Shelf Life
Tough times in Springfield
Prison, drug addiction, and gangs have defined the lives of three ethnic Puerto Rican brothers profiled in “When a Heart Turns Rock Solid’’ (Pantheon). Fausto, Sammy, and Julio were raised in Springfield, a declining industrial city where half of all Puerto Rican students in the late 1980s dropped out. Neither of the boys’ parents graduated from high school, and Fausto, at 15, could not read or write in Spanish or English.For 20 years, Timothy Black, a sociology professor at the University of Hartford, has been a mentor to the brothers and a student of their world. In his new book, Black chronicles their triumphs and sorrows against a backdrop of shifts in social policy and the labor market. Black’s work is no sociological treatise. He has produced a narrative as compelling as well-crafted fiction.
Back to the Blackstone
The Blackstone River is sleepy as it twists and turns from Worcester to Pawtucket, R.I. Yet 200 years ago the Blackstone was a whirring engine of the American Industrial Revolution. Slater Mill in Pawtucket was the nation’s first successful water-powered cotton-spinning mill. The area was instrumental in the shift from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy.To celebrate the region’s past, University Press of New England and the Worcester Historical Museum have produced “Landscape of Industry: An Industrial History of the Blackstone Valley.’’ Old maps, prints, and photographs (as below) illustrate essays by historians and National Park Service rangers.
The Rumford Chemical Co., based in the village of Rumford in East Providence, is one of the valley businesses that haven’t disappeared entirely. Its Rumford Baking Powder - a key ingredient in the bread baked to feed Union troops during the Civil War - still can be found in cupboards across the country.
JFK, now in fiction
Jed Mercurio, a British writer trained as a doctor, turns his attention to President John F. Kennedy in his new novel, “American Adulterer’’ (Simon & Schuster). In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Mercurio explained the impetus for the book: “I felt that biographers were always coming up against the barrier of the bedroom door, and that was part of the enigma and great territory for a fiction writer to explore.’’This fictionalized treatment of a White House resident is not without precedent. Curtis Sittenfeld’s “American Wife,’’ published last year during the Republican National Convention, was based on Laura Bush’s life.
Coming out
■“Intervention,’’ by Robin Cook (Putnam)■“Rhino Ranch,’’ by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)
■“Rashi,’’ by Elie Wiesel (Schocken)
Pick of the week
Mary Cotton of Newtonville Books in Newton recommends “The Magicians’’ by Lev Grossman (Viking): “Quentin Coldwater is an awkward, bookish teen who finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a secretive school of magic for a rigorous education in modern wizardry. But this is not a Harry Potter knock-off. This intriguing coming-of-age fantasy takes a dramatic turn when Quentin discovers that Fillory, the beloved Narnia-like land he’s read about all his life, is real - and he can go there.’’Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com. 
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