Finished: Run (Patchett) A moving story about a man left with three young boys to raise after the death of his young wife. Always wanting a huge family, but only able to have one child of their own, the Doyles adopted two brothers, one a newborn and one 14 months old. They were fortunate in their lifestyle, and Bernard had been mayor of Boston. He continued to be a hands-on, good father, raising his three sons, Sullivan, twelve at the time of the adoption, and the babies, Tip and Teddy, after his wife's passing. The unusual thing about their family, but not at all unusual to any of them, was that Tip and Teddy were African American while the Doyles were Caucasian. The story picks up with Bernard still active in the lives of his college-aged younger boys, while Sullivan, who probably had the hardest time of all with his mother's death, is working in Africa, but really not living a great life. Ann Patchett is such a beautiful writer. She takes the reader into the depths of what each character is feeling and we see how each of them misses their mother and wife, and we see how much the younger boys adore and respect their father, but don't feel like they can live up to the expectations of what he would like them to do...follow a "meaningful" professional career of some sort like he did. Tip, the older, just wants to be an Ichthyologist. He's got a brilliant mind for science, and his father would like him to continue on to medical school, but he just wants to study fish! Teddy, the youngest, is very close to his mother's brother a priest, Uncle Sullivan, and finds himself being called to follow the same profession. One night, as Bernard insists that the boys meet him on the Harvard campus, where Tip goes to school, for yet another political speech, this one by Jesse Jackson, Tip finally decides to tell his dad after the speech that he's definitely not going to medical school. They are trudging through a downfall of snow, and Tip is walking backwards in front of his dad, talking to him, when an SUV comes out of nowhere headed straight for Tip, who has accidentally stepped off the curb. In the blink of an eye, a woman throws herself at Tip, pushing him out of the way and taking the full brunt of the impact. Her eleven year old daughter, Kenya, is beside herself and rushes to her mother's side. Both Tip and the woman are transported to the hospital, but while Tip gets away with just a sprained ankle, the woman, whose name is Tennessee, is fighting for her life and needs surgery. Kenya sits alone at the hospital and Bernard realizes that she means to stay there with her mom all night. When Kenya starts talking to them, though, she reveals that she already knows each one of them. Her mother is the biological mother of Tip and Teddy and has watched over them their entire lives with Kenya in tow. Needless to say, all of the Doyle's are flabbergasted and are not sure whether to believe it or not. However, the most important thing to Bernard at the moment is that Kenya has no other family and no where to go, so he insists that she come home with them and they'll take her right back to see her mother in the morning.  When they arrive home from the hospital they are shocked that 33 year old Sullivan has arrived from Africa for a surprise visit. And so, begins the story of the relationship between each of the Doyle men and Kenya. They are all very kind to her, in particular Sullivan, who has always cherished his little brothers, even though you'd think that he might resent them suddenly getting all the attention when they were adopted. Now, he sees that this bright young girl has entered their lives and might just take all the attention away from the boys. Both Tip and Teddy grapple with the notion that their biological mother is lying in the hospital hovering between life and death. I'm not going to give any more details, because there are a couple of surprises, but it is a lovely book. Oh, and Tip is so excited when Kenya is genuinely interested in all the fish in the jars when he takes her to his lab at Harvard! Also, Kenya is an amazing track runner, hence the name of the book. She is destined to be in the Olympics some day! Even though there were some sad moments in the book, it was, for me, a heartwarming book that made me feel good at the end. :-)

Finished: The Last Flight (Clark) The fastest I've read a book in a long, long time! The Last Flight is a gripping, page-turner. It's the story of two women, strangers, running from their lives, who meet briefly in an airport and desperately exchange boarding passes and ID's to take the other's flight and assume a new identity. Claire is running from a powerful, rich, yet physically abusive husband who is about to run for senate, but who is suspected of killing a former lover who crossed him. She's attempted to divorce him before, only to be beaten into submission. Everyone knows her, and the family's philanthropic nature, outwardly at least. Eva is running from a life of manufacturing drugs for rich Berkley students. She's caught between the ruthless man who set her up in the business, and the DEA agent who insists she turn evidence against the man, even as the agent can't promise her protection after she testifies. Neither telling the other the complete truth of what they'd be meeting on the other end of their landing flight, both women see no other choice but to run from everything and everyone they know. The story unfolds very quickly when the flight of one of the women crashes in the middle of the ocean with no survivors, and the remaining woman's face is splashed all over the papers as lost in the flight. It's not a very deep story, but just the kind of suspenseful drama I needed to keep me reading to see what happens to Claire and Eva, and to see if the men in their lives get their comeuppance as well. :-)

Finished: How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. This book was powerful at moments, but very redundant. I had higher hopes for the prose, but the ideas are still very solid and eye-opening. Maybe non-fiction is just harder for me to read. I may have gained the most from the book by some of Kendi's earliest comments such as this one: 

"The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it--and then dismantle it." "The common idea of claiming "color blindness" is akin to the notion of being "not racist"--as with the "not racist", the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity."

This really struck a cord with me personally. Those words, plus what is going on in the world today, have made me much more aware that I need to be proactively antiracist. I don't want to be racially passive. Kendi's own personal journey from being racist himself towards his own black people, thinking he, as an educated, middle-class black man was above the poorer, uneducated black man, was very powerful. Towards the end of the book, Kendi and his future wife, Sadiqa, experienced a situation in a restaurant where an obnoxious, drunk white man climbed up onto a stage and started fondling a statue of Buddha to the laughter of his table-mates. Kendi says:

"I had learned a long time ago to tune out the antics of drunk White people doing things that could get a Black person arrested. Harmless White fun is Black lawlessness."

I hope this statement can be overcome in the future, but, sadly, I fear our country has a long way to go to make this happen.