Hoaxes don't help...

Yesterday I posted about the absolutely unacceptable way a New York mother responded to a birthday party invitation her son received from a classmate with two gay fathers. Many of you shared my outrage and cynicism.

Well, it turns out cynicism and outrage were appropriate emotions, but for the wrong reason. You see, the two people pictured above made the whole incident up.

DJs Leeana Karlson and Steve Harper, with Long Island's K-98.3, made the whole thing up. Apparently at the behest of K-98.3 management, the two admitted today that the entire story was a lie and issued an apology.

"Dear K-98.3 Listeners," the statement begins, "On Wednesday, we told you the story of Sophia's birthday party, and one parent's objection to the same-sex household of Sophia's parents. We also posted the invitation on our Facebook page, and invited comments from our followers.

"This story was, in fact, totally fictitious, and created by the two of us. This was done without the knowledge of K-98.3 management or ownership.

"We were attempting to spur a healthy discourse on a highly passionate topic, but we made a mistake by misleading our listeners into thinking that this specific situation actually existed. "We are very sorry that we perpetuated this falsehood, even after it was clear that it had taken on a 'life of its own.' We deeply apologize for violating your trust, and we will work hard to regain that trust."

At this point the radio station's management hasn't commented on their plans for the pair. I hope they get fired and never work in radio again.

Let's face it: the type of treatment Karlson and Harper created actually does happen in our country. But when hoaxes like these catch the media's attention, they add fuel to the fire of those who deny that discrimination and prejudice exist, those who say that anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT people aren't necessary. They're the reason that certain states—Kansas being one recently—can feel empowered enough to introduce a law in the state legislature that says discrimination against LGBT people for religious reasons is okay.

Hoaxes like these don't help. We need to talk about these issues, to make this type of prejudice really stop, but creating a scheme to promote dialogue isn't the answer.

Book Review: "Mercy Snow" by Tiffany Baker

The town of Titan Falls, New Hampshire is ruled by its paper mill. The mill has always been a powerful fixture in the town and it still employs most of the men. Its success or failure has a direct effect on the well-being of the town, and its byproducts have tainted the Androscoggin River for years, certainly leading to a number of deaths and illnesses.

One night a tragic bus accident rocks the town, holding two families in its sway—the McCallisters, who run the mill, and the ne'er-do-well Snows, who had only recently returned to Titan Falls and now live on its fringes. When Zeke Snow is accused of causing the accident despite his innocence, his younger sister, Mercy, is determined to prove his innocence, while starting to embrace the mysterious gifts that have been handed down through generations of women in her family. All Mercy wants is normalcy, but trouble and scandal seem to follow her family wherever it goes.

June McCallister, wife of the mill's owner, reinvented herself from the poor Florida girl she once was to the woman whose actions are followed by everyone in town. When she discovers some facts about the night of the accident, and how her own family was far more involved in events than anyone knows, she is determined to protect her husband and her son at any cost, no matter what it takes—intimidation, innuendo, bribery, lies, even putting others at risk. June doesn't really want to know the full truth, about the accident or the Snows' ancestor, Gert, whose skeleton was uncovered the night of the accident, and to whom her husband's family may very well be linked.

Mercy Snow is a book with a gothic feel. It's one where no one is quite what they seem, and there are more secrets than truths. It's a story about a town where the power of some has held dominion over others, no matter what the cost, and no one wants to be the one to speak out or ask questions. It's also a story about the strength of familial relationships and all that we'll do to protect the ones we love.

This was an interesting and compelling book, and Tiffany Baker has a very evocative use of language. I wished there were a few more surprises in this book than there were; I felt as if once I got a handle on the plot and where it was going I was able to fairly accurately predict how the story would resolve itself. I also don't particularly enjoy books or movies where one character or group of characters hold all the cards and can manipulate everyone into doing what they want, even though it's wrong, although I know this happens in real life. But in the end, the star of this book is Baker's storytelling ability and the town of Titan Falls itself, both of which made the book worth reading.

