Month: December 2024

How We Heal Review

Book: How We Heal
Author: La June Montgomery Tabron
Publisher: Disruption Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “From a vivid portrait of her childhood in 1960s Detroit to her leadership of one of the world’s largest philanthropic institutions, La June shares her full-circle, American story – a coming-of-age journey where she gains a firsthand understanding of how systemic racism prevents our children and communities from thriving and learns about the transformative role healing can play in helping all of us transcend the legacy of racial inequity.
As she rises to her position as the first female and first African American leader of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, La June experiences the power of sharing and listening with empathy. And with the help of mentors and colleagues, she refines the message that will guide the foundation’s mission for years to come : Healing can begin only with truth telling.
Empowered by the mission set forth by its founder to support children and families, the foundation explores a racial healing framework that transforms communities and individuals around the world – from small rural towns and big cities across the United States, including La June’s own beloved Detroit, to Mexico, Haiti, and beyond.
How We Heal serves as a testament to the power of transformation and a blueprint for how each of us, no matter who we are or how we lead, can use racial healing to move from trust to empathy, from understanding to repair – one conversations and one connection at a time.”

Review : Whew. That’s a heck of a synopsis, isn’t it? And though How We Heal is a mere 212 pages long (in ARC form), much like the back-cover synopsis, it packs a lot into those 200-odd pages. While La June spends time detailing what her childhood was like growing up in Eastside Detroit both prior to and after the Detroit Rebellion in 1966, it’s worth noting that the majority of the book describes in detail the work she has and continues to do at the W.K. Kellogg foundation, first as COO and currently as CEO, among other titles. How We Heal is less about La June herself and more about the work that’s been facilitated through the Foundation and through the people who have been impacted by the Foundation’s charitable worn. While the start of the book engages the reader as, perhaps not strictly memoir, but more so memoir adjacent, it’s worth knowing before you dive in that it is decidedly not a memoir.

La June, a direct descendant of Isaiah Thornton Montgomery, the founder of the Reconstruction era town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, describes the pitfalls and structures of power imbalance that have served to create racial imbalances and divides throughout the United States. And while she would have every right to broach this topic with hate-laced accusations and pointed fingers, La June instead describes what she calls the empathy deficit to explain much of what has stunted racial equity and growth, if not rolled back progress entirely. Rather than assuming that the growth of opportunities and formulation of protections around basic human rights might take all of the above away from those who are not Black or Hispanic or Asian or Indigenous, empathy reminds us that we are all worthy and capable of having access to spaces of growth, stable and safe housing, and quality job opportunities with good wages. When racial equity exists, when we find ourselves within diverse communities, studies show time and time again that we all thrive. It isn’t an us vs them narrative presented within How We Heal, it is very much so the opposite, with La June asking us to imagine a world in which our country outgrows its flawed beginnings and continuous, subsequent failings. As La June says “…through inclusivity, we could make the table bigger.” (How We Heal)

Detailing her decades of work at the Kellogg Foundation, La June describes how the Foundation transformed from a world in which race was an unmentionable topic to a world in which the Kellogg foundation runs multiple racial healing circles throughout the world in order to bridge divides between any number of groups of people. Describing the necessary work at play within the Foundation’s days in the early 2000s as it began to transition into a space that directly addressed racial divides and inequity, a member of the board of trustees, Joe Stewart said (paraphrased by Montgomery Tabron) “Either work to fulfill the dreams of everyone in this nation or tear down the Statue of Liberty.” Because we come from a country whose very foundation was built on the backs of enslaved people and Indigenous massacre, we cannot simply step into the realm of reconciliation without actively addressing the root problems, working toward transformation, and find ways to unite. Enter : TRHT, or Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation – a project created by those working within the Kellogg Foundation to bring spaces of true healing into diverse communities impacted by racism, a history of redlining, systemic poverty, gun violence, even apartheid. Racial healing circles are designed based on Indigenous practices worldwide and TRHT has been facilitating circles of healing, understanding, and equity for decades, attempting to reach as many people as possible. When it comes to a blueprint for healing, this is it. La June shares so many stories of positive impact within these racial healing circles, it feels almost hard to believe at times. Rather than creating spaces where fingers are pointed and injustices are gripped tightly to, racial healing circles exist to create spaces of radical transformation through understanding and forgiveness. When we are able to fully hear and see where those who have different lived experiences than us are coming from, we can begin to repair something that began as fundamentally broken.

While How We Heal read at times like a proposal for a board meeting, it was deeply informative, well researched, and concise. It laid out a foundation for our path forward, it did more than present the scary facts and figures, it laid out the work the Kellogg Foundation has been doing for a century to combat those figures – going even further to explain how individuals and groups around the globe could be (and have been) taking steps of their own using the very blueprint the Kellogg Foundation uses to create radical healing where it’s so desperately needed. It’s encouraging to me to read a book like this, particularly as we see racial divides deepening, knowing that healing has a way forward. It can and does exist. There’s hope here. And that’s something you can’t buy – or maybe you can, in the form of this book. I found myself crying multiple times during my reading of this book – the stories of hope, forgiveness, healing, and transformation are incredibly moving. It’s well worth the read.

Advice : I think this is a worthwhile read for anyone who is genuinely interested in seeing healing take place on a global scale, anyone who lives in cities with racial disparities (that’s most of us!), or anyone who’s interested in a new take on an old problem. You’re going to want to read this one.

