiar by Joyce Magnin
Right Where I Belong by Krista McGee
The Embittered Ruby by Nicole O’Dell
The Shadowed Onyx by Nicole O’Dell
Code of Silence by Tim Shoemaker
Addison Blakely: Confessions of a PK by Betsy St. Amant
Temptation: Solitary Tales No. 3 by Travis Thrasher
How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Three of the books on the list I’ve already read and reviewed, as indicated. Actually, I read How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr, and I thought I reviewed it but can’t find the review anywhere. I liked all three very much. I read a couple more of the books on this long list this past week: There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones and Code of Silence by Tim Shoemaker (review coming soon).

Ms. Jones is a rather prolific author of teen romances for Christian girls. Her books were all over Lifeway last time I was there. I rad one of her other books a year or two ago and thought it was just “meh.” This one was fairly low on the scale, too, and would have received a complete pan, were it not for the setting: Ireland.

Finley Sinclair, daughter of a wealthy hotel magnate, and sister to Will whose death in a terrorist incident has put Finley’s life in a tailspin of grief, is headed for Ireland to spend a year studying and trying to reconnect with God. Will came to love and know God when he studied in Ireland, and Finley hopes to follow in his footsteps, literally by visiting all of the places Will wrote about in his travel journal. Color Finley grey: grief-stricken, questioning, recovering from a mental breakdown, and lost.

Enter Beckett Rush, teen heart-throb, Hollywood player and bad boy, and star of a series of vampire movies. He’s in Ireland to film the latest movie in the Steel Markov vampire franchise. Beckett and Finley meet on the plane, clash, and hope never to see one another again. Alas, predictably, they are destined to meet again, clash again, and eventually fall in love and live happily ever after.

OK, it’s not quite that cliche. Take away the “live happily ever after.” Beckett and especially Finley are dealing with way too many issues to have a traditional happy ending. Beckett has a pushy dad who doubles as his greedy manager. Finley has mental health issues, a grouchy school assignment, and the loss of her faith, as well as the afore-mentioned grief and Beckett to keep her busy and confused.

As I think about it, this book would have made a good K-drama: Finley falls asleep on Beckett’s shoulder and drools, the two feud but are thrown together in spite of themselves, there’s a group of nasty, jealous girls at school, Finley has a sidekick, Erin, whom she mentors, lots of K-drama tropes. An awkward kiss or two, change the nationalities and the setting of the novel, take out the God-talk, and it would work on Korean TV just fine. In fact, it would work better on screen and with some editing.

I probably wouldn’t have made it through this one, though, if it hadn’t been set in Ireland. Give me a vivid setting, and I’ll follow you anywhere. And I got to read parts of the dialogue with an Irish lilt inside my head. A good plot and some engaging characters would have helped the journey, however.

Other reviews in which the blogger thought it was just peachy (I may be in the minority on this one): Edgy Inspirational Romance, YA Books Central, Christian Novels, Tree Swing Reading, etc.

Saturday Review of Books: April 6, 2013

Apr5

One reads at one’s own speed, in short snatches on the subway or in long, voluptuous withdrawals from the world. One proceeds through a big, complex novel. . . .like an exceptionally well-heeled tourist in a foreign landscape, going slowly or fast depending on the roads, on one’s own mood and on the attractions along the way. If one loses something, one can always go back to pick it up. ~Vincent Canby

SatReviewbutton

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Harvee
2. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown)
3. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series)
4. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Princess and the Goblin)
5. Becky (Insanity of God)
6. Becky (Altar Ego)
7. Becky (The Wall)
8. Becky (Sever)
9. Becky (Dash of Magic)
10. Becky (Bliss)
11. Becky (Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop)
12. Becky (Anne’s House of Dreams)
13. SuziQoregon @Whimpulsive (Fractured)
14. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Silver Linings Playbook)
15. the Ink Slinger (Easy Chairs, Hard Words)
16. Barbara H. (The Victory Club)
17. Barbara H. (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
18. Reading World (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)		 19. Beth@Weavings (Eight Cousins)
20. Melissa (Let me be a woman) Elizabeth Elliot
21. Lazygal (The Testing)
22. Lazygal (A Spear of Summer Grass)
23. Lazygal (The Black Country)
24. Lazygal (The Circle)
25. Lazygal (The Eternity Cure)
26. Lazygal (Good Riddance)
27. Lazygal (My Summer of Pink and Green)
28. Lazygal (Riptide)
29. Lazygal (The 5th Wave)
30. Janet (The Scent of Water)
31. Yvann @ Reading With Tea (Constance Harding’s Rather Startling Year)
32. Annie Kate (Crucifying Morality)
33. Thoughts of Joy (With or Without You)
34. Thoughts of Joy (A Faint Cold Fear)
35. Thoughts of Joy (Helsinki Blood)
36. Janie (Ireland, part 2)		 37. Harvee (Rocamora)
38. Nicola (Bone Quest for the Spark Book Three)
39. Nicola (The Bedlam Detective by Stephen Gallagher)
40. Nicola (Killer Charm: The Double Lives of Psychopaths by Linda Fairstein)
41. Nicola (The Devil by Leo Tolstoy)
42. Nicola (The Enchanted Wanderer by Nikolai Leskov)
43. Nicola (Night’s Child by Maureen Jennings)
44. Nicola (Curses! Foiled Again by Jane Yolen)
45. Girl Detective (May We Be Forgiven)
46. Girl Detective (Beautiful Ruins)
47. Girl Detective (Building Stories)
48. Girl Detective (Bleak House)
49. Girl Detective (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk)
50. Little Willow (Magic Zero by Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski )
51. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Two Crosses)
52. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Darkness Before Dawn)
53. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Scorned Justice)
54. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The House That Love Built)

