Psychiatrist Searches for Sanity in a Crazy World

Title: The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee

Author: Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Web site: http://www.stuartbramhall.com/
Genre: memoir
ISBN: 978-1-60911-858-7

Reviewed by Michael David Morrissey
This is a frightening book. Much of it reads like a thriller, but unfortunately it is a true story. Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhill, a woman (despite the unusual first name) and a psychiatrist, describes her 15-year long mental, emotional and physical ordeal resulting from her involvement in leftist activist politics in Seattle, Washington. Beginning in 1986, says Bramhall, "for some unknown reason, some faceless higher-up in one of the eleven federal agencies that spy on American citizens decided I posed a threat to national security," and from then on she was subjected to phone harassment, wiretaps, break-ins, and even attempts on her life. Since she was never able to prove any of this (and how does one prove it?), she was also confronted with the disbelief of her own professional colleagues, who were quick to diagnose her as "psychotic" and gave her the choice of losing her medical license or spending a week in a locked ward at a mental hospital for observation. She chose the latter, though she continued to be misdiagnosed and over-medicated, which exacerbated her mental torment and had serious physical side-effects that lasted for years afterward.
Bramhall learned the hard way that her fellow medical professionals were the last people in the world she could be honest with about her feelings of persecution:
"The moment I mentioned the CIA, my psychiatrist decided I was psychotic and refused to listen anything else I said... Nelson's erroneous diagnosis stemmed from pure political naiveté. He had no reason to come in contact with political or union activists, unemployed whistleblowers or the low-income street people that the police, and, I believed, U.S. intelligence, recruited as informants. Nevertheless, I had no confidence in any of my colleagues to objectively assess my mental state. I practiced in a totally different world from other Seattle psychiatrists, who automatically turned away patients who couldn't afford their one hundred dollar fee."
Bramhall was never more than a "lukewarm radical":
"I was a very late bloomer politically. Despite my early disenchantment with the "establishment," as we called it in the sixties and seventies, it never occurred to me to blame political factors for my chronic sense of loneliness, alienation, and unmet emotional and social needs."
At thirty-five, she "fell into Marxism almost by accident" when a medical colleague invited her to join CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, formed in 1981 to protest Reagan's covert war against El Salvador). Marxism helped her "make sense for the first time of a political system riddled with contradictions," but she "never accepted the need for violent revolution to overthrow capitalism."
This would have been enough, I think, to have alienated her from most of her colleagues, since it must be as almost as hard to be a "Marxist" psychiatrist in the U.S. as it was to a "capitalist" one in the former Soviet Union, where political deviance was routinely equated with psychosis.
But Bramhall crossed a number of other tripwires in her efforts to combine political activism with her profession, the most conspicuous one being the color line. As a white woman who actively pursued her profession, as well as social and political associations, in the African American community, she became involved with other activists whose motivations, she came to suspect, were not as innocent or transparent as her own. One of her early acquaintances, a former Black Panther called Jabari Sisulu, put it succinctly: "White professionals who fraternize with black radicals are at much greater risk than I am." Bramhall's story is testimony to the truth of this statement.
Over the years, as she continued to participate in local activist projects like the effort to turn an abandoned school building in Seattle into an African American museum and cultural center, Bramhall broadened her political consciousness by reading about the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Cointelpro, AIDS, and more recently, 9/11 -- in short, by delving into the immense body of literature dealing with the facts and evidence about such topics that continues to be systematically suppressed by the mainstream press and dismissed as "conspiracy theory" but which is now readily accessible on the internet. At some points, her activities at the "micro" level intersected, perhaps with consequences, with the "macro" level (my terms), such as her association with Edna Laidlow, who claimed to be the lover of the "umbrella man" at Dealey Plaza who supposedly gave the signal to begin the shooting of JFK. She also suspects that her effort to publicize an ulcer drug called "Tagomet" [sic, presumably Tagamet] as a treatment for AIDS may have triggered a covert response.
