Only Because It's You

Finished August 4

Only Because It's You by Rebecca Fisseha

This novel has an Ethiopian Canadian woman Miz as the main character. She came to Canada for medical reasons when she was a young child, brought there by her mother, and they stayed. Her father remained in Ethiopia. When she was fourteen, her mother sent her back to Ethiopia to stay with her father for the summer. She learned then that her parents were still married and that surprised her. She also hung out with some kids her age while she was there, and became friends with Kal. Years later Kal came to Canada as a visitor, but managed to get a work visa as an actor. He had a mentor, Oliver, who gave him advice and help, and who was working to get a theatre company to do sponsorship for him. 

Miz has always said that she would never marry, citing her parents' relationship as the reason. She's had a few casual relationships, more based on physical attraction than emotional connection.

When Kal's sponsorship falls through and his work visa is getting close to the end, Miz starts trying to find other ways for him to stay, including finding a woman for him to marry. Eventually they settle on her being his spousal sponsor and they have a civil ceremony at Toronto City Hall. But because they already have an emotional relationship, and they know each other's family members, it gets weird for Miz. A planned visit to Ethiopia brings up more issues, some from the past and some from the current situation. 

The plot was interesting, and I liked Kal, but Miz really began to annoy me. It seems that she needed therapy to deal with a lot of unresolved issues around her feelings toward her parents and her feelings about relationships. So I didn't really connect to her as a character as much as I usually do in novels. 

I enjoyed learning about some of the Ethiopian culture included. 

The Garden of Eden

Finished August 31

The Garden of Eden by Sharon Butala

This book takes place mostly in 1993, with the character Lannie having experiences as early as 1984. This is when Lannie arrived as a volunteer in Ethiopia. She was deeply affected by the news of Ethiopian famine and was determined to find a way to help there. Without medical or other specialized training, she found a church willing to send her for her reporting on what was happening. Lannie makes herself useful in whatever way she can, picking up knowledge as she goes. 

When she was a young child, she was dumped on her uncle Barney and aunt Iris by her father, Howard, Barney's older half-brother following the death of her mother. Her younger siblings, Dillon and Misty, were left with another relative in Calgary.

Lannie had lived in Chinook, Saskatchewan, and her aunt and uncle had a farm just outside town. Despite the love they had for her, Lannie always felt out of place. 

In 1993 in Chinook, Iris is spurred to leave the town to search for Lannie who has been gone for a decade, with letters petering out soon after she left. The impetus to search for Lannie is a sudden, unexpected loss of her own. Iris thinks about her own ties to the land, living on the farm that her mother and grandmother lived on before her. She has often thought about the indigenous people who lived there before them, protecting the signs they left behind, and spending time in the remaining wild coulee that is part of her property.

The book is separated into three sections: Seeding, Growing, and Harvesting, and there are overarching themes of drought, and land use and conservation.

Both women are also searching for love and belonging, and both have dreams that take them into the past and the future. They also feel a sense of a woman guiding them in these dreams. 

I really enjoyed seeing their experiences, even the difficult ones, and seeing them grow as they realized that their strength was within them, and they needed to love themselves first. A moving story that shows the commonalities across cultures. 

Life on the Ground Floor

Finished May 29
Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine by James Maskalyk

This memoir is organized in a very interesting way. Maskalyk goes alphabetically through the letters of the alphabet, with each chapter on a topic starting with a letter. There are a couple of chapters where he combines two letters for his topic. So the subtitle doesn't mean what I thought it did, which was letters from one person to another.
Maskalyk works in emergency medicine at St. Mike's hospital in Toronto, and sometimes on the trauma team. He also teaches emergency medicine at the University of Toronto, and he works as an advisor, teacher, and consultant in emergency medicine in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This memoir of his work in this field moves between his work at St. Mike's, his work in Ethiopia, and his offtime with his grandfather in northern Alberta, near where a lot of my family came from and some still live.
The interesting comparison of a rural area of Canada, with a very urban area of Canada, and an urban area of Africa is one that emphasizes both things in common and differences. The hospital he works at in Ethiopia struggles to get the staff, equipment, and drugs necessary to treat patients properly. The patients struggle to pay for what they need. The families are a big part of the caregiving due to staff shortages, and lack of experience. In Canada, St. Mike's is right downtown, with all the difficult situations that that environment brings: drugs, violence, homeless, and mental illness. But they have staff that are well-trained, the most up-to-date equipment, and easy access to the necessary medications.
With his grandfather in rural Alberta, medical care is available, but not necessarily coordinated. At one point, he reviews his grandfather's medications and eliminates ones that don't give enough benefit for the side effects, or aren't needed. At another he accompanies him to the loca doctor, and explains his grandfather's condition and the risks he faces, becoming an advocate for the right treatment at the right time. I loved the closeness between these two men, and the way they dealt with real life issues.
Maskalyk is a man who cares deeply, who wants to make a difference in the world for the good, and who lives a life that sometimes is a lonely one.
Highly recommended.

Ethiopian Tale

Finished June 18
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
We follow the family of Hailu and Selam in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia beginning in 1974 with the revolution. Hailu is a doctor and Selam is dying in the hospital. Their oldest son Yonas takes refuge in prayer, pleading for an end to the violence. Yonas' wife Sara feels herself to be abandoned by God after the loss of their parents and earlier pregnancies, even as she prays for her daughter's life to be spared. Hailu's younger son Dawit has joined an underground student resistance movement, and finds himself pushing to do more.
The family dynamics play a large role in the plot, as does the revolution and resistance in Ethiopia. When Hailu makes a decision to spare a prisoner further torture, he is ordered to report to jail and the fight for freedom becomes more personal. As the family becomes more involved in the political situation, we see the desperation and hidden depths of the characters we have come to care about.
Told from multiple viewpoints, this story is an emotional and powerful one.

Epic Novel

Finished June 2
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, read by Sunil Malhotta
This is a long novel (19 CDs in audio) but a gripping one. We are told the story of Marion and Shiva Stone, identical twins, conjoined at birth, whose mother died at their birth. The twins were unexpected to everyone else at the mission hospital in Ethiopia. Their mother, a nun from India, worked there assisting the surgeon, their father. He was so shocked and devasted by the incidents surrounding their birth that he ran away.
Taking us from the 1950's into the 21st century, this story follows Marion's life as he looks back on his parents lives, on the lives of his adopted parents, also doctors at the mission hospital, to his own childhood and youth growing up in Addis Ababa. Marion follows in his parents footsteps, becoming a surgeon himself, and events force him to flee Ethiopia during its civil war and take refuge in Kenya and then in the United States, where he continues his medical training.
The author is himself a doctor and this knowledge is evident in the text. While there is a lot of medical information, it never seemed anything but natural to me, a necessary part of the story.
The best thing about this novel to me was the sense of place that is made so clear of this small mission hospital in Addis Ababa. From the mangled name of the hospital (Missing Hospital) to the staff (the priest gatekeeper and the administrative Mother Superior to name just two) one is immersed in the surroundings of the young boys as they grow up in this wonderful atmosphere.
This novel just flows, and I was enchanted by the wonderful story as well as by the narrator's voice, perfectly suited for the tale. While a long novel, it never felt like too much, and though the story drew us backward and forward through the lives of various characters, it never jarred.
A wonderful book that I will recommend highly.