Why not just say, "No, thank you"?

I realize, that much as we were told back in the day, that it takes different strokes to move the world. But try as I might, sometimes I just don't understand why people find the need to act like total jerks.

A woman in Baldwin, New York, decided she didn't want her seven-year-old son to attend his classmate Sophia's birthday party.

Does she not approve of tie-dye parties because the 70s are over? Does she think that at this age, boys shouldn't go to little girls' birthday parties?

No, none of those things. She didn't want her son to attend the party because Sophia is raised by her gay fathers.

But instead of showing her son how to handle things with class, this mother wrote on the invitation, "Tommy will NOT attend. I do not believe in what you do and will not subject my innocent son to your 'lifestyle.' I'm sorry Sophia has to grow up this way. If you have an issue or need to speak to me: [number erased]."

Seriously. As misguided as I clearly think it is to penalize a little girl for who her parents are (much as I'd like to penalize this woman's son), why was this behavior necessary? This wasn't a party where the kids were going to a same-sex marriage ceremony, a food bank helping people with AIDS, or a Human Rights Campaign Fund event. This was a little girl's birthday party. I'd wager a guess that the so-called "lifestyle" of this girl's fathers would have closely resembled everyone else's.

If there's a bright spot, when this story was originally posted on Huffington Post, the woman's phone number was still listed on her response. I'd be willing to bet she got more than a few phone calls from people telling her what they thought of her behavior.

Raising your child in the midst of ignorance and prejudice will do more harm than going to the birthday party of a girl with two dads.

Book Review: "The Cost of Living" by Rob Roberge

"The dumbest junkie I've ever met could do the quickest math imaginable about how much they had left and how long it could and would last. We can shift metric to standard in our heads and we can tally up the numbers of pills in our pockets faster than a room full of MIT grads with calculators."

Bud Barrett should know better than anyone what it's like to be a junkie. He's spent a good part of his adult life completely high, thinking about getting high, figuring out how long his high is going to last and how to maintain it, and recovering from being high. Amazingly, during a good amount of this time, Bud has been a well-known indie guitarist and singer, part of a band that achieved some renown (and even more after he left). But the siren call of drugs has led him down an increasingly self-destructive path, causing him to do things he never thought he'd do, and hurt himself in ways non-addicts couldn't even imagine.

"I'd crossed so many ethical lines I said I would never cross in my life. I'd become a man I couldn't recognize more times than I could ever count."

Bud's mother committed suicide when he was young, and his relationship with his father has been strained since he witnessed a shocking crime he never quite understood. And those two relationships have haunted him, driven him toward drugs and thoughts of suicide, and given him some thought of redemption at times as well. When Bud meets smart, sassy, responsible Olivia, for the first time in his life he wants to be sober, wants to savor the moment instead of drowning in it drugs. But will the pull of his addiction be stronger than true love?

Rob Roberge's The Cost of Living is a beautiful, almost poetic book which is brutally frank in its depiction of the daily struggles of a drug addict. Bud is a man with everything—talent, brains, drive, love—but he can't keep from putting himself in harm's way, literally putting his life at risk hour after hour, day after day. The book shifts back and forth through different times in Bud's life—sometimes he's deep in the throes of addiction, sometimes he's clean, sometimes he's somewhere in between—and it follows him as he deals with problems both ordinary and bizarre. He finds and loses love because of his addiction, he's financially secure and penniless, he's with old friends and drug friends he barely knows.

At its heart, this is a book about relationships. All the paths in Bud's life lead him back to his estranged father, a man whose love Bud craved yet a man he also wanted to destroy at times. Yet the answers he seeks from his father could either set him free or set him back on a path of self-destruction, and he's not certain which he'd rather it be.

"My next overdose could be my last, and I wasn't sure I was too scared by that anymore."