Murder at Gulls Nest Review

Book: Murder at Gulls Nest
Author: Jess Kidd
Publisher: Atria books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “I believe every one of us at Gulls Nest is concealing some kind of secret.
1954: When letters from Frieda, her dependable former novice, stop arriving, Nora Been asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in one of Frieda’s letters, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a boarding house filled with lively characters.
A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests. But when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest, it’s time to ask whether a dark past can ever really be left behind.”

Review : If ever there was a book (and book cover, for that matter) for me, Murder at Gulls Nest is it. As a lifetime lover of Agatha Christie and a familiar soul in the mystery section of the bookstore, Gulls Nest called to me immediately. It’s worth noting that this book is being marketed as the first in a series – I couldn’t be happier to hear it! And now that I’ve devoured this one, sadly, the wait begins for book two. Jess Kidd has crafted a perfectly cozy, wonderfully intriguing, and marvelously enjoyable whodunit, complete with an amateur sleuth hell bent on doing her own thing, potentially because she’s simply better at this than the actual detectives on the case; a small town filled with interesting characters and all manner of crime; and the back-and-forth, will they / won’t they banter between our protagonist and the town’s slightly cinematic, slightly heroic, slightly overworked detective inspector. What isn’t there to love?

Nora Breen, formerly Sister Agnes, has left her post at the convent, released her vows, and joined the outside world as a middle aged woman with a head for solving puzzles and an interest in what life outside the habit and wimple might actually entail. Kidd has created such whit within Nora’s character, rounding her out and giving depth to someone we’ll spend an entire book alongside – it made for a truly enjoyable and unputdownable book. Nora, following in the footsteps of her friend and former novice, Frieda, is bound and determined to find out what’s going on. Similarly to Nora, Frieda has recently entered the outside world as someone other than a nun, however unlike Nora, Frieda did so for medical reasons. Being afflicted with some kind of heart and lung condition, Frieda was advised to take to the sea, for the brisk and salty air were a balm for her condition. Upon arriving at Gulls Nest, a boardinghouse complete with mysterious long-term boarders and rife with gossip, Frieda begins to fulfill the singular promise she made to Nora when she left : she wrote a letter a week to tell of her new adventure. When Frieda’s letters stop arriving, Nora knows something has gone terribly wrong. Despite her best efforts to convince her Mother Superior that Frieda would never simply break a promise and stop writing, the consensus (among nearly every person she encounters throughout the book) is that Frieda is out living her life, no need to worry. Nora disagrees, and being someone who sees connections where others might not, she knows she cannot sit back and allow her friend to be in potential danger. So she leaves.

** Spoilers Ahead **

It would be difficult to review this book without giving SOME spoilers away, but don’t fret! I promise I won’t tell you who did it, you’ll have to read it for yourself to find out.

Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, under the guise of a former nurse (which, in fact, she was), with a small stipend, a few hand-me-down dresses, and all the gumption in the world. She begins to casually insert herself into the lives of her fellow boarders at Gulls Nest, having rented the room that once belonged to her friend. She reveals her mission to the local detective inspector, one Inspector Rideout, and causes much damage to the police station by way of a thrown shoe – or two. Something I loved immediately about how Nora was written was that not only did we find her grappling with life in the outside world after several decades of life in a convent, we immediately get to know her as so much more than a former nun and nurse. From making friends with the gull who likes to hang out on her windowsill (who she affectionately names Father Patrick Conway, after the priest who saw her through her own novice), to mild harassment of the local police force, to completely ignoring Inspector Rideout’s assessment of her missing friend, to smoking cigarettes just to do it, to riding in fast cars because it was purported to be an enjoyable aspect of life, there is no shortage of facets to our lively protagonist; Nora is a force all her own.

Unlike Sherlock Holmes or even Hercule Poirot, Nora Breen is not indescribably smarter than the average reader – something I enjoy a great deal in a murder mystery. We are given the chance, as readers, to take in just as much information as our protagonist does, meaning we have every opportunity to solve this murder for ourselves. Or maybe I should say murders. Once Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, believing she’s there to solve the case of her missing friend, two more boarders end up dead, most certainly murdered. I was grateful to find that while I did, in fact, solve the murder a little more quickly than our Nora, I didn’t solve it right away or even without much reading. I made it through a good portion of the book before I came to any kind of conclusion, having jumped between several theories at different times and that feels like the making of a good, classic whodunit. We get to be the amateur detective here and that’s something I’ll always appreciate – no missing or hidden clues from the reader, no information we couldn’t possibly have known, just pure and simple, straightforward sleuthing for clues, compiling information, and attention to detail.

Kidd has done an excellent job with her first installment in the Nora Breen Investigation series and I look forward to additional mysteries to come! This is clearly not her first rodeo, having written several book prior to this. The layout flowed well, the pacing made sense, and though it was written in the present tense, which is not my favorite, though the fact that this post is written largely in the present tense is not lost on me, it read easily and without confusion. The fact that I didn’t solve the mystery right off the bat, that I became invested in the whole cast of characters, and that I was sad when it ended and I wasn’t able to order book two immediately all make this a great read in my humble opinion.

Advice : If you enjoy a good mystery, this is going to be a must read for you! This book is for anyone who enjoys Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, or any of the classics. You’re going to love it, I just know it.