Or maybe not. In the United States, HIV infections among some demographic groups are on the rise.
Meanwhile, AIDS continues to utterly ravage Africa.

Fairview High School graduate Nicole Itano, who spent five years living in South Africa, wants America to know that the epidemic is anything but over. In fact, some 7,000 South Africans die every day from the disease; that’s more than 2.5 million a year.

But rather than write a remote or scholarly book on the issue, Itano did what good journalists are supposed to do (and used to do): Talk to those most affected by the disease.

For two years, she “ate meals with them, helped wash their laundry and harvest their fields, and even occasionally slept at their houses,” she writes in an introduction.

Itano also recognizes that traditional journalistic “objectivity” and distance is hard to achieve when you’re working at that level, and hints that she finds that “ethic” suspect. As a result, she gives the reader a deeply personal, informative, affecting and true portrait of a story most Americans know nothing about.

Throughout the book, Itano bluntly exposes Western beliefs about the African AIDS epidemic for what they are: Typically uninformed and loaded with prejudice.

But it’s the personal touch of Itano’s time spent with women suffering from the epidemic that make the book more than just another Western “analysis” of a crisis in a far-flung land.

There is new hope, she says, as money, retroviral drugs and attention to the problem flow into Africa, demonstrating “what can be done if the global community works together to combat a pressing problem and (proving) wrong those who say the continent’s problems are too vast and hopeless.”

— By Clay Evans

“Between Me and the River: Living Beyond Cancer: A Memoir” movingly explores Host’s life after learning she had carcinoid tumors in 2003. It‘s a particularly difficult form of cancer to treat, and Host masterfully recreates her understandable emotional oscillations.

Yet Host, who is married to a successful local developer, has many tools at her disposal: top-notch insurance, enough resources to ensure that she can choose to fly to the Mayo Clinic for treatment, even a housekeeper and relatives available to care for her children while she is undergoing treatment. As difficult as her struggle is, it’s hard to imagine what it must be like to be poor or uninsured and facing the same situation.

Whatever her relatively privileged circumstances, Host has written a book that won’t merely engage the general reader, but offers gems of hope and wisdom for anyone facing a bout with cancer.

“As we go along with this disease, we learn that a pill might ease things now and then. But we know it is only a temporary fix and that the truth is that we‘re all we‘ve got. … You alone can do this. Take a deep breath and invite your solitude in, as close as possible,” she writes.

Host, who studied at Naropa University (she writes of one encounter with the late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg), is a fine, straightforward writer. She’s far from ornate but textures each page with just enough flair and wisdom to rescue the book from becoming too prosaic. But the river metaphor around which Host builds her story ebbs and flows, occasionally feeling forced.

“Between Me and the River” is an accessible, honest book that skillfully drops the reader into the author‘s dire situation. Those who love diving into deeply personal memoir will enjoy it, and her honesty will resonate for those facing a similar illness.

— By Clay Evans

Dallas is masterful with the historical fiction genre. “Prayers,” like many of her novels, is set in Colorado. This one, set in the fictional Middle Swan, tells the story of a mining town in the Colorado high country. Middle Swan is the home of Hennie Comfort, who came west after the Civil War to marry a miner, after her first husband was killed in the war.

She has lived in Middle Swan for 70 years when a young bride moves in to town with her husband. It is 1936 and the couple has moved to the mountains in search of work in the mines. Hennie sees a bit of herself in newcomer, Nit Spindle, and befriends the girl, teaching her the ways of mountain women.

The novel starts with the sharing of the type of secret other authors save for the climax or the great secret revealed in the final pages. This story up front will require time to regain composure; but not too long, because putting down a Sandra Dallas read is nearly impossible. This book is filled with secrets revealed as the reader learns about the lives of the characters. The secret revealed in the final pages is top notch.

It is not uncommon for Dallas to name characters from a previous novel in a newer novel. This book provides the readers with some in-depth answers regarding the life of a man slighted in “The Diary of Mattie Spenser.”

“Prayers for Sale” ends with a happy resolution, which is not always the case with Dallas novels. The ending of “The Diary of Mattie Spenser” could be considered satisfying but not happy. Reading the two of these novels together would make for a wonderful weekend.

— By Lyn Rinehart
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