The reader, like Bramhall herself, waits in vain for any resolution of the question of who was harassing her and why. This is hardly surprising, since none of the issues at the "macro" level have been resolved either. Despite the ever-increasing mountain of evidence of government involvement in multitudinous conspiracies ("plans by more than one person to do bad things") against "the people," both domestic and foreign, the steadfast response of both government and mainstream press, which are in this respect identical, remains the same. It is not denial -- which would require facts and arguments -- but silence.
Thus Bramhall leaves us, at the end of the book in 2002, having emigrated to New Zealand in hope of starting a new life at a healthy distance from the "insidious pseudo-culture" of the U.S. public relations industry and "stranglehold of the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence." I wish her luck, and as an longtime ex-pat myself I can say that she made a rational decision. I too am a kind of "American Refugee," as Bramhall subtitles her memoir. Fortunately, I never experienced the kind of personal harassment she did, but reading her book gives me a strong sense of "there but for fortune." I could have easily gone the way of Stuart Bramhall, just as I could have ended up in Vietnam or (more likely) in Canada fleeing the draft. But I got lucky. First of all, I was lucky enough to realize early on that the Vietnam war was insane, and secondly, I found a psychiatrist who shared my view. (He called it a "mass neurosis," which I thought a gross understatement, but it served my purpose of escaping the draft.)
I did not leave the U.S. for political reasons, however. I left, in 1977, because even armed with a Ph.D. (in linguistics), I couldn't get a decent job. So I guess I was an economic "refugee." (Part of Bramhall's motive for emigrating was also economic, her medical practice having suffered under cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations.) I was, obviously, opposed to the Vietnam war, but I did not become "radicalized" until much later, in 1988, when I was older than Bramhall was when she turned to Marxism, so I too was a late bloomer, politically. The catalyst for me was, I am almost ashamed to say, a TV program: Nigel Turner's documentary about the assassination of President Kennedy (The Men Who Killed Kennedy). I saw this in Germany, after I had been living here for almost 11 years. This was the major turning point for me, but it all happened in my head. In Bramhall's case, despite the opinion of her bourgeois colleagues, I don't think it was in her head. Maybe some of it was, but her story is much too detailed to be dismissed as paranoia.
So the irony of our two stories is complete. On the one hand, we have a psychiatrist who is persecuted for political reasons and falsely judged by her colleagues to be insane. On the other hand we have a linguist who opposes an insane war and is correctly judged by a "renegade" psychiatrist (as I'm sure his colleagues would have described him in those days) to be sane and therefore unfit to "serve." Both of us end up leaving the country.
But not everyone can leave. Vietnam did not end. It's here again under a different name: Afghanistan/Iraq. In fact, things are much worse now, much more insane, than they were in the sixties. There was at least some attempt to lie convincingly about the reasons for the Vietnam war. The "communist threat" was more convincing than the the blatant lies about non-existent weapons of mass destruction, retaliation for 9/11, and bringing "freedom and democracy" to those unfortunate countries. A very large portion of the population, probably close to one half, disbelieves the government's story of 9/11, and a clear majority does not support the ongoing war (read "military engagement"). There is a huge disjuncture between what people think and what the government and the mainstream media tell them.
If societies were people, the U.S. would have to be locked up with the criminally insane. No person could remain sane harboring so many violently conflicting ideas. Societies are not people, but people do have to live in this insane society. How do they do it? I think there are three alternatives: 1) denial, 2) acceptance, and 3) fighting back. 1) and 2) are themselves psychotic states. How can you deny or accept insanity without becoming part of it?
3) is the only sane, reasonable and honorable alternative. This is what Bramhall did, and what many of us try to do, each in our own way. It is wrong to see her story as negative or her struggle as futile. It is part of the ongoing struggle.
P.S. Dr. Bramhall mentions me as the "translator" of AIDS researcher Jakob Segal, but in fact I only proofread the English edition of his book "AIDS Can Be Conquered" (Verlag Neuer Weg, 2001; "AIDS Ist Besiegbar," 1995). I did translate a couple of shorter pieces, which are accessible on my homepage (mdmorrissey.info) and in my book "Looking for the Enemy." The latter and my more recent book "The Transparent Conspiracy" (on 9/11) are available on Amazon.com.
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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

