Nonfiction

Book Review: HERE, WHERE DEATH DELIGHTS: A LITERARY MEMOIR by Mary Jumbelic, M.D.

| Jessica Crawford

Here, Where Death Delights: A Literary Memoir by Mary Jumbelic, M.D. is a 302 page book self-published in 2023.

Genre:

Nonfiction, Memoir

Synopsis:

Mary Jumbelic has been obsessed with death since the loss of her father when she was 13. The sudden departure of her dad, the mother left behind, and her position as an only child led her to grow up quickly. Yet the why and how of her father’s death plagued her. She chose to view an autopsy at the age of 15 and discovered a science that explained the process. Becoming a forensic pathologist wasn’t a given. She struggled before deciding on a career as a medical examiner.

For 25 years, she analyzed corpses and explained to families what had happened to their loved ones, something that hadn’t been done for her. She faced blood, gore, violence, and grief in urban and country morgues and internationally in mass disasters. This daily confrontation challenged her to re-live her own loss. She became an advocate in recognizing preventable injuries to help reduce fatalities. Dr. Jumbelic developed a way to honor the person’s life by speaking for them in courts, classrooms, and interviews. How did she finally integrate death into her own life so filled with hope?

This is her journey.

My Thoughts:

I find forensics fascinating. There was a time in my life when I was headed down the path of becoming a forensic anthropologist, before veering off into nursing instead.

A few weeks ago my library hosted a local author event featuring Dr. Mary Jumbelic, a forensic pathologist. I learned that, although now retired from government work, she had previously been the Chief Medical Examiner for my county for many years. I was stoked to attend her talk at the library!

Since retiring, Dr. Jumbelic has now self-published two nonfiction books about her work as an ME. She is currently promoting her new release, Speak Her Name, but I figured I would start at the beginning, and purchased this literary memoir from her. Some of the chapters have been published previously in various scientific journals. There is no cohesive overall narrative present, just a collection of what amounts to vignettes of Dr. Jumbelic’s experiences, some personal along with the professional. They vary in length, but are all fairly short. And reader, I was hooked! There is plenty of grim material, of course, but as I said I find the subject matter very interesting and I plowed through this book in two sittings!

Some of the stories leave us all wanting satisfaction (but then what happened?!), but that’s the nature of the work. Not all crimes receive justice tied up in a neat bow. Additionally, the author often juxtaposes her professional life against her life as a mother of three children, and how difficult it can be to separate the two realms in your mind, and she doesn’t offer anything prescriptive – there is no tidy lesson about how to go about doing this, just glimpses of what she dealt with.

An added layer to my personal stake in this book: I would be reading the start of a new chapter and think, “This reminds me of that girl I went to school with,” and then because Dr. Jumbelic is local to me, OF COURSE it was the girl I went to school with being discussed! She isn’t named, but the story is clearly the same.

Also included are stories of the author’s work while attempting to identify the dead after large-scale disasters, such as after Hurricane Katrina and 9/11.

Ultimately, I knew I would find this book interesting, but was surprised by just how compelled I was to keep flipping pages at the rate I did. Her newest book apparently focuses on some of the stories of violence against women she has witnessed, again some of which I recognize as they happened in my own sphere (for example, the gynecologist I saw in place of my own one time who has since been convicted of his wife’s murder). I plan on getting my hands on Speak Her Name as soon as I can!

Goodreads

Bookstagram

Book Review: RAISING HARE by Chloe Dalton

| Jessica Crawford

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton is a 224 page nonfiction book published by Canongate Books in 2024.

Genre:

Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature

Synopsis:

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and snoozed in your house for hours on end. This happened to me.

When lockdown led busy professional Chloe to leave the city and return to the countryside of her childhood, she never expected to find herself custodian of a newly born hare. Yet when she finds the creature, endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm, she is compelled to give it a chance at survival.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together and the challenges of caring for the leveret and preparing for its return to the wild. We witness an extraordinary relationship between human and animal, rekindling our sense of awe towards nature and wildlife. This improbable bond of trust serves to remind us that the most remarkable experiences, inspiring the most hope, often arise when we least expect them.

My Thoughts:

This is really stirring nonfiction about how a singular hare changed the author’s life for the better.

When Dalton found a leveret, a newborn hare, chased out of its hide into the open, she first waited to see if its mother would find it and hide it away safely once again. When that doesn’t happen, she sets herself to learning how to raise a wild hare. After caring for the animal through its infancy, she ensures it is free to make its own choices. The hare comes and goes, roaming the English countryside at nighttime and returning to the author’s garden and even into her home to rest, eat, and play. Dalton tries her best to not anthropomorphize the wild animal, or to make it into a pet. Regardless, the hare is so comfortable with her human associate, she even gives birth to one of her litters inside her home, and keeps her babies hidden away safely there while she forages at night.

