The Art of Crash Landing by Melissa DeCarlo

  The Art of Crash Landing: A Novel by Melissa DeCarlo.
Harper, 2015. Adult Fiction.


Although Mattie Wallace has grown up in Florida, she finds herself going to her mother's hometown of Gandy, Oklahoma after her mother, an alcoholic who left home after high school, dies. It seems that she has an inheritance from the maternal grandmother she never knew and a world of things to learn about her family and herself. Pregnant and broke, Mattie leaves her sick stepfather, the only father she has ever known, and makes the trip alone. While Mattie meets many people who knew her mother, no one seems to know why the young woman left town thirty-five years ago. It's up to Mattie to make some money (through a job at the local library), keep herself and the baby safe, and to find answers so she will not turn into her unhappy mother. Who knows all the secrets and who will help Mattie discover the past?


Smart mouthed, funny, and impulsive, Mattie is not the role model you'd want a daughter to be, but she will win your heart and make you root for her survival. If your past is a world of hurts, can your future be any different?  In this debut novel, East Texas writer and former Oklahoma resident DeCarlo, has a spunky heroine in the most unimaginable and wacky situations. Who  else has two dogs both named Winston?

Cooking as Fast as I Can by Cat Cora

  Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef's Story of Family, Food, and Forgiveness by Cat Cora. Simon and Schuster, 2015. Adult Nonfiction.


In one of the most honest and straight forward memoirs I have ever read, celebrity chef Cat Cora describes growing up in Mississippi, sexual abuse she experienced as a child, and what it was like to be lesbian in the deep South. Her adopted family's Greek heritage and her growing up Southern both influenced her cooking. Cooking was a solace and brought her challenges and happiness and became her life's work. Now married and a mother to four boys, Cat Cora describes her work, her mentors,  and her becoming the first female Iron Chef. Her positive attitude, love for family and food, and survival in hot kitchen all over the world combine in this fascinating story.

The Storm of the Century by Al Roker

 The Storm of the Century: Tragedy, Heroism Survival, and the Epic True Story of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900.  William Morrow, 2015.  Adult Nonfiction.


Although it is hard to read a book about the great Galveston storm of 1900 without thinking about the excellent title by Erik Larson, Al Roker does an interesting job of mining new stories and presenting the story from his own perspective.  Although the book has no footnotes, it does present a bibliography. Roker has mined the oral histories collected by Collins in 2004 for authentic voices of some of  the community's African American residents. Roker's passion for weather: how it works, how it is reported, how can be predicted, etc. comes together with the history to determine who knew about the storm in 1900 and how residents were not prepared or given notice about the coming storm.  He does a good job of telling about another weatherman, Isaac Cline and his brother, Joseph, and how the storm impacted their lives and careers. The book does not end with the storm itself, but goes on to tell of the aftermath: 10,000 or more lost, $20 million in damages, and the building of the Galveston seawall which was said to rival the building of the ancient Wonders of the World.  Included in the people who rushed to the island were  nurse  and founder of the Red Cross, Clara Barton, and Annie Laurie (Winifred Black), a reported sent by Hearst newspapers to cover the story. Neither had ever seen such devastation and they helped improvise a national rescue relief effort on a huge scale and helped bring new ideas about equality for women. Even after a hundred years, the numbers, the hubris, the miles and the stories exceed our expectations and imaginations and are hard to believe.