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Poetry Friday: Discovering Poems

Apr5

W.H. Auden: “if I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.”

Detective Story by W.H. Auden.

If you’ve read the article and the poem and returned to get my take on it, I must say I don’t know what the poem really means. I can make a stab at it.

Who cannot . . . “mark the spot where the body of his happiness was first discovered?” I take this to mean that we all know when and where we lost our innocence or our sense of innocence.

“Someone must pay for our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.” So the murderer of our happiness is someone else, someone who must pay? And what is that lingering doubt and that smile all about? I smile at the ending of the detective story because . . . I am the murderer of my own happiness? Because I know that the murderer in the story is not so very different from me? And I wonder about the justice of the verdict because . . . I don’t want to admit that I am guilty?

“But time is always killed.”

I can never figure out the who the murderer is in most detective stories either.

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Apr4

Ah, yes, complex, multi-layered, “faith-informed” fiction. I speeded through this book, recommended to me by the blogger at Thoughts of Joy, because I really, really loved the characters and wanted to know what would happen to each of them. So, let’s start with the characters, almost of whom could be described as “central characters” in the book:

Swan Lake, an eleven year old, rather precocious, and full of mischief.
Bienville and Noble, Swan’s older brothers.
Samuel Lake, Swan’s Methodist preacher daddy. Samuel is about to go through a crisis that will test his faith, his commitment to his life’s work , his marriage, and his sense of who he is.
Willadee Moses Lake, Swan’s mama. Willadee makes good biscuits, likes for her children to run free as much as possible, and loves Samuel Lake extravagantly.
Calla and John Moses, Willadee’s parents. Calla runs a general store out of the front of the house during the day, and John runs an all-night bar called “Never Closes” out of the back.
Toy Moses, Swan’s uncle. Toy likes hunting and fishing in the woods, and he doesn’t talk much. He lost a leg in the war, and the rumor is that he killed a man after he returned from the war.
Berniece Moses, Toy’s wife who thinks that she is in love with Samuel Lake.
Ras Ballenger, neighbor to the Moses family. Ras trains horses and terrifies his wife and children.
Blade Ballenger, Ras Ballenger’s oldest son and Swan’s new friend.

I wish I could give you a feel for this novel. That list sounds sort of prosaic and humdrum, but the book is anything but. Jenny Wingfield captured the culture of the south that I grew up in just perfectly. These are real people, and I enjoyed reading about them. Well, mostly I enjoyed. I must warn sensitive readers that there are violent deaths, more than one, in the novel, and there is a very difficult scene toward the end of the book that could trigger emotional distress in some readers.

That said, I think the violence and abuse in the novel were described in a tasteful manner while not minimizing the horror of what happens to several of the characters. I also thought Samuel Lake’s perplexities and inner confusion were handled quite well. Lake is a man with a deep faith in God, and that faith isn’t ridiculed as it could easily have been. Nor is Lake’s faith cheapened by making it facile and shallow. He has to struggle with some very difficult questions, and in the end (which some people didn’t like) the answers God gives Samuel Lake are satisfying but not really complete. It’s a realistic ending, and one one that I did like.

More reviews:
USA Today: “But it’s Wingfield’s ability to set the stage, to transport her readers back to rural Arkansas of the 1950s, that takes this novel to another level.”
Book Snob: “The Homecoming of Samuel Lake will break your heart, make you leap for joy, and bring tears to your eyes. You will fall in love with the Lake and Moses family and become a believer in miracles.”
Literary Hoarders: “There are parts of this novel that are difficult. You’ll want to holler “watch out!” at critical moments. You’ll want to hold the hurt, and will want to save the helpless. Luckily, you’ll have Swan on your side. She’s eleven years old, and you will be eternally grateful that she has no patience for injustice.”