New Literary Novel Praised by Book Pleasures Reviewer Jennifer Andrew

Title: The Secret of Lies Author: Barbara Forte Abate
ISBN: 978-160844-418-2
Genre: Mainstream Literary Fiction

Originally reviewed for Book Pleasures by Jennifer Andrew

The Secret of Lies is a character driven novel, which gave the reader insight into the internal struggle of the main character. Stephanie Burke, was trying to regain some happiness in her life after being dragged through the lies of her family. This young woman, who had been forced to grow up in a web of lies, was attempting to make a life for herself.
The novel began with a prologue before the first chapter. The reader is drawn into the feelings of the main character. You realize her state of mind, the turmoil she has endured and the emotional struggle that has her torn apart by what has happened in her life. Within the first chapter, the reader is brought to the beginning of how it all happened.
Conflict lies throughout the book with the main character. Stephanie having to grow up with the guilt surrounding her sister, the ties that she had with her Aunt Smyrna, the deception she held from her mother were all issues battling at Stephanie’s psyche. Struggling to overcome her personal demons, she tried to cope and go on with life.
Barbara Forte Abate resolves the conflict and does not leave the readers hanging. She brought us through an exciting story through the efforts of her main character. To the detriment of Stephanie’s own relationship, she tries to solve her problems alone.
The author brought everything to life and made you feel you were a part of the family. You felt empathy when the relationship between Uncle Cal and Aunt Smyrna slowly started to unravel. You saw through the façade of what began to happen with Eleanor and her coming of age. You are drawn into the story and feel sorry for the chain of events that occured in the story.
The characters jump out at you. They are animated and relatable. Barbara does an amazing job in describing the characters; the setting, Stephanie’s hometown, the people she interacts with, her own family and making it all come together in one satisfying story.
The dialogue was enjoyable and true to life. The words were descriptive and continued to propel the story forward. The Secret of Lies was written in Stephanie’s point of view and the story did not sway from her outlook but continued to flow.
Barbara Forte Abate has written a creative, entertaining story in The Secret of Lies, which makes any reader understand the hidden secrets in any family. Your heart goes out to lovable characters and an appreciation for what is important.
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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Magical Literary Novel Reviewed

Title: Houdini Pie

Author: Paul Michel
Website: http://www.paulmichel.com/
Genre: Literary Fiction
ISBN: 978-1934733554

Reviewed by Jim Barnes, Editor, IndependentPublisher.com


"This shining debut effort is the closest thing to the Great American Novel I’ve read in some time, with its Depression-Era setting and southern California hopefulness. Our hero comes-of-age amidst bootlegging, baseball, and a boondoggle involving Native American legend, buried treasure and women with shamanic powers. Paul Michel's uncluttered writing style and brilliant descriptive powers transport the reader to a time when Halley’s Comet was overhead and the world held magical possibilities."

Sounds zany like a screwball comedy from the selfsame era. And it is. (Some of the novel’s craziest material is purportedly true, according to Michel in a fascinating Author’s Note.) But what really distinguishes Houdini Pie is that Paul Michel doesn’t write zany. His prose is lean and unfussy, artful in period detail and the construction of believable characters. His third-person narration expertly deploys alternating points of view, which allows us to get up close and personal with an unusually large cast of characters. Here, for instance, is Edith, the psychic, taking in her first baseball game along with her daughter, Isabelle, who’s developed an enthusiasm for the sport (and for the Sheiks’ young pitcher, Hal Gates):
The ballpark was small by ballpark standards; fewer than four thousand seats, but to Edith it seemed enormous. The playing field was a vast carpet of grass so green it seemed painted. The ball players, in gray or white flannel uniforms, stalked its perimeter. Some swung bats at imaginary pitches; others played catch, a few made quick, sprinting forays onto the field, a dozen steps forward then back, retrieved on invisible leashes. Isabelle’s excitement was infectious as she pointed things out—the drink and peanut hawkers beginning their descents into the stands; the grounds crew laying down the white chalk lines, the black-suited umpires clustered behind home plate like a coven of witches.


Author Bio:


Michel is a veteran short story writer with dozens of literary magazine credits over the last twenty-five years. For a first novel, Houdini Pie is structurally ambitious and plotted with a clever eye for withholding information and building suspense. A bootlegging episode gone disastrously wrong early in the novel, for example, becomes clear a hundred pages later. There are incidents in which characters appear in disguise unbeknownst to us until climactic revelations. All in all, Houdini Pie is a triumph of independent small press publishing (kudos to Seattle’s Bennett and Hastings). What’s needed now—while we await another novel from the author—is a collection of Michel’s short stories."
 
