Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this. But every time I write a book, it’s only at the very end that I find out what it was actually about. Somehow, I’m surprised every single time this happens. I write middle-grade narrative nonfiction, which may seem like it’s straightforward. My books all stem from questions I have or …
I grew up reading Judy Blume and the Sweet Valley High series. Book after book, I never saw anyone on the page who resembled me or had similar family experiences. What’s worse—I didn’t notice. Then, in my early twenties, I attended a Native College where I was assigned to read novels by Indigenous authors. Wow, …
Have you ever read a book that you finish and say you are a different person when you finish it? That’s this book. There are books that are powerful and important, and then there are books that are POWERFUL and IMPORTANT. This is the latter. This book impacted me on all levels. Beautiful, romantic, smart, …
Why is this novel so absurdly entertaining? Shum, who was a casino dealer in Lake Stevens before getting his English PhD, loosely bases his story on an old gambling tale by Pushkin, but it has a seemingly effortless liveliness all of its own (I say “seemingly” because that kind of effortlessness takes a lot of …
