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A Story of Improbable Hope: “Fatherland: A Family History” by Nina Bunjevac

This review first ran in the “Elkhart Truth” in April 2015.

Thanks to Better World Books, 215 S. Main St. in Goshen, for providing me with books to review. You can find all of these books at the store.

Nina Bunjevac’s “Fatherland” is about many things, some quite difficult, some—like the history of the former Yugoslavia—quite dense. At root, this story is about a young girl losing a father she barely knew. Peter Bunjevac, a Serbian nationalist, died in a garage explosion in 1977 in his adopted country of Canada. No one knows exactly what happened, but he was likely assembling bombs. His daughter Nina was preschool age at the time, living in Yugoslavia with her mother, sister, and grandparents.

Now in her forties and living in Toronto, Bunjevac understands a lot more, both about the history of the region that her parents came from—now Croatia—and about the politics behind the Serbian loyalist terrorist organization with which her father became entangled. Continue reading “A Story of Improbable Hope: “Fatherland: A Family History” by Nina Bunjevac”

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“From Lone Mountain,” by John Porcellino

From Lone Mountain, by John Porcellino. 304 pages, Drawn and Quarterly, March 2018. Paperback, 22.95.

NOTE: Drawn and Quarterly sent me a free review copy of this book.

Thanks to Better World Books, 215 S. Main St. in Goshen, for providing me with books to review. You can find or order all of the books I review at the store.

This is King Cat:

This is his creator, John Porcellino:

Continue reading ““From Lone Mountain,” by John Porcellino”

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Brave the Wilderness with “Lumberjanes”: A Comic for “Hardcore Lady Types” and the Rest of Us

Another post from the archives: this review was originally published for the Elkhart Truth in early August 2015. The “Lumberjanes” crew has been prolific since then: Volume 8 just came out this past February, and Volume 9 is expected in July.

Thanks to Better World Books, 215 S. Main St. in Goshen, for providing me with books to review. You can find all of these books at the store.

Search for “women” and “woods” on the Internet, and you’ll mostly turn up harrowing stories of rescues and close calls. Despite the long history of the Girl Scouts and other nature-oriented organizations, our culture generally expects for women and girls to look something like this in the woods:

The young adult series “Lumberjanes,” however, has no patience for such stereotypes. These campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for “Hardcore Lady Types” may be briefly startled, but it only takes until the bottom of the page for them to recover, with style and grace, no less:

Continue reading “Brave the Wilderness with “Lumberjanes”: A Comic for “Hardcore Lady Types” and the Rest of Us”