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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Military Memoir Top Award Winner Many Times Over

Title: Stand To…A Journey to Manhood
Author: E. Franklin Evans
Published in: Jan 2008
Awards: 2009 Award Winner, Founder’s Award, Mil Writer Soc of America (MWSA)
Silver Medalist, Branson Stars and Flags, 2009
45th Annual Georgia Author of the Year Nominee
See the video trailer at http://www.efranklinevans.com/index.php?page_id=269



Reviewed by W.H. McDonald, Jr. for Military Writer's Society of America


Vietnam veteran and author E. Franklin Evans has captured something very special in his personal war memoir, "Stand To...A Journey to Manhood". We get a good glimpse back into the life and times of a "young man" caught in the vortex of war. The reader is treated to a well written accounting of his experiences surviving both the traumas of battles and people. It is historic, personal and entertaining.
This is one of this decade's "Top 10 Best Memoirs" on the Vietnam War experience. The story is emotionally presented through the eyes of a young Army officer - but it is clearly written with the introspection of a much older author. He looks back at that time and place in his life in an attempt to understand and come to grips with these events. It is truly a journey and one that most readers will find well worth taking with this author.

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The reviewer is the founder of  MWSA, Bill MacDonald. The author won the Founder’s Award for 2008.  It was also. iUniverse’s Reader’s Choice, Editor’s Choice, and Publisher’s Choice in 2008.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

How To Sue A Telemarketer

How To Sue A Telemarketer
Author's website link – http://www.howtosueatelemarketer.com/
Genre or category – Humor/Legal
ISBN-10: 061533817
ISBN-13: 978-0615338170


About How To Sue A Telemarketer


Telemarketers have been a pain in the general public’s behind for decades. Thanks to their interrupting us day and night, the telephone has been transformed from a convenience, into a source of annoyance and frustration.

How To Sue A Telemarketer: A Manual For Restoring Peace On Earth One Phone Call At A Time is a tongue-in-cheek manual that shows the average citizen how they can fight back against a telemarketer by taking them to small-claims court. Half humorous and half how-to, the book combines comedy with savvy information about the legal system and step-by-step instructions on how consumers can take telemarketers to task.

About Steve Ostrow


A practicing lawyer for 30 years in Cardiff by the Sea, California, Steve also had the unique opportunity to play the celebrity double for Seinfeld’s Cosmo Kramer, originally played by actor Michael Richards, in venues around the country for 10 years. With the additional skills of being a small claim judge and licensed real estate broker, recently Steve turned his attention to writing a tongue in cheek manual on How To Sue A Telemarketer- A Guide to Creating Peace On Earth One Telephone Call At A Time.
Combining his wise guy roots in New York with a laid back California lifestyle, an unusual combination of wit and insight into the legal system is explored in his latest exploit. With insights from a long time yoga practice, the lawyer Steve tries to see a bigger emotional picture of the client’s needs

Topics In How To Sue A Telemarketer by Stephen Ostrow-
• What to do when a telemarketer first calls
• Gathering information to file a civil complaint
• Filing and serving of the complaint
• What to do in court all the way through collection on the judgment
• Everything you need to know about suing telemarketers
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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've loved. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by author names, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the index handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using the widget below:

A Nail Through The Heart Reviewed

TITLE: A Nail Through the Heart
AUTHOR: Timothy Hallinan
GENRE: Mystery
CATEGORY: Thriller
ISBN-10:0061257222
ISBN-13:978-0061257223

Reviewed by Beth Crowley for Murder by Type

REVIEWER'S RATING: 5 Stars


A Nail Through the Heart, the first of Timothy Hallinan's Bangkok thrillers, balances family, love, loyalty, and hope against evil that destroys the spirit and sacrifices innocence to perversion.

I read this book a few years ago. Tim's post, "Behind the Smiles", on the Murder is Everywhere blog, sent me back to the book and I am glad it did. I found things I missed in the first reading and I understand some things better because of what I have learned about Thailand through Tim's posts.

In the blog, Tim writes that Bangkok is the "meat market where the children of the poor, both male and female, go to sell their beauty." The men who use them believe "there has to be something real, something genuine, behind smiles like those. And there are: poverty and powerlessness."