I was absolutely captivated by Roberge's storytelling. Although the shifts in time took a little orienting, Bud is such a vivid character and his persona, both high and sober, is so well-drawn, that even as you're disgusted by him and pity him and think he might be better off dead, you can't help reading about him. The Cost of Living is tremendously well-written and utterly compelling. One hell of a read.

Book Review: "The UnAmericans: Stories" by Molly Antopol

There was a time when I didn't read short stories, because I said I didn't like getting emotionally invested in characters and plot only to have to move on a short while later. It was a foolish sentiment, in retrospect, one which I abandoned about 15 years ago when I realized how rich the short story landscape truly was, filled with talented authors creating stories with the power of full-length novels, stories whose characters intrigued me and made me long to know more about what happened to them when the stories ended.

Molly Antopol's new collection, The UnAmericans, is one of the reasons I'm glad I read short stories. Every one of the eight stories in this collection packed a quiet power, richly drawn characters, and tremendously compelling explorations of human emotion in typical and unusual situations.

The characters in Antopol's stories are Jewish people spanning the 1950s through the present. Whether it's the former Czech dissident-turned-New England professor in "The Quietest Man," who tries to find out from his estranged daughter what her new play will say about their strained relationship; the restless Israeli journalist desperate to once again leave her country in search of work, but can't seem to get herself disentangled from a relationship with a widower and his teenage daughter, in "A Difficult Phase"; the actor recently released from prison after refusing to name names during the McCarthy era in "The Unknown Soldier," who has reinvented himself to get roles but can't seem to even act the part of good father to his young son; the young Israeli soldier in "Minor Heroics," who finds his loyalty to his family tested after an accident; or the woman recounting her exploits in the Yiddish Underground during World War II in "My Grandmother Tells Me This Story," these are seemingly ordinary people facing challenges that test their strength and their heart.

After I finished every one of these stories, I simply thought to myself, "That was so good!" Antopol's use of language and imagery, as well as the emotional richness with which she imbues her characters, really makes this a tremendously strong collection. It doesn't matter that I couldn't identify with the situations most of these people found themselves in; I just wanted to keep reading about them. And usually when I read, I'm struck by a sentence or two, something I like to use in my reviews, but there were so many amazing sentences in these stories it became an exercise of excess.

I've always felt that a good short story keeps you thinking about the characters after it has ended, and in many cases, you'd be willing to read more about them. I felt that way about nearly every story in The UnAmericans. I'm so glad I found this collection, and look forward to seeing what's next in Molly Antopol's career. I know we'll be hearing from her again soon.

Book Review: "The First True Lie" by Marina Mander

Luca is a young boy living in Italy with his mother, who suffers from depression, and their cat, Blue. He has never known his father and doesn't quite understand where he went, so many of his classmates call him an orphan. Sometimes he and his mother have a typical relationship—they have fun, she nags him about getting up on time, taking a bath, doing his homework. But sometimes his mother is unable to cope with the world and locks herself in her bedroom for a day or two, but Luca is attuned to those moods.

"They say that for a child I'm extremely sensitive—whether or not they mean it as a compliment, I don't know. They say it with a smile, but there's something sad behind that nice smile that makes me think they haven't understood much of anything. I train myself to be sensitive and my antennae tune in on their own."

One morning, however, Luca's mother doesn't wake up. At first he thinks she has taken some of her pills, which often make her sleep deeply and not hear anything, but when he returns from school that day and sees she hasn't moved at all, he knows that she has died. And now, he truly is a "complete orphan," and he is sad that his love and his presence weren't enough to keep his mother alive. But beyond that, he fears that when his mother's death is discovered they'll put him in an orphanage, a horrible place where you aren't encouraged to be yourself or be free, and they'll separate him from Blue.

"This is terrible. I don't want to go. I don't want to be a complete orphan. Anything else would be better. Better to say that Mama's left. Or else say nothing and act like it doesn't matter. Better to find a way to make do. It can't be that difficult. Better to try to survive. Better to keep it a secret and smile. Better to use my imagination, to make myself come up with something special. Better to hope it will all just be over soon."

At first, like many young children who discover they're suddenly without adult supervision, Luca enjoys the freedom of eating only junk food, of leaving their apartment a mess, and staying up as late as he can. But he knows he must pretend to the outside world that everything is fine. He tries not to act overly sad or even overly happy—he doesn't want anyone to question his behavior, which might lead them to want to talk to his mother. He figures out how to go the grocery store and act like he belongs there, to pass his mother off as busy at work or running late so people don't encounter her, all while he has all the windows to her bedroom open to combat the increasing smell of decomposition.

The First True Lie is a heartbreaking story of one boy's courage and ingenuity in the face of what he knows is inevitable. Luca is a tremendously endearing narrator—smart and imaginative, impish and mischievous. His sensitivity in recognizing his mother's moods and feeling for her even if he doesn't understand them is moving, as is his fervent desire to stay in his home with his cat. While obviously not every young child could keep up the subterfuge (and it's clearly a measure of how much his mother has disconnected from the world), you find yourself rooting for him to succeed.

This was a tremendously compelling book, because you want to know what happens to Luca. Its narrative is at times a little disjointed and peppered with curses, much as dialogue with a young boy might be. But you are moved, and even impressed, by Luca's bravery.

Book Review: "The Last Days of California" by Mary Miller

Fifteen-year-old Jess and her family have left their home in Montgomery, Alabama, and are driving to California, with the plan to arrive before the Rapture. Along the way, they are committed to saving as many souls as they can—Jess' father wants her and her older sister, Elise, to hand out as many tracts as they can every time they stop at gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels, and the occasional casino. Despite the special and sacred nature of their pilgrimage, this car trip is like one many families experience—Jess and Elise squabble over space in the backseat, their long-suffering mother just wants to read and relax in peace, and their father refuses to use a GPS because he doesn't like machines to tell him what to do.

Other than their father, it doesn't appear that anyone in their family truly believes that the Rapture will actually happen. Elise, who is secretly pregnant, hopes in many ways that it does come, so she won't have to live with the disclosure of her secret. And Jess isn't sure what she believes, about being saved, or anything else for that matter.

"That was my problem—I had no imagination—I couldn't imagine anything other than what I knew. The way time functioned, for example. Minutes. Waiting. How long a day could be. My biggest fear was that things would go on forever and there would never be any end. The idea of forever terrified me, even if we were in heaven and everything was great there."

As her family makes their way across the country, Jess confronts her insecurity with her looks and her body, and her simultaneous envy and relief that guys stare at Elise and not her. She desperately wants something to happen in her life—she wants more meaningful friendships, she wants to fall in love—but in her heart she knows she might not be as ready for these things as she thinks she is. She says, "I didn't know how I could want things so badly while making it impossible to ever get them."

Jess also watches as her parents struggle with their own relationship, with their father's inability to hold a job, their fears about money, and with Elise's erratic behavior. They also struggle with the question of whether the trip will ultimately end in the Rapture, and what will become of their lives if it doesn't occur. Elise can't face the reality of her situation, and isn't sure whether she should keep using her looks to get her the attention she craves. Jess wants things in her family, and their relationships, to remain the same.

"If I wasn't the good daughter, I wouldn't know what I was. I wasn't popular or a cheerleader or a straight A student. ... There were so many things I wasn't that I had difficulty defining myself, especially in relation to Elise, who was so many things."

Mary Miller really told an interesting story, and I found both Jess and Elise's characters to be very dynamic—you knew there was more about them than you first saw. I wasn't sure where the plot would go, and I like the way that Miller ended things, but I thought this was a compelling exploration of how you learn to trust what you know rather than what you're told, and how complicated it can be to find yourself and become comfortable with who you are. This was a really quick read; I read nearly the entire book in about a day.