A focus of this book, besides the story of the interactions and relationship between woman and hare, is how changing her life to accommodate this animal and watching it thrive led the author to learn a new appreciation for nature and life itself. She slowed down, observed more, lived in the moment, and developed mindfulness that allowed her to take more joy in the small realities of life. Additionally, she became more conscious of how human endeavors affect the habitat around them, as well as the wildlife that depends on it. She was able to effect some change to help alleviate some of these environmental harms.

Beyond being educational about hares, their behaviors and natural habitats (a subject that has apparently historically been somewhat neglected), this was an emotional, meditative and reflective book that was a pleasure to read.

Goodreads

Bookshop.org

Bookstagram

Book Review: THE WALTHAM MURDERS by Susan Clare Zalkind

| Jessica Crawford

For whatever reason, I was OBSESSED with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, and all things tangential – including the Waltham murders, and Ibragim Todashev’s fatal interview with the FBI. There has been a certain lack of transparency in regards to some of these things, and Zalkind’s book with all her own investigative journalism on the topics was everything I could have hoped for and more. I was absolutely riveted from start to finish.

Zalkind’s reporting style here is top notch. She shares all of her primary and secondary sources as she is able to, and is sure to point out that people may or may not be telling the truth and that she can’t tell you which it is, but she presents what evidence she has that may either support or refute what others have told her in her interviews. In the end she is able to say, “Here is what the evidence shows happened in Waltham/with Todashev, and here is why authorities have never told the public about it (not even the families of the victims murdered over a decade ago)”. Her investigation and reporting is thorough, and she never makes unsubstantiated claims, but rather always supports her conclusions with what she was able to learn, with the caveat that there may be more we don’t know and what that other information might possibly pertain to. Her personal relationship with one of the murder victims does not prevent her manner of reporting from being admirably professional.

The organization of the book did throw me a bit at times, but I assumed the author had her reasons for presenting the information in the order she chose, and I was always able to follow.

My Kindle tells me that I made 275 highlights in this book – some of those are of multiple paragraphs! There is just so much here that I want to be able to look back at. I think this likely means I should just reread the whole thing sometime. I got the ebook version for free through the Amazon Prime First Reads program, but am planning on buying a print copy of the book to support the author and all the amazing work she has done over the past 10+ years, uncovering truths about a topic I have long been fascinated by.

Bookshop.org

Goodreads

Bookstagram

Book Review: LAY THEM TO REST by Laurah Norton

| Jessica Crawford

There aren’t many things I find more intriguing than learning about the journey that begins with finding unidentified human remains, then studying them and investigating to discover who they belonged to, and ultimately, it is hoped, what happened to them.

I have an anthropology degree I’ve never used (changing career tracks and attending nursing school immediately after obtaining it), but have continued my lifelong interest in the subject, most especially with forensic anthropology. I read popular science books that are published on the topic. Oftentimes these are written by scientists in a very factual manner (like Sue Black’s survey of the human skeleton, including examples of specific cases she attended and what she was able to learn about a person from particular bones). This book takes a different approach. Written by a podcaster/writer/researcher/English professor, it describes the investigation into a specific Jane Doe’s identity with a narrative that includes the day to day process of planning and conducting the research.

I assume the decision was made to present it this way to make it more relatable, maybe? More like a story than strictly informational? However, for me, this made for a 50% absolutely fascinating read, and 50% boring drag. I honestly could not have cared less what hairstyle complemented Dr. Amy Michael’s cheekbones, or about the author’s skin care routine or keto diet; nor all the times the author ordered a Coke (Coke Zero twice at Mexican restaurants, Diet Coke at the trampoline park), the times she ordered a salad (including the time it came without dressing), all the times she flew Delta, and whether she then traveled to her hotel via rideshare or however else. I just wanted to get back to the matter at hand!

I also grew a little bored with the explanations of certain science topics with which I was already familiar, but of course the book couldn’t and shouldn’t just assume all readers are already brushed up on those. What I DID find super interesting was the specifics on the research and investigation done to identify this specific person, and several other Does brought up along the way. I also appreciated that the author includes in her writing the names of all the professionals who contributed, as well as some programs and nonprofits that readers might choose to look into more on their own.

Looking past the filler I did not care for, there was still plenty of great interest. Whether you’re a fan of true crime content or forensic anthropology and genealogy, you’ll probably find a lot to like in this book.