A Nail Through the Heart is about family, love, loyalty, hope, and the future but it is also about the debasement of the most innocent of humanity and the evil which kills beauty because there is no need for beauty when power is all that matters. Poke's search for a missing man and his maid leads him to Madame Wing who offers Poke the money he needs to speed along adoption process that will make Miaow, and 8 year-old street child, legally his. The money will help his love, Rose, establish her business. Madame Wing wants Poke to find an envelope but he must not look at the contents. One man did and had to die for doing so. The threads come together in the end to a satisfying, almost, conclusion.

This is a book that the reader won't want to put down. Since I first read it, I have thought, on occasion, of "Growing-Younger Man", the man whose face is so tight Poke wonders how he chews. Why do people try so hard to pretend that they haven't experienced life? Why is youth so envied when it is the young who haven't yet had the time to develop the life-skills that allow us to keep living?

But that is a minor issue compared to what the author is really serving up. Child pornography is financed by the people who buy it. Anyone who does is as guilty as the men who perform the abuse. They do it for the world wide audience who know without question that what they are seeing on the screen isn't pretend. And then there is the ultimate question: When is the taking of a life not a wrong? Are all murderers equally guilty? How should society respond when, as Poke says, "The victims were guilty....and the murderers were innocent?"

Finally, the book reminded me that I haven't told my children enough about the killing fields of Cambodia. As the victims of the holocaust should never be forgotten, neither should the victims of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We have an obligation to them as well.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Memoir about Finding Oneself Will Especially Resonate with American Indians

One Small Sacrifice: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
By Trace A. DeMeyer
Memoir-NonFiction
ISBN: 978-0-557-25599-3.

Originally reviewed by John Christian Hopkins, for the national Native newspaper News From Indian Country


The Beatles sang of a long and winding road, but they never set foot on the long, treacherous path of a Native American adoptee that is strewn with potholes, dead-ends and disappointment.

Award-winning Native journalist Trace A. DeMeyer shares the heartfelt journey of loss, loneliness and finding love in her powerful, new memoir “One Small Sacrifice: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects,” an exposé on generations of American Indian children adopted by non-Indian families.

One reader told DeMeyer it was like being “punched in the gut.”

Pulling no punches, DeMeyer, who now lives in Greenfield, Mass., with her husband, Herb, rips away the illusion that adoption ends happily ever after as soon as the documents are signed and finalized.

She delves into the dark world of doubts – “Why didn’t my mom want me?” – and the fear that asking too many questions would cause her adoptive parents to throw her away all over again.

She suffered years of abuse – emotionally, sexually, and physically – as pain became her constant companion and a pretend happy smile her childhood defense against the torrent of doubts in her life.

DeMeyer spent years meeting and talking with other “Split Feathers,” Native American children taken from their homes and placed in non-Indian families; she discovered that her experiences weren’t new or unique, that many other adoptees, just like her, had unanswered questions, mountains of sadness and, often, shattered lives.

Conquering that tumultuous beginning felt like the easy part as DeMeyer attempted to find her birth family. Her first obstacle was that her adoption was “closed,” meaning sealed and she had no legal right to view her own file!

A sympathetic judge in her Wisconsin hometown allowed DeMeyer to look at her file when she was 22; she found tantalizing clues about her birth family, and even more questions to haunt her as sought to come full circle and discover who she really was.

“I read this powerful book cover to cover, Trace tells her story with such compassion and truthfulness,” Alutiiq-Cherokee adoptee and author Anecia O’Carroll wrote. “Her memories, feelings and facts are written with such unflinching truth, in my mind and heart, she is a warrior and a hero.”

Known for her exceptional print interviews with famous Native Americans such as Leonard Peltier and John Trudell, DeMeyer started research on adoptees in 2004, which led to this fact-filled, 227-page biography that includes congressional testimony, evidence of Indian Adoption Projects and how the Indian Child Welfare Act came to exist.

This jaw-dropping narrative of living as an adoptee, her search, meeting birth relatives, will surely raise eyebrows and question the validity of sealed records and the billion dollar adoption industry. Trace DeMeyer’s blog, updated often, can be found at www.splitfeathers.blogspot.com.

Her journey takes her to Illinois to meet her birthfather in 1996 where she learns about her Cherokee-Shawnee ancestry.

In the 1870s Ponca chef Standing Bear had to take his case to court to prove he was a human being; but DeMeyer’s journey took her further as she tried to prove to herself that she was somebody, too.
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The reviewer is author of Carlomagno: The Pirate Prince,

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using the widget below: